Palit RTX 5090 GameRock Review

1. Introduction2. Meet the Palit RTX 5090 GameRock3. Testing Methodology4. Game Benchmarks5. Clock Speed6. GPU Temperatures7. Acoustics8. Noise-Normalised Temperatures9. Power Draw and Efficiency10. Overclocking11. Closing Thoughts12. View All Pages

Today we've been back at the ultra-high end, checking out Palit's RTX 5090 GameRock. It's a decent partner card, and I think its main point of appeal will come down to the aesthetics – the ‘chameleon panel' design Palit is using is very eye catching and is unlike any other card on the market right now. When you factor in the 360-degree RGB lighting too, this card is a prime contender to be vertically mounted as the showpiece component of your rig.

In fact, I'd go as far as to say that not vertically mounting it would be quite a waste, as the rest of the design is a lot more boring. There's just black plastic on the sides, while the backplate is made of black brushed metal. I think Palit could've done a lot more with the rest of the design, to bring it in-line with the psychedelic-looking shroud. Right now it feels like they only got half way designing the card and said ‘good enough'.

The cooler itself is fine but unspectacular. Noise-normalised performance was about level with the 5090 Founders Edition when looking at GPU thermals, whereas the VRAM saw just a 4C drop. Compared to the Suprim SOC, MSI's card is clearly superior in terms of its overall thermal performance, while also delivering much lower noise levels out of the box.

We also have to address the 12VHPWR situation that has reared its head again over the last week. While my own current testing today did not suggest anything out of spec, with even load balancing on show, the fact remains this is a GPU drawing over 600W across the cable, with next to no safety headroom and no way for the GPU itself to respond to dangerous current imbalances. I really hope Nvidia will be able to take the feedback on board and improve things, else I fear we may just hear more stories of melting connectors and other dangerous cable-related incidents.

The lack of availability is still a huge problem for the RTX 5090, too. I've not been able to find anywhere in the UK actually taking pre-orders for this GPU, so it will likely be months before it is actually available to buy. Curry's is listing a £2200 asking price for the GameRock, which works out as an 11% premium over the Founders Edition, and is way cheaper than the MSI Suprim SOC.

It's still incredibly expensive though, and for the money I would hope for better thermal performance, given things aren't really improved over the Founders Edition to any significant degree. It is, however, still fine overall, and the USP is clearly the shroud, so the Palit RTX 5090 GameRock would be one to consider – if you could actually buy one…

Pros

• Small performance gains over the RTX 5090 Founders Edition.
• Eye-catching ‘Chameleon' shroud design.
• Our sample hit around 3GHz when overclocking.
• Huge 32GB GDDR7 frame buffer.
• DLSS 4 has improved Ray Reconstruction and Super Resolution scaling.
• Multi Frame Generation enables higher frame rates than would otherwise be possible.

Cons

• Not available to buy anywhere.
• Very high power demands.
• It's physically huge.
• Not much of an improvement over the FE in terms of noise-normalised performance.
• 12VHPWR remains a very valid concern.

KitGuru says: It's an eye-catching design for sure, but we'd hope for a greater improvement to thermals compared to Nvidia's Founders Edition.

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