Let's face it, GPUs aren't cheap right now. If you own one, be it the RTX 5090 or something from 10 years ago, you want to make the most of it. Unfortunate, then, that just one slider can absolutely wreck your GPU performance, but if you check it out, you might be able to turn things around for the better.

Nvidia's DLSS 5 came at a time when little else was going on in the GPU world, and it shook its very foundations. People loved it, people hated it. It had several big problems, and the AI slop was not even the worst of it.

I've dedicated the better part of the last decade to covering graphics cards. New launches, new features, new capabilities. Disappointments and amazing developments. Ever-rising prices, worse in 2026 than we've ever seen them.

You'd think that having a discrete GPU gives you all the freedom in the world. Enjoy every game you like at any given time, provided your graphics card can actually handle it (and for those that can't, there's always DLSS 5 in its entire AI-slop-esque glory).