In early September, Nvidia officially released DLSS 5, kicking off support with NBA 2K27. The biggest change is the introduction of neural rendering, a controversial piece of technology that aims to deliver hyper-realistic graphics with help from AI. Despite the backlash, AMD is reportedly rushing to create its own version of the technology in time for its next-generation RDNA 5 GPUs.

Well-known leaker Kepler_L2 says AMD will “have their own version” of neural lighting “like DLSS 5” soon enough. This is not to be confused with AMD’s Ray Regeneration, which acts as a machine learning-based denoiser for ray-traced visuals. Nvidia’s counterpart is known as DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction, which launched last month, shortly before DLSS 5 came along.

DLSS 5 equivalent for AMD graphics cards could be on the way

Kepler offered some thoughts on how AMD’s version of DLSS 5 “should be done”. They say the AI model should be given “direct access to 3D game data such as geometry/BVH, Ray data, depth buffers, materials, etc., so it doesn’t have to guess and can accurately know how each object in a scene should interact with light.”

AMD has already published two related research projects to its open-source GPUOpen middleware: Lightweight attention-based indirect illumination, on August 20, and Temporally stable generative illumination with a one-step diffusion model, on September 9. Modders have already been able to get DLSS 5 running on Radeon GPUs with some success, so the potential is definitely there.

In a follow-up comment, Kepler says the new DLSS-like neural lighting technology will “probably” be exclusive to RDNA 5 cards; “this stuff is pretty heavy,” they add. With DLSS 5, Nvidia also restricts official support to its latest RTX 50 series cards, but it will be coming to RTX 40 series GPUs at a later date. Gamers have already been testing a leaked DLSS 5 build on all sorts of hardware.

We’re currently on the RDNA 4 generation with the RX 9000 series, which was home to its own exclusive feature – FSR 4/FSR Redstone – at least until AMD finally brought official RX 7000 series support this June. There’s no official word on RDNA 5 yet, but we expect early 2027 at the earliest (when AMD also brings FSR 4 to RX 6000 series GPUs), perhaps at CES next January.

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Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.