I think the miss with DLSS 5 over just AI stuff is that this will be really expensive tech.
The demos I saw were running on a pair of RTX 5090 GPUs. One was handling the game rendering, the other was dedicated entirely to running the DLSS 5 AI model. NVIDIA was upfront that there's still significant optimization work to do, and the plan is to ship DLSS 5 running on a single GPU when it launches later this year.I don’t see how nvidia reasonably gets to that performance without significant cost increase or degradation. It’s not like they’re going to give it to us for free.
And I think people are about ‘tapped out’ on what they’re willing to spend on cards. The people I knew who used to build ‘megarigs’ all build mid-range rigs now, because the cost has overtaken them. If no one has the hardware for this feature, it won’t drive sales.
I kinda think we’re entering the nadir of powerful home machines. Everyone is going to be scaling back, not up. PC gaming manufacturers will have to stop assuming that users will just keep paying every other year for power and performance.