NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition Review – Bruteforce Specs Meets Smart AI

Nvdia RTX 5090 Review Philippines

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Nvidia continues to double down on AI with various advancements in the field from software, datacenters, and now consumer hardware with the recent launch of its Nvidia GeForce RTX 50 series last CES 2025. The new GeForce RTX 50 series is powered by the Blackwell Architecture which is designed to leverage AI with its Neural Shaders, AI management processor(AMP), GDDR7 memory, and more. Today marks the embargo for the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 reviews and we have the GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition to test out including DLSS 4.

Nvidia Blackwell Architecture

Nvidia RTX 5090 Founders Edition Review Blackwell Architecture Overview
Nvidia RTX 5090 Founders Edition Review Blackwell Architecture Overview

The Blackwell Architecture is probably one of the most hyped graphics architectures from NVIDIA since the announcement of the NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip for data centers, especially for AI. Its performance advancement in the server and AI field led enthusiasts to believe in a similar uplift on the consumer side. NVIDIA highlights Neural Rendering as the next era of computer graphics and that is what Blackwell is built upon. Blackwell Architecture uses the latest NVIDIA DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation, NVIDIA Reflex 2 features with NVIDIA RTX Neural Shaders alongside other advancements such as the use of GDDR7 memory.

DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation

One of the key highlights of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 50 series is DLSS 4 which takes advantage of the RTX Neural Shaders. In a nutshell, DLSS 4 is a steroid version of DLSS 3.5 where it’s able to generate up to three frames based on one rendered frame. unlike DLSS 3.5’s one generated frame per one rendered frame.

To put in into perspective, in a DLSS Frame Generation 4X setup at 120 FPS, only 30 frames are rastererized aka “traditionally rendered,” while the 90 frames are AI generated with 15 out of 16 pixels in are generated by AI. There are three frames inserted in between the traditional rendered frames.

Neural Shaders, Shader Execution Reordering & Flip Metering

Is DLSS 4 available on previous RTX GPUs? Yes and No

While DLSS 4 features an upgrade in every aspect of its feature set, the main DLSS Multi Frame Generation feature is exclusive to the RTX 50 series GPUs. DLSS 3 Frame Generation’s AI model relied on game data and the RTX 40 series’ optical flow accelerator based on motion vectors, and depth to generate one frame. DLSS 4 Multi-FrameGen takes advantage of the RTX 50 series’ Neural Shaders, more efficient SER, and AI management processor to render additional frames.

Multiframe generation is taxing on older RTX GPUs due to the hardware or architectural limitations making them a “decelerator” as these renders happen within a few milliseconds. Nvidia 5th Gen Tensor Cores addresses this by having up to 2.5x more AI processing performance compared to last gen. That said, there are complexities in generating three frames in between traditional ones. For this reason, Blackwell uses hardware Flip Metering which transfers the frame pacing logic to the GPU instead of the CPU for better display timings.

These combinations of hardware and software implementations improves, or at the very least, minimizes the negative impact on image quality, smoothness, and latency especially when compared to the previous DLSS technolgy.

DLSS Transformer Model

The previous DLSS technologies used Convolutional Neural Networks(CNNs) to generate new pixels by analyzing localized context and track changes in those areas over successive frames. Nvidia claimed to have peaked in maximizing DLSS CNN architecture six years after the introduction of DLSS on the RTX 20 series. This prompted them to move to the new Transformer Model for Image Quality improvements.

The new DLSS Transformer Model uses a vision transformer, enabling self-attention operations to evaluate the importance of each pixel in a frame and the next frame/s. This new model doubles the parameters of the CNN model allowing it to generate pixels with better stability, reduced ghosting, higher details, and smoother edges depending on the scene.

Nvidia Reflex 2

Nvidia RTX 5090 Founders Edition Review Nvidia Reflex 2
Nvidia RTX 5090 Founders Edition Review Nvidia Reflex 2

Nvidia implements Frame Warp, a technology commonly used in VR games. Based on the latest mouse or controller input, the CPU calculates the camera position of the next frame as the frame is being rendered by the GPU. Frame warp uses the new camera position and “warps” the frame just rendered by the GPU to the extrapolated frame. The warping is done at the last possible moment, before the rendered frame is sent to the display, ensuring the latest input is reflected on the display.

The “warped frame” has small holes or blank pixels as the supposed pixels are moved to reflect the recent movement. Nvidia’s predictive rendering algorithm uses camera, color, and depth data from prior frames to in-paint these holes. This results to users seing the rendered frame with an updated camera perspective, without the holes. This effectively reduces the latency for any camera-moving actions in game for better aiming or tracking.

There’s currently no games that support Reflex 2 at launch but Nvidia confirmed that Reflex 2 will be coming to Valorant and The Finals.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Specifications

RTX 40 SERIES SPECSRTX 5090RTX 4090RTX 4080 SUPERRTX 4080RTX 4070 Ti SUPERRTX 4070 TiRTX 4070 SUPER
Cores2176016384102409728844876807168
Tensor Cores680512320304264240224
RT Cores1701288076666056
Boost Clock (GHz)2.412.522.552.512.612.612.48
Base Clock (GHz)2.012.212.212.212.342.311.92
Memory Config32GB GDDR724GB GDDR6X16GB GDDR6X16GB GDDR6X16GB GDDR6X12GB GDDR6X12GB GDDR6X
Memory Interface512-bit384-bit256-bit256-bit256-bit192-bit192-bit
Total Graphics Power575W450W320W320W285W285W220W
Min Required PSU1000W850W750W750W700W700W650W
PricePhp 145,800Php 112,300Php 69,300Php 84,200Php 55,420Php 63,200Php 41,550

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition – A Closer Look

Nvidia outdid themselves with its new Founders Edition packaging. It’s easily the most premium GPU unboxing experience we’ve had in recent years, and that’s including special edition GPUs.

The compact yet very sturdy packaging delivers an overall premium experience. The adapter and manual are on the outer brown box as opposed to being on the inner box like the previous FE cards.

While it may look like Nvidia just transferred the fan from the back to the front, Nvidia moved from a dual axial flowthrough cooler design to a double flowtrhough one. Behind the fans are just heatsinks for air to blow through as the GB202 PCB is positioned in the middle of both fans. Since the main PCB is the middle with the fans having no obstructions apart from the heatsinks and heatpipes, the PCIE x16 slot and I/O are separate PCBs which are connected via ribbon cables.

Upon the CES 2025 launch of the RTX 50 series, I initially didn’t like the design of the new Founders Edition cooler as having the dual-fan at the front felt like going back to the pre-RTX 30 series era. That said, seeing it in person, especially the back part where the hourglass frame is highlighted immediately changed my mind. Renders and even videos don’t do it justice.

Nvdia RTX 5090 Founders Edition Review 282
Nvdia RTX 5090 Founders Edition Review 282

There’s a lot to digest with the new RTX 50 series Founders Edition cooler for you to appreciate Nvidia’s engineering feat. Coming from the RTX 4090 at 3.5-slots, Nvidia has managed to reduce the thickness of its FE cooler to only 2-slots. This is considerably a bold move and shows Nvidia’s confidence with the new cooler design especially considering that the RTX 5090’s rated TDP is at 575W – 125W more than the RTX 4090’s 450W.

Nvidia somewhat address the melting 12VHPWR connector issue with a very simple yet dumbfounded solution, by mounting it vertically. The vertical oriented connector makes it less straining to the cables and pins. That said, the GeForce RTX LED logo is blocked by this setup.

Nvidia still includes a 4x 8pin PCIE to 12VHPWR adapter for its RTX 5090 Founders Edition card. What surprised us is that the adapter is now braided further reducing the risks of melting with less stress on the pin thanks to its flexibility.

Nvdia RTX 5090 Founders Edition Review 246
Nvdia RTX 5090 Founders Edition Review 246

The RTX 5090 has three DisplayPort 2.1b ports and one HDMI 2.1b port meaning that it can support up to 4K 480Hz or 8k 120Hz with display stream compression.

Size Comparison vs other GPUs

RTX 5090 Founders Edition vs RTX 4090 Founders Edition

RTX 5090 Founders Edition vs RTX 4070 Founders Edition

Benchmark Setup and Test Methodology

Gadget Pilipinas’ testing philosophy is to provide detail-oriented results as accurately as possible so that our readers can replicate our tests given that these conditions are met. Different benchmarking apps and sequences are used depending on the tested component or device.

CPUAMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
COOLERASUS ROG RYUJIN II 360mm V2 – Noctua NT-H2 Thermal Paste
MOTHERBOARDGigabyte X870E Aorus Master | BIOS F4i
MEMORYGSkill Trident Z Neo 32GB(2x16GB) DDR5-6000 CL28
GPUsNvidia RTX 5090 Founders Edition | Nvidia RTX 4090 Founders Edition
STORAGEKingston Renegade 2TB NVME SSD
POWER SUPPLYFSP VITA GM1000W Gold ATX 3.1
OPERATING SYSTEMWindows 11 Pro Build 24H2, VBS off
CASEOpen Benchtable V2

We use CapFrameX 1.7.5 as our primary FPS capture and analysis tool for all our gaming benchmarks. The latest build version of Windows 11 Pro and WHQL-certified drivers are used for our benchmarks. Readings such as temperatures and power draws are recorded using HWINFO64, and other relevant software for cross-checking.

For more info, read our Review and Benchmark methodology article.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Synthetic and Productivity Benchmarks

CINEBENCH 2024

Maxon’s Cinebench benchmark is one of the most iconic benchmark applications used by reviewers and enthusiasts. The latest Cinebench 2024 uses the latest rendering architectures, including Intel’s Embree ray tracing technology and other advanced features from AMD and Intel that allow users to render the same scene on the same hard. 

ADOBE PREMIERE PRO VIDEO EDITING BENCHMARK

Procyon benchmark suite is developed by the UL, the same team behind 3DMark and PCMark benchmarks. The UL Procycon video editing benchmark uses Adobe Premiere in a typical video editing workflow. The benchmark starts by importing two video project files with various edits, adjustments, and effects – the second project uses several GPU-accelerated effects. Each project is exported in 1080p with H.264 encoding and again in 4K with HEVC H.265. The reported score is based on the time taken to export all four videos. GPU acceleration is turned on for GPU benchmarks.

PCMark10

From the same developers of the popular game benchmarking tool 3DMark, PCMark 10 is a benchmarking app for measuring a whole PC’s performance. It covers a wide variety of tests to reflect common tasks performed in a modern workplace. We selected PCMark 10’s extended benchmark and reported both the overall score and the Digital Content Creation Score. 

V-RAY 6

V-Ray Benchmark is a stand-alone version of V-Ray developed by Chaos Group. It is designed to test the CPU and GPU by rendering sample scenes at a fixed amount of time. V-Ray is a plug-in mostly utilized by 3D computer graphics software applications mainly for industrial design, product design, architecture, film, and video game production. V-Ray is not limited to 64-threads as it supports multi and mega-threading.

GeekBench 6.3

Geekbench is a multi-platform benchmark used to gauge CPU performance and compare them across Windows, Mac, and Mobile. Geekbench 6 is the latest version and doesn’t rely on memory more than the previous Geekbench 4, making it a great tool to measure both single-core and multi-core CPU performance. Geekbench also sa GPU benchmarks using the OpenCL and Vulkan API.

BLENDER 4.3.0

Blender is a widely used, free, open-source 3D creation suite. It supports the whole 3D pipeline process from modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, and even motion tracking. Blender has become a standard for CPU benchmarks with the BMW27 and Classroom Scene most used. This prompted the company to release Blender Open Data Benchmark in 2018, a benchmark-specific version allowing users to run a preset benchmark and share the results online like 3DMark.

HANDBRAKE 1.8.2

Handbrake is a top-rated open-source video conversion software that is used by professionals, enthusiasts, and even reviewers as a reference point mainly because of its wide variety of media codecs. The rise of streaming and blogging makes video content, both encoding and transcoding important for these people, regardless of whether they’re seasoned professionals or just starting out. Handbrake also takes advantage of AVX-512 and OpenCL to accelerate certain types of media codecs. Our Handbrake benchmark converts a 3:16 4K60 clip shot from an S24 Ultra to 1080p60 H264 mp4 for CPU or 1080p NVENC H265 for GPU.

3DMark Benchmark Suite

3DMark is the go-to benchmark for gamers because of the ability to share and compare results online. We test GPUs both in DX11 Firestike and DX12 Timespy for the “classic” benchmarks. We also used 3DMark’s latest Steel Nomad and SpeedWay benchmarks as we slowly shift to these “more accurate” synthetic game benchmarks.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 AI Benchmarks

Geekbench AI

Computer Vision – Procyon

Image Generation – Procyon

Text Generation – Procyon

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Gaming Benchmarks

RETURNAL

Returnal is one of the most technologically advanced games since the launch of Cyberpunk 2077. Released last April 2021 on PS5 and February 2023 on PC, it uses Unreal Engine 4 and supports multiple technologies such as Ray Tracing, DLSS, VSR, and FSR.

COUNTERSTRIKE 2

CounterStrike 2 or CS2 is the successor to the now-retired CSGO and now uses the Source 2 Engine – the same engine used on DOTA 2. CS2 is a great FPS game to test out CPU performance. Our benchmark process uses the replay function of the game.

DOTA 2

Dota 2 is a good reputation among F2P titles especially MOBAs and RTS as it lands on the demanding side of the spectrum. Its gameplay and quality of life updates are far more frequent than most F2P titles thanks to its vast popularity. Our benchmark sequence is based on a replay of Liquid vs. Gaimin Gladiators in the The International Grand Finals Game 3 from the team fight that happened from 16:24 to 17:24. 

SPIDER-MAN: MILES MORALES

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony is one of the most popular PC port titles last 2022. It’s one of the few modern game titles that support upscaling technologies FSR, DLSS, and XeSS making it a great title to use for benchmarks.

F1 23

F1 23 is the official video game of the 2023 Formula One and Formula 2 championships developed by Codemasters. F1 2023 is the sixteenth installment in the franchise and uses the Ego Engine 4.0. F1 233 is a good representation of racing games thanks to its realistic graphics and fairly demanding spec requirements as well as support for Ray Tracing and the latest upscaling technologies such as DLSS, XeSS, and FSR.

ASSASSIN’S CREED: MIRAGE

Assassin’s Creed Mirage is the latest Assassin’s Creed game from Ubisoft making it the thirteenth major installment in the franchise. It uses the AnvilNext 2.0 game engine and is the very first AC game to support the latest upscaling technology such as XeSS, FSR, and DLSS.

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 is arguably the most hyped game of 2020. Developed by CD Projekt Red, the dystopian open-world, action-adventure RPG sports is one of the most demanding titles to date. Cyberpunk 2077 also supports three Ray Tracing settings as well as DLSS which makes the game a great tool to measure Ray tracing performance for both AMD and Nvidia graphics cards.

HORIZON FORBIDDEN WEST

Horizon Forbidden West is a 2022 action role-playing game developed by Guerrilla Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The Horizon Zero Dawn game sequel launched on PC last March 2024 built on the Decima Game Engine, the same one used on Death Stranding. Horizon Forbidden West features Ray Tracing and Upscaling technologies not present in the prequel game.

BLACK MYTH WUKONG

Black Myth: Wukong is one of the most popular game titles launched in 2024 with its stunning graphics thanks to the Unreal Engine 5. Developed by Game Science, Black Myth: Wukong is one of the most demanding titles recently released titles with complete Ray Tracing and Upscaling technology features making it a great benchmark for new hardware.

GHOST OF TSUSHIMA

Ghost of Tsushima is an action-adventure game developed by Sucker Punch Productions and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It was initially released for the PlayStation 4 in July 2020 and later for PlayStation 5 and Windows. Ghost of Tsushima runs on a modified and optimized version of Sucker Punch’s in-house engine, originally built for the PlayStation platforms.

HOGWARTS LEGACY

Hogwarts Legacy is a popular game catering to the hearts of Harry Potter fans and gamers with its rich world and engaging gameplay. Developed by Avalanche Software and built on the Unreal Engine 4, Hogwarts Legacy delivers detailed environments and character models with support for the latest rendering and upscaling technologies.

FAR CRY 6

FarCry 6 is an FPS game published by Ubisoft and uses the Dunia engine. It heavily relies on and takes advantage of DirectX 12 to render a realistic environment that makes it taxing to both the CPU and GPU. It’s also the first game of the franchise to support Ray Tracing.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Ray Tracing and DLSS Benchmarks

CYBERPUNK 2077

F1 23

HOGWARTS LEGACY

RETURNAL

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Temps and Power Draw

Nvidia RTX 5090 Founders Edition Review RTX 5090 Temps
Nvidia RTX 5090 Founders Edition Review RTX 5090 Temps

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition peaked at only 77.8°C during our testing compared to the RTX 4090 Founders Edition’s 69°C peak. That said, it’s nothing but impressive considering that the RTX 5090 is 1.5 slots thinner and consumes almost 30% more power than its predecessor. Taking all that into account including the performance improvement for a 10 percent temperature delta is a very welcomed trade-off that most if not all would undoubtedly take.

Conclusion – Rasterization or Neural Rendering?

Addressing the elephant in the room when it comes to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090, its $2,000 US or Php 145,800 price tag – It basically crosses RTX Titan level pricing and is the first GeForce card to reach that price point. The RTX 5090 Founders Edition commands a 30% price increase over the RTX 4090 with almost the same increase when it comes to power consumption. Now when it comes to performance, the percentage increase varies depending if you take into account, the other elephant in the room, AI-Generated Frames or DLSS 4 Multi Frame Gen.

The good news is pure rasterization performance improvement is about the same at 30% at higher resolutions but that comes with a lot of asterisks. At least in our testing, the performance uplift on the RTX 5090 over its predecessor depends on how the game or engine consumes resources to be able to maximize the increased core count, and VRAM of the RTX 5090. In well-optimized games, you’re seeing the scalable improvement in Average FPS whereas weaker titles show 10%-20% higher framerates. But, in terms of 1% FPS, the RTX 5090 Founders Edition shows much higher frames which is more important for smoothness as it translates to a much better gameplay experience, especially in competitive games.

Moving to the aforementioned other elephant in the room, DLSS 4 Multi Frame Gen. There’s a great divide within the enthusiast community with Multi Frame Generation especially the fact that up to 75% of frames are AI-generated with the 4x setting. That said, Nvidia has made clear in our briefings introducing different technologies and optimizations to showcase that these generated frames will have no or at the very least minimal impact when it comes to image quality, responsiveness, and smoothness – namely the new DLSS transformer more, AMP, Flip Metering, etc.

The value of the GeForce RTX 5090 or the RTX 50 series in general lies behind on how you value these AI technologies brought by the Blackwell Architecture. Some may argue that Multi Frame Gen is just a fancy black frame insertion type gimmick to trick the user of the perceived smoothness of the game but it’s clearly much more than that. The mere combination of hardware and software to bring out Multi Frame Gen is indeed a performance improvement as Nvidia claims, and rightfully so. Not to mention the clear balancing act of managing responsiveness and image quality that Nvidia did compared to when DLSS first came out.

As for the DLSS 4 experience, there were only Cyberpunk 2077, Hogwarts Legacy, Star Wars Outlaws, Alan Wake 2, and Marvels Rivals as the launch titles for the feature. We tested on both Cyberpunk and Hogwarts and there were no visible or weird artifacts throughout our benchmark session except for a few stutters or flickers on some shadows but they were not as game or immersion-breaking compared to the quality when DLSS first came out. That said this is tested on the RTX 5090 with 2 out of 5 games, we’ll have a separate DLSS 4 deep dive review once we get to the RTX 5070, and more games will be supported and tested.

Going back, whether it’s traditional rendering(rasterization) or neural rendering(multi-frame generation), there’s no denying that there’s a performance uplift with the RTX 5090 and that the relative performance uplift scales and in some arguments, far exceeds the 30% or Php 33,500 markup from the RTX 4090. However, the price remains to be great barrier for the RTX 5090, especially if you’re not one to maximize all of its feature set. Say, if you have a high-resolution 240Hz monitor and above you can now maximize the framerates with Multi Frame Gen with far lower latency when paired with Reflex 2 giving you the competitive edge in all aspects.

That said, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 is great for gamers or even professionals who already have a decked-out PC and simply want to maximize every bit of setting and performance that’s available – regardless of whether you’re getting the extra performance uplift through the brute force increase in specs or the smart AI implementation with Neural Rendering. Moreover, the raw specs of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 particularly the CUDA cores and its 32GB GDDR7 512-bit memory configuration make the RTX 5090 a pseudo-Titan or Quadro card hence the arguably justified pricing allowing small developers or studios to have a workstation-class GPU for far less the price.

The double flowthrough cooler on the Founders Edition, especially the one on the RTX 5090 feels like cheating with its exceptionally superb cooling performance only peaking at 77°C on our tests despite having a compact 2-slot design and monstrous 575W TDP. The Founders Edition model has certainly been elevated to the most premium tier of GPU models and is without the doubt should be your first choice if its available in your region.

Grant Soriano
PC Review Lead and Sales Officer at Gadget Pilipinas | Website

Grant is a Financial Management graduate from UST. His passion for gadgets and tech crossed him over in the industry where he could apply his knowledge as an enthusiast and in-depth analytic skills as a Finance Major. His passion allows him to earn at the same time help Gadget Pilipinas' readers in making smart, value-based decisions and purchases with his reviews and guides.

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