Nvidia RTX 5090 Review: Ray Tracing, DLSS 4, and Raw Power

1. Introduction2. Meet the RTX 5090 Founders Edition3. Testing Methodology4. Alan Wake II5. Black Myth: Wukong6. Cyberpunk 20777. Final Fantasy XVI8. Forza Horizon 59. Ghost of Tsushima10. Horizon Forbidden West11. The Last of Us Part 112. A Plague Tale: Requiem13. Senua's Saga: Hellblade 214. Starfield15. Total War: Warhammer III16. Performance Summary (12-Game Average)17. Cost Per Frame Analysis18. Ray Tracing: Alan Wake II19. Ray Tracing: Black Myth: Wukong20. Ray Tracing: Cyberpunk 207721. Ray Tracing: F1 2422. Ray Tracing: Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart23. Ray Tracing: Returnal24. Ray Tracing: Shadow of the Tomb Raider25. Ray Tracing: Star Wars Outlaws26. Ray Tracing Performance Summary27. DLSS 4 Testing28. AI & Productivity Benchmarks29. Clock Speed30. GPU Temperatures31. Acoustics32. Power Draw: 1080p33. Power Draw: 1440p34. Power Draw: 2160p (4K)35. Performance per Watt: 1080p36. Performance per Watt: 1440p37. Performance per Watt: 2160p (4K)38. Total System Power Draw39. Closing Thoughts40. View All Pages

Here we present frame rate figures for each graphics card, averaged across all 12 rasterised games on test today. These figures can disguise significant variations in performance from game to game, but provide a useful overview of the sort of performance you can expect at each resolution tested.

Looking at the 12-game average results, for rasterisation the RTX 5090 comes in 22% faster than its direct predecessor, the RTX 4090, when testing at 1440p. That also makes it 54% faster than the RX 7900 XTX and a 57% uplift compared to the 4080 Super.

Of course, this GPU is really designed for 4K and it scales best at this resolution, now delivering an extra 29% performance over the 4090, while it's 64% and 71% faster than the 7900 XTX and 4080 Super, respectively.

Just to break down the performance versus the RTX 4090, here we can see the relative performance gains for the 5090 over its predecessor. At 1440p it ranges from 16% up to 29% faster.

As mentioned, those margins do increase at 4K, as we see just one title showing a gain of less than 20%, while six of the twelve games tested show improvements of at least 30% over the 4090.

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