War Thunder adds DLSS 5 as NVIDIA releases a new Game Ready driver

NVIDIA has announced that DLSS 5 with 3D-Guided Neural Rendering is now available in War Thunder. Added through the Eagle's Shadow update, it builds on the game's existing DLSS and ray-tracing features with a new AI model. NVIDIA's November 12 announcement schedules Where Winds Meet's DLSS 5 update for November 23, 2026; the new Game Ready driver prepares for that forthcoming release.

From the March demonstration to one graphics card

Introduced in March, 3D-Guided Neural Rendering uses AI to enrich lighting and materials under developer control. In its Turkish press release, NVIDIA says roughly seven months of optimization and neural-network improvements brought the technology from a demonstration requiring two GeForce RTX 5090 cards to operation on a single card. The company claims up to a tenfold performance improvement during that development period, alongside better image quality. This comparison concerns its development process, not a promise of ten times the frame rate in every game.

DLSS 5 is offered on GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics cards, RTX Spark systems and, in supported titles, through GeForce NOW Ultimate. After NBA 2K27 received it in September and Hogwarts Legacy in early November, War Thunder is the latest addition. NVIDIA says these titles use the October 2026 AI model, which it describes as twice as fast as the previous version. That model-speed claim is not a guarantee of doubled gaming performance on every system.

War Thunder's Eagle's Shadow update

Gaijin Entertainment has continued updating War Thunder since its original 2013 release. The game combines tanks, other ground vehicles, aircraft and warships in PvP and PvE modes. Its existing technology support includes DLSS 4.5 Multi Frame Generation, Super Resolution, Ray Reconstruction, DLAA, NVIDIA Reflex, ray tracing and path-traced global illumination.

Eagle's Shadow adds DLSS 5 together with dozens of aircraft, ships and tanks, cluster bombs for aircraft and upgraded visual effects.

NVIDIA says Gaijin uses the new model to improve highlights, lighting detail, shadows and micro-contrast, aiming for finer detail and a more natural image. The October 2026 model runs on GeForce RTX 50 Series and RTX Spark systems.

The release describes high-frame-rate play at Ultra settings with path tracing, Ray Reconstruction and up to 6X Multi Frame Generation. Performance including generated frames still depends on hardware, resolution and settings. No independent War Thunder benchmark is presented here.

Hogwarts Legacy: the conditions behind the 300 FPS claim

Hogwarts Legacy's DLSS 5 update supports GeForce RTX 50 Series desktops and laptops, RTX Spark systems and GeForce NOW Ultimate. According to NVIDIA, enabling Neural Rendering improves environmental detail and shadows, character textures, shading, lighting and reflections.

The company says the game now supports the complete DLSS technology suite. Its recommended configuration enables DLSS Super Resolution, DLSS Multi Frame Generation and NVIDIA Reflex, with DLSS Ray Reconstruction also enabled when using ray-traced effects.

NVIDIA reports up to 300 FPS at 4K on a GeForce RTX 5090 with DLSS 5, Ray Reconstruction, 6X Multi Frame Generation, NVIDIA Reflex and ray tracing enabled together. The figure must therefore not be described as native-resolution performance with frame generation disabled. It is the company's reported upper result for particular hardware and settings, not an independently measured guarantee.

Game Ready support and the November 23 schedule

The new GeForce RTX and RTX Spark Game Ready driver includes optimizations and enhancements for Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV. It also prepares for Where Winds Meet's DLSS 5 update on November 23. Availability of the driver does not mean the future game update is already available.

A free demo marks 20 years of the GeForce 8800 GTX

NVIDIA is also marking the 20th anniversary of the GeForce 8800 GTX, which reached stores on November 8, 2006. Its role in PC gaming and the development of CUDA is revisited in GeForce 8800 GTX - 20 Years of a Legend, a free Steam demo created by Unreal Engine artist Dylan Browne.

The experience recreates the atmosphere of installing the graphics card in a period-appropriate 2006 PC. It uses current features including DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction, Dynamic Multi Frame Generation, Path Tracing and RTX Mega Geometry to revisit that era of PC gaming with modern graphics.

In its corporate background information, NVIDIA states that more than 200 million gamers and creators worldwide use GeForce GPUs and that RTX technologies provide AI-powered graphics capabilities in over 1,000 games and applications. These figures are attributed to the company.

Sources: NVIDIA Turkey press release; NVIDIA War Thunder / DLSS 5 announcement. Image: War Thunder official gallery.