Unofficial DLSS 5 on Radeon RX 9070 XT Claims 75 FPS in Cyberpunk 2077

Both Wccftech and TweakTown reported the milestone on September 28. The primary source is the developer's own GitHub release record, and the figure is a developer claim, not an independent benchmark. The difference matters, and this article comes back to it below.

What Alpha 0.4.3 claims​

The GitHub release page shows that developer danielblnc published Alpha 0.4.3 on September 28 at 06:31 (no time zone is given). The notes claim a 20% performance improvement over v0.4.2 in Reference quality mode, 18% in Fast mode. The developer calls it "the 75 FPS update" and lists these changes:

• Performance now hits 75 FPS in Cyberpunk @ 1080p, 9070 XT Fast mode
• A new OverlayKey setting
• A fix for the overlay sometimes not opening
• Fixes for several bugs in the settings editor

Wccftech says the screenshot with its report shows an average of 75.19 FPS. The system in the image appears to use an AMD Ryzen 9 3900X and 32 GB of memory. Neither outlet gives the full graphics preset, the test scene, how long the run lasted, or whether it repeats. The 75 FPS figure is a snapshot, not a controlled test.

Summary: One developer-reported number from one GPU at one resolution in one mode. It's impressive, but it hasn't been verified.

How the project got here in about four days​

The pace has been remarkable. According to the release history:

Before that, VideoCardz reported that Alpha 0.3.3 came with a claimed 23% performance improvement over version 0.3.2. Wccftech combined the 0.3.3 and 0.4.0 gains and called it nearly a 74% total performance boost in a single day.

Be careful with the math. Each percentage is measured against a different baseline and under different conditions. The 15% in Alpha 0.4.2 applies only to Fast mode on RX 9000 cards, and the extra 9% in 0.4.1 applies only to heavy loads. Wccftech's 46–49% figure for the last three releases does roughly match multiplying the Fast-mode and Reference-mode gains together. But Wccftech also says the card went from barely 30 FPS to 75 FPS, an "over 200%" improvement. Going from 30 to 75 FPS is a 150% increase (2.5 times the frame rate), not more than 200%.

Summary: The trend is real and fast. The individual percentages don't add up to one clean overall figure.

The context the headlines leave out​

What does 75 FPS actually mean? Earlier independent testing gives a useful reference point. Tom's Hardware reported that testing by YouTube channel Ancient Gameplays showed Cyberpunk 2077 running at over 80 FPS on a Radeon RX 9070 XT without DLSS 5 Neural Rendering, and that enabling the unofficial implementation caused performance to drop to around 11-12 FPS. TechPowerUp later reported that the Alpha v0.2.7 update pushed it to about 30 FPS, still a steep cost for a card that handles native rendering well.

At 1440p ultrawide, Ancient Gameplays tested the Alpha 0.4.0 build in Cyberpunk 2077 at 3440 x 1440 resolution and found the Radeon GPU reaching around 50 FPS. Tom's Hardware said that result remains well below the performance of the game without Neural Rendering enabled.

If the new 75 FPS was measured under settings similar to that 80+ FPS baseline, the cost of running Neural Rendering would drop from a huge hit to a small one. That's a big "if": nobody has published an apples-to-apples comparison. For now, this is informed inference, not a verified result.

Why can RDNA 4 do this at all? TechPowerUp points out that DLSS 5 runs on FP8 math, and AMD's RDNA 4 architecture, which powers the RX 9000 series, has native FP8 support, just like NVIDIA's RTX 50-series and 40-series cards. That helps explain why the RX 9070 XT is the main test card and why RX 7000 cards stay on the slower Reference mode.

What the tool is, and what it isn't​

The project README says it is not a translation layer. The developer describes it as a ground-up, full reimplementation of the neural network runtime for AMD GPU architectures (HIP kernels, memory layouts, game integration), written from scratch. No NVIDIA code is included or translated at runtime. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by NVIDIA or AMD, and it's offered as-is, without warranty, at your own risk.

About the two modes: Fast mode arrived in Alpha 0.4.2 and is now the default on RX 9000 cards. It uses cheaper arithmetic, and the developer says the visual difference is "barely visible." Reference mode keeps what the developer calls NVIDIA's exact arithmetic and remains the default on RX 7000 cards. The README says output quality is very close to DLSS on NVIDIA hardware, but some effects may not work fully yet. Its stated goal is performance matching an RTX 5070 Ti.

One more thing to watch: at the time of writing, the README still lists performance as roughly 33 FPS at 1080p on an RX 9070 XT. Use the Alpha 0.4.3 release notes for the current claim, not that older README estimate.

Requirements and setup (per the project README)​

Prerequisites:

• Windows 11
• A DirectX 12 game with FSR (Cyberpunk 2077 and GTA V Enhanced are the tested titles; Vulkan support is planned)
• An AMD Radeon RX 9000-series GPU (tested on the RX 9070 XT). RX 7000 cards "should work," and the developer wants reports. Older GPUs are not currently supported.
• AMD Adrenalin driver 26.1.1 or later
• Your own copy of nvngx_dlssnr.dll, build 310.8.0.0, taken from a game that supports DLSS 5

Steps:

1. Download dlssnr_on_amd_setup.exe from the project's latest release.
2. Put it in the game's executable folder. For Cyberpunk 2077, that's bin\x64.
3. Put your nvngx_dlssnr.dll (build 310.8.0.0) in the same folder.
4. Run the setup utility and follow its prompts.
5. Start the game and turn on FSR. Any FSR 3 or FSR 4 quality setting works, as does FSRAA.
6. Press End to open the overlay. Use the arrow keys to adjust settings and Enter to toggle. Options include mode (inline, or async for photo mode only), tone intensity, structure intensity and skin structure.

It worked if: the overlay opens with End and changing its settings visibly affects the image.

Common problems:

• Overlay won't open: Alpha 0.4.3 fixes some cases of this, so update first. You can now also set a different key with the new OverlayKey setting.
• Game blocks the DLL: As TechPowerUp noted, anti-cheat games will block the DLL entirely, so this is single-player territory only for now. Don't try this in online games.
• Updating or uninstalling: Run the setup utility again and choose update (U) or remove (R).
• Anything else: The developer asks users to open a GitHub issue and attach dlssnr_on_amd.log if you encounter any problems.

The bottom line​

Taken together, NVIDIA's newest neural rendering model is being reimplemented from scratch for a competitor's hardware, and it's getting faster almost every day. As TechPowerUp put it, this is another sign that NVIDIA's neural rendering tech is spreading faster and wider than the company planned for.

Still, this is alpha software. Tom's Hardware warns that performance and compatibility can vary considerably depending on the game and GPU. The 75 FPS result is limited to Fast mode at 1080p on one card, and TweakTown notes that higher resolutions and heavier scenes still need more optimization. If you own an RX 9070 XT and a single-player game with FSR, it's a fun experiment. Just don't treat it as a validated benchmark or as a replacement for an official DLSS 5 implementation.