RTX 5090: 4K stunned
Early hands‑on video tests show the RTX 5090 delivering dramatic 4K gains, smoother path tracing and DLSS advances that keep visual fidelity high while lifting framerates — a real jump for desktop gaming realism. The March 25 deep‑dive highlights path‑tracing maturity and AI upscaling as the key enablers for pushing maxed settings at 4K (youtube.com).
In comparative datasets, the RTX 5090 averaged about 96 FPS at 2160p Ultra in Death Stranding 2 versus roughly 70 FPS for the RTX 4090 — roughly a 37% uplift in that test. (pcbench.net) Lab/spec tables put the 5090 at 21,760 CUDA cores, 32 GB of GDDR7 memory and a 575 W TDP, marking it as NVIDIA’s Blackwell‑class flagship with substantially wider memory bandwidth than the 4090. (ofzenandcomputing.com) Reviewers recorded previously impractical path‑traced frame rates: one test shows Cyberpunk 2077 with path tracing at 4K hitting about 87 FPS on the 5090 versus 53 FPS on the 4090. (ofzenandcomputing.com) NVIDIA’s DLSS4 plus Multi‑Frame Generation is responsible for the biggest effective framerate jumps — lab coverage and benchmarks show scene‑dependent 2×–4× improvements over native rendering when MFG is active. (tomshardware.com) At the same time, Igor’s Lab and other reviewers documented 1%‑low micro‑stutters when pushing high MFG multipliers (e.g., 4×), a tradeoff that appears in several controlled tests. (igorslab.de) Launch pricing in reviews put the Founders Edition at about $1,999, and hands‑on testing warned buyers to plan for a 1,000 W+ PSU because of the card’s ~575 W power draw. (notebookcheck.net) Coverage from Digital Foundry and PC Gamer shows NVIDIA and game studios are already iterating on DLSS4/4.5 and planning DLSS5 lighting features (NVIDIA targets “Fall 2026” for DLSS5), with published demos suggesting engine updates could enable much higher‑refresh, path‑traced play in select titles. (digitalfoundry.net)
