NVIDIA has lifted the review embargo for the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 GPU. And, since the green team has provided us with a review sample, we can benchmark it and compare it against the mighty NVIDIA RTX 4090.
For our benchmarks, we used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D with 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, and the GeForce 571.86 driver. Moreover, we’ve disabled the second CCD on our 7950X3D. That’s the ideal thing you can do for gaming on this particular CPU.
Since we are a PC gaming site, we have access to A LOT of PC games. So, for our benchmarks, we used the 20 most demanding PC games that are currently in the market. Some of them are rasterized, some of them are ray-traced and some of them are path-traced. As such, you can get a pretty clear image of how fast the RTX 5090 can be over the RTX 4090.
The “rasterized” games we tested were A Plague Tale Requiem, Dead Space Remake, The Last of Us Part I, Starfield, and Final Fantasy 16. The performance uplift in those games was between 30-42%. The only outlier was Starfield which was CPU-limited, even at Native 4K with Max Settings.
For Ray Tracing, we used games like Hellblade 2, Star Wars Outlaws, STALKER 2, Silent Hill 2 and more. The performance improvement over the RTX 4090 was between 23% and 47%. Do also note that Star Wars Jedi: Survivor was CPU-limited. For this title, we tested the Koboh area. And, even with Ray Tracing at Native 4K, the game was bottlenecked by our AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D CPU.
As for Path Tracing, we tested Cyberpunk 2077, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Black Myth: Wukong, Alan Wake 2 and Portal RTX. Cyberpunk 2077 and Black Myth: Wukong ran significantly faster on the RTX 5090 than the RTX 4090 (38% and 37%, respectively). Alan Wake 2 with Path Tracing also got a big performance boost. On the other hand, the performance boost in Indiana Jones and Portal RTX could have been better.
Overall, the NVIDIA RTX 5090 is 33% faster than the RTX 4090 in these 20 games. Depending on the game, you can expect from a 23% to a 47% performance boost over the RTX 4090.
So, the big question now is: Should you buy an RTX 5090? Well, if you already own an RTX 4090, there is no reason at all to upgrade to the RTX 5090. Unless you want the best of the best and you don’t really care about money. As for everyone else, the RTX 5090 has a better value right now than the RTX 4090. And as you all know, I’ve been highly recommending the RTX 4090 these past couple of years.
But let the numbers talk. NVIDIA has raised the price of its XX90 GPU model by 25%, offering 30-40% better performance. So yes, the RTX 5090 has a better value than the RTX 4090. There is no doubt about that.
It’s crucial to note that you’ll also need a high-end CPU to take full advantage of it in games that are lite on Ray Tracing effects. That’s where DLSS 4 comes into play, but we’ll talk about DLSS 4 in a separate article.
Overall, the RTX 5090 is a beast of a GPU and my impressions are positive. It’s faster than the RTX 4090, and the FE model comes in a 2-slot form. This is another thing that will please some gamers. The FE model of the RTX 5090 is no longer as bulky as the one used for the RTX 4090. It’s more elegant. And I know, some of you would have loved to see a new GPU that is 50% faster than its predecessor. However, we can only judge what we have in our hands and not imaginary GPUs. And, the performance improvement of the 5090 is not small. In fact, it’s what we normally get per generation.
So there you have it. The NVIDIA RTX 5090 is the best gaming GPU that you can buy right now. So, if you are looking for the best PC gaming GPU and if you can find it at its MSRP, I highly recommend getting it. If you own an RTX 4090, you can simply skip the RTX 5090. Your RTX 4090 will not become obsolete. Yes, you will not have access to DLSS 4 (which is really cool by the way), but the RTX 4090 still remains the second-best gaming GPU.
Be sure to also check out our “DLSS 4 Benchmarks & Impressions” article!

John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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