NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition, 32GB GDDR7, HDMI, 3x DP

Nachdem Nvidias Präsentation der neuen Grafikkarten-Generation mal wieder mit dem Wort "AI" gespickt war, wollen wir einen kurzen Eindruck der Fähigkeiten der neuen Geforce RTX 5090 gewinnen und haben die GPU durch erste KI- und Workstation-Benchmarks geschickt.

KI als Schlüssel zum Erfolg. Die Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 markiert die nächste Stufe in der Welt der High-End-Grafikkarten. Mit modernster Blackwell-Architektur, gesteigerter Leistung und innovativen Technologien setzt Nvidia neue Maßstäbe für Gaming, Content Creation und KI-Anwendungen. In unserem Test prüfen wir die GPU auf Herz und Nieren: Wie schlägt sie sich in Benchmarks, unter Gaming-Bedingungen und bei anspruchsvollen Workloads? Erfahrt hier, ob die RTX 5090 dem Hype gerecht wird.

Endlich ist es so weit! Nach der Ankündigung zur CES Anfang Januar sowie den Details zur Blackwell-Architektur und den neuen Technologien kommen wir heute zu den harten Fakten: Benchmarks und Messwerte! Wir schauen uns an, in welche Leistungsregionen die GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition von NVIDIA vordringt. Dabei im Fokus steht natürlich das Leistungsplus gegenüber den Vorgänger-Generationen, aber auch gegen die wohl einzig verbliebene Konkurrenz in Form der Radeon RX 7900 XTX. Auch die neuen Techniken wie DLSS 4 inklusive Multi Frame Generation, die KI-Leistung und vieles mehr werden wir genauer beleuchten.

Mit der RTX-5000-Generation alias Blackwell beginnt die Ära des "Neural Rendering" - laut Nvidia. Der Hersteller verspricht eine Leistungssteigerung um bis zu Faktor 8 dank Multi Frame Generation. PCGH prüft im Mega-Test, was die Geforce RTX 5090 mit und ohne KI-Features auf dem Kasten hat - auch im Vergleich zur RTX 4090.

Verglichen mit der RTX 4090 zeigt die RTX 5090 eine deutliche Weiterentwicklung in nahezu allen Bereichen. Die Steigerung der Frameraten und der Bildqualität ist signifikant, insbesondere bei der Nutzung von DLSS 4 und den erweiterten Raytracing-Funktionen. Während die RTX 4090 bereits als leistungsstarke Option galt, übertrifft die RTX 5090 sie durch innovativere Technologien und eine bessere Effizienz in anspruchsvollen Anwendungen. Die NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 bietet beeindruckende Fortschritte in Theorie und Praxis und ist ein riesiger Monolith der anderen Art.

Die GeForce RTX 5090 ist die neue schnellste Gaming-Grafikkarte, an die auf absehbare Zeit kein anderes Modell heranreichen wird. Das neue DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation (exklusiv GeForce RTX 5000) funktioniert unter gewissen Voraussetzungen richtig gut und auch Nvidias immer umfassenderes Software-Ökosystem und der innovativen Founders-Edition-Kühlung überzeugen im Test.

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5090 is the fastest, most powerful, and feature-rich consumer GPU in the world as of today, period. There’s no other way to put it. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition card itself is also a refined piece of hardware. To design a card that offers significantly more performance than an RTX 4090, at much higher power levels, in a roughly 33% smaller form factor is no small feat of engineering. The card also looks great in our opinion. On its own, the GeForce RTX 5090 is currently unmatched in the consumer GPU market – nothing can touch it in terms of performance, with virtually any workload – AI, content creation, gaming, you name it.

This year’s CES had major announcements from all of the big names in the industry with Intel and AMD both announcing new motherboard chipsets and AMD also announcing their upcoming GPUs. Nvidia had a lot to announce as well. The biggest of those was their new 50 series of GPUs based on their Blackwell architecture. That included four GPUs which they planned to launch in January and February. They have the RTX 5090 which is their flagship, the RTX 5080, RTX 5070 Ti, and the RTX 5070 all announced. They also announced Multi Frame Generation which along with the new Transformer based DLSS ray Reconstruction and Super Resolution models make DLSS 4 and Nvidia Reflex 2 as well. RTX Neural Shaders and Neural Faces were both announced as well. Today the performance benchmarks for the upcoming RTX 5090 lift and while I take a look at the new RTX 5090 Founders Edition we can also check out DLSS 4 alongside of seeing how the new flagship GPU performs. It’s a lot to cover, so let’s get to it!

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090, which will launch on January 30, 2025, with an MSRP of $1,999, will redefine high-performance gaming and AI workloads. Built on the Blackwell architecture, this flagship GPU pushes the boundaries of computational power with 32GB of GDDR7 memory, a 512-bit memory bus, and a massive increase in CUDA, Tensor, and RT core performance. Critically, NVIDIA has several AI claims for the 50-Series platform, which this review aims to explore.

The new Nvidia RTX 5090 delivers the fastest gaming performance ever seen from a consumer GPU - but at an average 31 percent improvement over RTX 4090, is that enough to meet expectations? And meanwhile, what about DLSS 4? Are frame generation fps boosts actually increased performance? It's tricky - and the discussion has only just begun.

The Founders Edition delivers exceptional performance in an impossibly small form factor.

Overall then, I do think the RTX 5090 is a solid card. Yes, there are some valid concerns around pricing and power draw increases, but I just don't think the target audience for this card will be particularly bothered – it's ultimately all about the increased performance, and while circa 30% gains won't blow your mind like the jump from an RTX 3090 to the RTX 4090,

The new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is the first high-end graphics card in the world that makes use of a PCI-Express 5.0 bus interface. Are you in trouble when try to run it on PCIe 4.0? What about x8, like when an SSD is using up some bandwidth? We've also tested various PCI-Express 3.0, 2.0 and 1.1 configs to get a feel for how FPS scales with bandwidth.

So let’s break this down a little because with a card like this, there are multiple angles to look at. The first is that this is the most powerful GPU in the world. There’s no doubt about that, but it comes with a caveat, though it’s a pretty obvious one. If you’re slapping down $2000 on a 5090, you’ve probably got a 4K high refresh-rate monitor and you also would expect the very best performance.

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5090 is the fastest graphics card ever released. It comes with a whopping 32 GB VRAM, and support for multi-frame generation, which achieves hundreds of FPS easily. We also managed to disassemble the card, and our review includes performance testing without upscaling or frame generation, too.