Modder reduces DLSS 5 performance on AMD Radeon by 74% more in one day

Modders working to bring NVIDIA’s DLSS 5 neural rendering to AMD Radeon GPUs just had their busiest day yet. The developer behind the DLSS-NR-on-AMD tool delivered two new versions in 24 hours, Alpha 0.3.3 and Alpha 0.4.0, together adding about 74% performance on Radeon hardware, according to the project’s own GitHub release notes. YouTuber Ancient Gameplays tested the update in Cyberpunk 2077 at 3440 x 1440 and saw frame rates increase from around 30 FPS on previous versions to around 50 FPS on Alpha 0.4.0. This is a big step forward for a workaround that was initially barely playable. The original version of the mod had poor performance, but it appears that this issue is being fixed.

The tool works by introducing NVIDIA’s own DLSS 5 DLL into Radeon RX 9000 GPUs, and apparently into RX 7000 cards as well, intercepting calls expected by the DLL and routing neural computation to AMD hardware, since RDNA 4 supports the FP8 math that DLSS 5 relies on. Alpha 0.3.3 also added a graphical installer with an editor of built-in settings and overlay controls, so getting neural rendering to work on Radeon apparently no longer means manually digging through file paths. Additionally, just today, the Alpha 0.4.1 update brought an additional 8% increase in overall performance and a 9% performance increase under heavy gaming loads.

The developer reportedly told Ancient Gameplays that another major update is coming soon. At this rate, DLSS-NR-on-AMD could eventually come close to NVIDIA’s own implementation, at least on paper. The modding community has done a great job since the DLSS 5 DLL leaked with NBA 2K27. The technology has since been ported to the RTX 40, RTX 30, RTX 20, AMD Radeon and even Intel integrated graphics. As for AMD’s implementation, progress certainly looks promising for an unofficial mod that’s barely a few weeks old.