Nvidia Brings DLSS 4.5 to Modern Warfare 4 and a Faster DLSS 5 Model to NBA 2K27

OCTOBER 16

Nvidia chose the busiest week of the PC gaming calendar to make its pitch simple: whatever you are playing this month, it should run faster on a GeForce card. In a GeForce news post published this week, Nvidia announced that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 arrives with its full DLSS 4.5 suite switched on for campaign early access, that NBA 2K27 is getting a substantially faster DLSS 5 model, and that a new beta Performance Mode for frame generation is now available through the Nvidia app. The Times of India, reporting on the same Nvidia announcement, framed the rollout the same way: one graphics update that touches a blockbuster shooter, a flagship sports title and hundreds of already-released games at once.

Modern Warfare 4 gets the full DLSS 4.5 stack

According to Nvidia, Modern Warfare 4's campaign early access begins on October 16 featuring its suite of DLSS 4.5 technologies, ahead of the full launch on October 23. PC Guide, citing Activision, reports that the campaign unlocks at 10 a.m. PDT on October 16 for players who pre-ordered a digital edition, with preloading already live. Nvidia says DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution will be available in all of the game's modes, where it is designed to raise frame rates while improving image quality over native rendering. On GeForce RTX 40 Series systems, players can add DLSS 4.5 Frame Generation on top of that. On GeForce RTX 50 Series systems, Nvidia says players can activate Dynamic Multi Frame Generation with multiplication of up to 6X, the company's most aggressive frame-generation setting.

The visual options do not stop at frame rates. Nvidia says Modern Warfare 4 includes optional ray-traced reflections, and that its Reflex latency technology can be enabled on all GeForce RTX systems to reduce PC latency and make controls feel more responsive. For a competitive shooter, that combination matters as much as raw frames: Super Resolution and frame generation push the number up, while Reflex works on the delay between a player's input and what appears on screen. If you are catching up on the rollout itself, Previously has the full early-access breakdown in our Modern Warfare 4 campaign early access guide.

Three launch dates, not one

The calendar around the game is staggered, and it is worth keeping the three dates separate. The campaign opens first, on October 16, for digital pre-orders. According to Activision and Infinity Ward's DMZ guides, reported by SavePoint, DMZ — the game's open-world extraction mode — gets its own early-access window on Tuesday, October 20 for digital pre-orders of the Standard or Vault editions, three days ahead of everyone else. Multiplayer and the full public launch of DMZ then arrive with the complete release on October 23. Nvidia's own post describes the October 23 launch as the point where multiplayer and DMZ join the package for all players, which lines up with Activision's guides once the pre-order early-access windows are factored in. In other words: story first, extraction second, everything for everybody on the 23rd.

NBA 2K27 and the faster DLSS 5 model

The second half of Nvidia's announcement is about DLSS 5, its newer neural rendering technology, and speed. According to Nvidia, NBA 2K27's Season 2 update on October 16 introduces a new, more performant DLSS 5 AI model that increases frame rates by up to 1.4X on GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs, RTX Spark laptops and GeForce NOW. Nvidia says the underlying 3D-Guided Neural Rendering model is now 10X faster overall than the version it debuted in March. Where conventional DLSS features reconstruct resolution or generate extra frames, Nvidia positions DLSS 5 as a final rendering stage that uses AI to restore lighting and material detail that real-time budgets normally force developers to cut. The company notes that DLSS 5 debuted in NBA 2K27 last month, where it was used to improve texture detail, skin, contact shadowing and hair rendering on players.

NBA 2K27 is the first stop, not the last. According to Nvidia, Hogwarts Legacy will add DLSS 5 support on November 5, Where Winds Meet will follow later this year, and RTX Remix — Nvidia's free modding platform for classic games — gains DLSS 5 on October 23. KitGuru, covering the same rollout, highlighted the NBA 2K27 figure as the headline proof point for the faster model ahead of the RTX Spark laptop launch. For players, the practical question is whether the 1.4X claim holds up in live Season 2 play; the structural point is that Nvidia is now iterating on DLSS 5's model speed in public, mid-season, rather than waiting for a new hardware generation.

Preset C: a beta Performance Mode for frame generation

The third piece of the announcement may end up touching the most games. Nvidia says it has released a beta version of a new Performance Mode for DLSS 4.5 Frame Generation, Multi Frame Generation and Dynamic Frame Generation through the Nvidia app, applicable to hundreds of supported games and apps. Labeled Preset C in the app's Frame Generation override settings, the mode swaps the optical-flow AI model used by frame generation for a faster, lighter algorithm. Nvidia says the trade is a minor reduction in image quality for meaningfully higher frame rates, and it cites up to 35 percent faster frame generation performance on a GeForce RTX 5060. The preset is available for GeForce RTX 40 Series and RTX 50 Series GPUs and RTX Spark laptops, and it can be applied per game or globally through the app's graphics settings.

There is a pattern across all three announcements worth naming. Nvidia is increasingly shipping its performance story as software that lands on a calendar — a game launch here, a season update there, an app beta in between — rather than as a single driver drop. The company also lists Crossout Remastered's DLSS 4.5 update on October 22 and Among the Trolls launching with DLSS and ray tracing among this week's additions, per its GeForce post. If your weekend plans are on the court or in the campaign, update the Nvidia app first. And if shooters are not your Friday, there is a quieter launch worth a look in Beyond These Stars arriving on Game Pass. More coverage lives on the Previously Games page.