Computers
Nvidia

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 hands-on review

Fake ray tracing is real!

Nvidia’s undisputed when it comes to high-end premium graphics performance, anything from Team Green that costs upwards of a lakh is usually stacked with technology which baffles the most nerdy minds. The RTX 5090 is packed to the brim with raw performance. Still, more importantly, the Blackwell architecture is built from the ground up for AI performance and you’ll see those numbers in supposedly ‘fake’ frames hitting a never-before-seen high in gaming performance.

All our games are tested at 1440p with graphics settings set to their maximum limit.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090: Performance

First up is the tech speak, the Nvidia 5090 has 21760 CUDA Cores and 32GB GDDR7 VRAM. Then there are the 5th Generation Tensor Cores for AI performance reaching 3352 AI TOPS and 4th Generation Ray Tracing cores for realistic lighting. We all love realistic lighting in our games even though the performance penalty is severe. That will change with Blackwell GPUS which we’ll get to in a bit.

ALSO READ: Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty review

Nvidia claims that the 5090 or 50 series cards in general can output 8x more performance using Nvidia DLSS 4 with multi-frame generation and that largely remains true. Cyberpunk 2077 with DLSS, Super Resolution and Ray Tracing turned off gets a 120FPS average on the highest graphic settings and at 1440p resolution. Good but not surprising. Turning on only Ray Tracing, the frame rate drops to a 50FPS average. Disappointing until you realise how demanding Cyberpunk 2077 is on maximum graphical settings. 

Moving ahead and enabling DLSS Super Resolution with the new Transformer model and Nvidia DLAA we got around 60FPS. Another minor improvement but this time the Super Resolution performance is much clearer than the previous DLSS 3.5. Images are sharper than before albeit, still a bit too soft for my liking. 

The DLSS 4 now has a new transformer-based architecture that replaces the earlier CNN architecture which used a small space on the frame to generate pixels around that space. The transformer-based models can work across a bigger pixel window and understand which area in the frame needs more attention so whatever you’re looking at generally turns out sharper.

 

Here’s when the RTX 5090 kicks into high gear. Turn on Frame Generation and switch to 4x where the GPU generates up to three additional frames compared to traditionally single-rendered frames, and Cyberpunk 2077 shoots up to 180FPS on average with Ray Tracing enabled! This is shocking how AI is enabling a higher frame rate without VRAM and power load on the GPU. Yes, the image is softer than brute-forcing frames from the GPU but if you’re not looking for the texture, the transformer-based AI model is very capable of rendering the right things in mere seconds as you see them. Cyberpunk is still a very graphically demanding title but switch to something like Star Wars Outlaws and I couldn’t tell the difference.

ALSO READ: Dragon Age: The Veilguard review

Star Wars Outlaws runs at 180 FPS average with DLSS, Frame Generation set to 4x and DLAA upscaling (this doesn’t soften the image). Without Frame Gen we got around 60FPS so between Frame Generation set to 4x and without it, the only difference we felt was in frames. Visually everything looked sharp and there was little to no noise or shimmering in any scene. Only sometimes Kay’s hair would shimmer behind the windy grass blades of Toshara. 

Dragon Age: The Veilguard has to be one of the most optimised games from last year and when we tested the game on our Nvidia 4080 Super during the game review we got around 142FPS on 1440p resolution with graphics settings set to the highest quality and Frame Generation enabled. On the Nvidia RTX 5090, the framerate goes up 350 FPS on average with 4x on Frame Generation. Mind you, both Star Wars and Dragon Age are getting these high ‘fake’ frames with Ray Tracing enabled. This is an incredible performance uplift for single-player games.

We’re not big fans of Alan Wake 2 here at the Stuff HQ because even though it has a 58FPS average with Ray Tracing and 200FPS with 4x frame gen and DLSS, there’s just not enough action in the game to warranty latency issues. If you’re a fan, frame generation is going to sell shockingly well on this title too.

ALSO READ: Star Wars Outlaws hands-on review

Our favourite title, Black Myth Wukong doesn’t see a big jump in performance but this game, like many others doesn’t have the Nvidia DLSS 4 driver update at the time of reviewing. Many DLSS 3.5 titles will soon upgrade to DLSS 4 after we publish this review so we’ll have to wait a few weeks before we can test more games and even productivity performance on this GPU.

Nvidia says the RTX neural shaders compress textures by up to seven times than before so you don’t need excessive VRAM to output more frames with DLSS 4. Super Resolution may still feel soft but frame generation feels like a massive improvement on these new Nvidia cards. The Blackwell architecture also uses flip metering that talks to the display engine to output consistent frames, when using frame generation and super-resolution, as per the requirement of the monitor.

PC test bench specs:

Intel i9-13900K

Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Pro X 

Corsair Vengeance 32GB RAM

Initial Verdict

There’s a lot more happening inside the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 but we only got 24 hours to test out the GPU’s performance which is why we’ll update this hands-on review with a full verdict with power draw and latency metrics soon. The card is also slimmer again by taking just two slots in your PC cabinet and the power cable is also flush with the design so it doesn’t protrude out like the RTX 4090. These are some good improvements to have and we’re happy to know that the 5090 series wasn’t as big as a stone brick from the 17th century.

So far the Nvidia 5090 doesn’t leave the shadow of its 4090 sibling. It’s definitely more powerful but is it 2lakh rupee more powerful? We’ll have to find out in the full review.