GeForce RTX 5090 is the latest flagship graphics card offered by Nvidia, but is it worth it? RTX 5090 offers the latest in Nvidia’s innovations in GPU technology. It features fifth-gen Tensor Cores, new Streaming Multiprocessors, and Fourth-Gen Ray Tracing Cores. Built with AI-based applications as a focus, it outperforms all other graphics cards when it comes to AI applications. With a new and improved DLSS 4 algorithm, it performs admirably when it comes to gaming. However, all of this comes at an eye-watering manufacturer-suggested retail price of $1999, making it the most expensive offering Nvidia has to date.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 – What Was Promised vs. What Was Delivered
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 promised a lot of raw power, however, how does it stack up to Nvidia’s previous offerings? Nvidia’s previous flagship graphics card, GeForce RTX 4090, offers 16384 CUDA cores, 128 RT cores, and 512 Tensor cores alongside a 24GB GDDR6X VRAM on a 384-bit bus. RTX 5090, on the other hand, boasts an impressive 21760 CUDA cores, 170 RT cores, and 680 Tensor cores alongside a 32GB GDDR7 on a 512-bit bus.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090’s official site frequently shows that it has twice the performance of the RTX 4090. However, its actual increase in raw performance leaves a lot to be desired. Various review outlets place the 4K rasterization performance gains of RTX 5090 at around 20%-50%, depending on the game. Raytracing at 4K was seen to be around 27% to 35% uplift over the RTX 4090 and the performance gains in 1440p and 1080p see a negligible performance increase.
All of this falls well short of the promised twice the performance of RTX 4090. While a significant improvement over its predecessor, the GeForce RTX 5090 leaves a lot to be desired. Gamers Nexus has an excellent video breaking down the RTX 5090.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 – Final Thoughts
Deceptive performance charts and an eye-watering price tag make the GeForce RTX 5090 a hard sell for most people. However, its performance is not to be underestimated. Its large VRAM capacity and solid performance in ray tracing make it a very lucrative card for most creative work. And when the best of the best is to be considered, its price tag would be unable to dissuade most people in need of the performance of this card.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 is a solid upgrade path updating their rigs from the aged RTX 2080ti and the RTX 3090.
