RTX 4090 Ti, Is That You?
This made it an extremely powerful and exciting option for high-end gaming, even if it was undeniably expensive.
Nvidia has faced some challenges this generation.
Therefore, Nvidia’s solution was to create a bigger and more powerful GPU.
The die is now 23% larger, featuring 33% more cores.
Given that price increase, we expect it to deliver performance far beyond what the specs suggest.
For this comparison, we tested The Last of Us Part 1 at 4K with maxed-out controls.
The cores averaged a clock speed of 2,655 MHz, while GPU power averaged 492 watts.
Clearly, the RTX 5090 runs slightly hotter and louder.
We are incredibly impressed with what Nvidia has achieved here.
The RTX 5090 might be the most impressive graphics card we’ve ever seen.
It’s an outstanding achievement.
Now, let’s see how it performs.
At 4K resolution, the margin increases slightly to 33%.
This is a solid uplift, but the extreme price premium dampens the enthusiasm.
This makes it only 22% faster than the RTX 4090, offering a very mild performance gain.
Next, we have Counter-Strike 2.
It’s worth mentioning that the RTX 5090 was slower than the RTX 4090 at 1080p in multiple instances.
Further investigation is needed here.
Even at 4K, the RTX 5090 only offers an 8% performance increase over the RTX 4090.
The issue doesn’t appear to be a CPU bottleneck, given the higher frame rates observed at 1440p.
Performance inGod of War Ragnarokis outstanding at 1440p, hitting 268 fps on the ultra preset.
In Delta Force, the RTX 5090 provides just 17% more performance than the RTX 4090 at 1440p.
However, frame rates here are extreme and likely approaching a CPU bottleneck.
At 4K, the margin extends to 27%, rendering 160 fps.
Oddly, the RTX 5090 is 4% slower than the RTX 4090 here.
While this is a decent uplift, it is undercut by the 25% price hike.
However, with an average of 191 fps, performance remains impressive overall.
Still, this is a disappointing margin given the higher cost.
The results are partly CPU-limited, as suggested by similar 1% lows between the two GPUs.
The 1% lows are also similar, indicating other system limitations may be at play.
At 4K, the margin improves to 32%.
While the overall performance is excellent, this result remains underwhelming.
However, this makes it only 24% faster than the RTX 4090.
This is a very disappointing result.
War Thunder runs at extremely high frame rates, even with the highest quality preset enabled.
At 1440p, the performance is clearly CPU-limited, which we confirmed by testing at 1080p.
As a result, the RTX 5090 is just 26% faster than the RTX 4090.
Increasing the resolution to 4K allows the RTX 5090 to pull ahead, delivering a 31% performance improvement.
While the performance is excellent overall, the value remains questionable.
This results in excellent overall performance.
At 4K, the RTX 5090 offers a 40% performance increase, averaging 125 fps.
This is a strong result, especially when compared to most other titles.
The RTX 5090 achieves over 100 fps inStar Wars Outlawsat 1440p using the ultra preset.
With ray tracing forced on, the RTX 5090 is 22% faster than the RTX 4090.
At 4K, the RTX 5090 improves slightly but is still just 7% faster than the RTX 4090.
It was also 73% faster than the RTX 3090 with only a 7% price increase.
By comparison, the RTX 5090’s performance and value fall far short of expectations for a generational leap.
Power Consumption
Now, let’s look at power consumption.
In Starfield at 1440p, the RTX 5090 increased power consumption by 12% compared to the RTX 4090.
In these tests, the RTX 5090 increased power consumption by 37 41%, depending on the game.
These results align more closely with the performance gains seen in these titles.
Finally, we re-ran those same power tests with a 60 fps cap, which yielded some interesting results.
However, Metro Exodus Enhanced would likely perform well on both the RTX 4090 and RTX 5090.
In Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, performance is heavily CPU-limited at both 1080p and 1440p.
While 4K benchmarks might provide more insight, the 128 fps cap at lower resolutions is concerning.
Although this is solid performance overall, for those with high-refresh-rate monitors, it may not be enough.
On average, the RTX 5090 was 14% faster than the RTX 4090 at 1080p with upscaling.
At 1440p, the RTX 5090 showed an average performance increase of just 17%.
In other words, after more than two years, there’s no meaningful improvement in cost per frame.
The RTX 5090 is essentially just a faster RTX 40 series GPU.
However, realistically, do we believe the RTX 5090 will actually sell for $2,000?
If anything, the retail price is likely to climb higher, making the value situation even worse.
What We Learned: It’s the World’s Fastest Gaming GPU, But…
The GeForce RTX 5090 is now the world’s fastest gaming GPU no surprise there.
This omission might seem odd, but we believe frame generation deserves a separate, dedicated analysis.
The reason we tackle topics likeframe generationandupscalingseparately is that testing these features properly is complex.
The reason we tackle topics like frame generation and upscaling separately is that testing these features properly is complex.
To summarize briefly, frame generation doesn’t deliver whatNvidia’s marketingclaims.
It’s not a true performance-enhancing feature; you’re not genuinely going from 60 fps to 120 fps.
That doesn’t mean frame generation is useless or that it’s not a good technology.
We also strongly believe that showcasing frame generation performance in benchmark graphs is misleading.
As it stands,DLSS 3and DLSS 4 frame generation are best described as frame-smoothing technologies.
Under the right conditions, they can be effective, but they don’t truly boost FPS performance.
Nvidia’s narrative that all gamers will or should use frame generation couldn’t be further from reality.
If Nvidia had launched this as an RTX 4090 Ti, few would have batted an eye.
We understand that Nvidia couldn’t do much given the limitations of the current process node.
However, they still could have delivered a more exciting product series.
We still expect the RTX 5090 to age well.
Nvidia could have addressed this by providing better VRAM configurations.
For example, 12 GB on the RTX 5070 is simply unacceptable it should have at least 16 GB.
