RTX 5090 Reviews are HERE - You impressed? (Die Shrink Telegrams)
Added 2025-01-23 21:45:09 +0000 UTCAs we prepare enough links for an entire podcast...for just the first story of Broken Silicon 294, it is becoming clear that we should get some of the 5090 discussion out of the way in a Die Shrink! So, let's save some of the more technical talk for the coming BS, and just ask you all are you impressed by the RTX 5090? What do you think based on the initial reviews?
You have ~2-3 hours to submit! Sorry for the short notice!
Comments
Me thinks this is Nvivia’s new fork in the road for obfuscation/ hallucinations , and I think it requires new metrics of measurement beyond FPS. Appears to me just comparing ‘one percent mins’ could be much more fair because of the possibility that AI synth frames or AI filter frames which may not be full real frames would obscure traditional FPS measurements . If Adobe elects to ignore these frames in favor of real frames we’ll know something’s up.
Ralph Ashley
2025-01-24 19:57:47 +0000 UTCYou should try a 128GB Strix Halo out.
Robert S Barnes
2025-01-24 06:05:24 +0000 UTCI think the consensus is that this is a 4090 Ti that might get better with time. Meaning, it somewhat mirrors the 2000 series in that it shows a lot of promising tech that may be useful in the future, but not right now, and the raw performance gains don’t feel game changing. I personally was getting caught up in the hype, and thinking of selling a 4090 for funds for the 5090 (privileged problem I know), but I’m glad I went through reviews, and now I feel better about waiting for the eventual 6090 or a discounted 5090 years from now. One more thing, in the back of my mind I was pushing myself to get these GPUs to do AI work, because I think it’s going to be very important, but the Project Digits claims makes using GPUs for LLM work seem outdated/inefficient given the difference in usable memory (even if Digits’ is slower).
Alberto M
2025-01-24 04:38:23 +0000 UTCI love the Robin from "Teen Titans" reference.
Mark Smith
2025-01-24 03:44:25 +0000 UTCRTX 4090 Ti … for ~ 400 bugs more Same process node but more cu’s and alike, faster VRAM, better cooling, etc. with that and the premium prize, it should be at least 41% faster over all in raster
Hethukawa
2025-01-24 03:37:12 +0000 UTCI was kind of expecting the 5090 to be the most favorably reviewed card of the bunch. Nvidia's own marketing has kind of painted it to be a paper tiger. That being said, I think this bodes well for AMD, as no one seems to be taking the MFG bait.
shredbird
2025-01-24 03:13:23 +0000 UTCNot so much impressed, but still find it interesting. It seems to have a lot of CPU bottlenecks with high-end CPUs in 1440P from the videos I've seen. That's no fun for those of us wanting very high FPS (240 locked minimum) for quite some lifespan. It seems to show that CPUs aren't ready to support that in 1440P, no matter how powerful GPUs get. If AMD could get their software done well and make a good high-end card again (especially with DP 2.1's high bandwidth versions), that would be excellent and easily appreciated by many people tired of Nvidia but still wanting high-end.
Trevor Renfro
2025-01-24 02:57:32 +0000 UTCI think the 5090 and I are a match made in heaven. I would never buy it, and happens to be priced at “please don’t buy me” prices 😆
Amiablechief
2025-01-24 01:53:13 +0000 UTCI know its too late and I am just gonna make a statement, screw NVIDIA, they can fly kite. This is actually something that makes me sick of them and will move to AMD for good. Great show man, Best wishes to you and Dan.
Shallon Ogden
2025-01-24 01:25:12 +0000 UTCI'd be impressed if it fell in the value curve of the rest of Blackwell, but it's comparable to 40-series in both value and...well, their own marketing vs a "$1600" 4090. (and you thought that was a rare deal?) It's twice the chip and twice the price of a 5080, and maybe ~35% faster on avg? This is not the kind of uplift I'd expect from TWICE THE CHIP IN NEARLY EVERY WAY. Maybe CPUs just need to catch up? As for new features, it's the same as Turing. Some stuff they showed was very cool and will help them age better, but the games don't exist yet. We were better off waiting for Ampere to turn on raytracing.
DeadOfKnight
2025-01-24 00:55:31 +0000 UTCHonestly, I voided all the NGreedia news and notifications I had in the last four months - each time I heard about them, it was just more bad news and disappointing prices and benchmarks. Also they still give less that the bare minimum of VRAM, and I'm not talking about eight gigabytes of VRAM, but twelve - if my 2070Super is struggling in some games at 1080p in 2024, then it'll be the turn of twelve gigs this year. Hell, many reviews already mentioned that twelve gigs cards already suffered texture quality losses and stutters last summer, so I'd argue it's been the case for a while. Now, coming back to the 4090 - the only truly and objectively amazing thing about it, is the motherboard design. A BEAUTY of engineering. Also another reason I don't care about NGreedia anymore (well, really more like CAN'T care) is because they still don't support Linux for real. What a shame, I guess I'll have to wait for 4080 performance at 500 USD in March, oh nooooo... Edit : forgot to mention I'm currently on Windows 10, and I'm quitting as soon as I get a Radeon card. Would be cool if SteamOS 3 was fully functional by then on PC (you can actually just straight up download the Steam Deck image to a full AMD PC and have it mostly work right now even if it isn't official) but otherwise it'll probably be Ubuntu, Linux Mint, or some version of Arch since that's the SteamOS backend.
3-Valdion Dreemur
2025-01-24 00:30:20 +0000 UTCAfter watching all the English reviews of the 5090, I notice something that kinda stuck out. In titles that used newer engines, I noticed that the RX 7900XTX would sometimes beat the 4080 in lite Ray Tracing loads. Mind you this is without any upscaling. Resolution played only a small role in the outcome. I was surprised but the more I think about it, the more it is becoming clear to me that I think despite the communications issues Radeon is having with the rest of AMD (and arguably the partners etc), they are definitely heading in the right direction. I now better understand what you hinted at in your latest video regarding the 5090. Blackwell is a good uplift; but it might start to look silly in gaming especially once RDNA 4 hits the ground in March.
MelodicWarrior
2025-01-24 00:29:09 +0000 UTCI am whelmed. Not overwhelmed, not underwhelmed, just whelmed.
Michael Mullin
2025-01-24 00:25:17 +0000 UTCMaybe they were worried about AI Feature fatigue - everything is claiming "now with AI!". I wouldn't be surprised if someone's making an AI chewing gum.
PostRetroism
2025-01-24 00:12:28 +0000 UTCWhy not just call them 4090ti and 4080ti
Sad XTX 999
2025-01-23 23:26:29 +0000 UTCI genuinely believe the most impressive part of the 5090 is the 2 slot cooler design from Nvidia. Its the new performance king, it doesn't move the needle as far as value but it doesn't have to. People will buy it because its the best. That's what happens when there is no competition at the top. I believe the 4090 was only $1600 because of some fear around the upcoming RDNA3 flagship. With hindsight Nvidia would have priced the 4090 at $2000, this is the price they wanted all along. Also I disagree with the idea its not impressive because its hardware and power consumption doesn't scale as expected. It's at the top of the charts. There are bottlenecks everywhere from game engines, drivers, cpu, memory, etc. We can say intel gpu are unimpressive because they require more silicon and power to hit the same performance levels as cards with less. The 5090 is the best consumer gpu on the planet. Every person calling it unimpressive would also install it in there computer tomorrow if it arrived at their doorstep. It's an impressive gpu.
AWS Danny
2025-01-23 23:25:58 +0000 UTCTom, I'm neither impressed nor unimpressed. Seems Nvidia added a few cores and a little bandwidth to the 4080 on the same node then upped the juice and called it a day. Slightly better than decades of Intel style of upping the clocks a couple of percent but not much. For creators the new video streaming support is really to compete with Apple but it's not a game changer by any means. Overall all its 25% more cost for 20% more performance? It certainly does not improve in performance in $ or watts; I'll pass on a 600 watt room heater. The new cooler is decidedly an engineering feat but not a feature in my opinion.
Kiln God
2025-01-23 23:21:05 +0000 UTCMy take is the 5090 isn't that impressive considering the increased power usage, increased memory bandwidth, cuda cores and lastly the price. If you sold it for $1599 I'd say it is impressive enough, but it will sell far higher than the MSRP due to the stock and increased demand. This also doesn't bode well for the 50 series, considering the 5090 was the most likely card to show the most promise with all that extra hardware, the 5080 and the rest of the stack won't be impressive at all. Also the power over that cable has me concerned a little that high power, I know they say it's all good but time will tell and the case better have the best air flow in the world cause its a heater!
JonWickBoomStik
2025-01-23 23:02:35 +0000 UTCI was a little disappointed that the 4090 Ti wasn't shipped with an auxiliary diesel generator to overcome the weak power limits imposed by puny electrical power outlets. 600 Watts is just weak. Jensen really must be *really* confident that AMD is not going to catch up this generation.
Molly the Bully
2025-01-23 22:53:43 +0000 UTCI never thought I’d see marketing willingly shoot a product in the foot. Not accidentally but willingly. They actually went out of their way to market it this way for gaming, if they just came out and said “we made an AI card and this is what it can do for gaming with these new AI features I don’t think anyone would have cared how lackluster it is because it’s an AI focused generation that can do gaming.
Sad XTX 999
2025-01-23 22:50:13 +0000 UTCNvidia changed Blackwell from 3 nm to 5nm to keep up with constant roll outs for AI generations. The issue: Ada Lovelace also uses 5nm. Nvidia didn't get a "free" bump from the process node improvements, and instead had to go with a larger die, and linear growth. Gaming will continue to play second (at best) fiddle. I'm not sure why Nvidia thought gamers would be happy with ~30% more performance for ~30% more cost/power/idle. Yuck.
Nicholas Buckner
2025-01-23 22:45:41 +0000 UTCHow is this MFG or even single frame generation going to work for Virtual world or MMORPG's that all content is on servers far away from where I'm sitting enjoying those games? DLSS isnt very much implemented on these types of games.
Cammi Hudson
2025-01-23 22:45:22 +0000 UTCNot really but it's about what I expected based on pre-embargo analysis and leaks. I'm more interested to see how the 5080 performs so we can find out if Blackwell actually improves on a per SM basis since the 5090 might be running into scaling issues or CPU bottlenecks
GrandDemand
2025-01-23 22:45:11 +0000 UTCHi Tom and Dan, There are only 2 things that aren’t disappointing about the 5090. The impressive 2 slot cooler design and the massive increase in minimum frame rate. The only review I’ve seen today was Gamers Nexus and I was impressed that in quite a few games the 5090 minimums were higher or on par with the 4090 averages. Do you think this is due to bandwidth? Maybe it’s usually like that, but I just don’t remember from previous launches. Steve seemed a bit surprised and commented several times about the good frame pacing.
Gob
2025-01-23 22:42:09 +0000 UTCAfter using more memory bandwidth, more power, and increasing the transistor count for only 20 to 30 percent uplift doesn't seem worth it. Even the AI performance is not as good as I was expecting. Don't forget about the crazy amount of engineering they had to do in order to air cool a 600W card in 2 slots, I am expecting third party vendor cards are going to be 4 slot plus. Seems like Blackwell is a dud or something is broken on it (software/hardware).
Porcelain Oats
2025-01-23 22:42:02 +0000 UTCGoing back to the announcement at CES, if Nvidia had simply shown the raw improvement in raster and RT performance in a decent selection of games and called it a day, do you think it would have been better? Putting it another way, given that some more prominent reviewers went out of their way to call bullshit on Nvidia’s performance claims, has Nvidia damaged their reputation?
Chris Rijk
2025-01-23 22:26:59 +0000 UTCTom i think you had a typo in the title of the die shrink, I think you meant the 4090 tie? In all seriousness I was extremely underwhelmed, both the performance and power consumption is kind of a bust. What exactly is the cause of it? Was it the node? the architecture?
Falto
2025-01-23 22:22:17 +0000 UTCThe 5090 at least had a very clear specs increase but specs for the rest of the lineup is quite similar to Lovelace apart from bandwidth. This looks set to be the most lackluster new generation in a long time. AMD’s decision to delay is looking smarter by the day.
Chris Rijk
2025-01-23 22:22:14 +0000 UTCNot really but that is mostly because of how impressive the 4090 was. 30% is fine and I don’t think there are too many people swayed by the performance one way or the other. You either have fuckyou money and just want the best or you work with it and need the best and/or large VRAM pool. Either way you probably already knew you were going to buy this. It is the best consumer card you can buy and that has value in itself. The implications for the rest of the lineup are more interesting. If the 5090 is that much larger and only 30% faster, the uplift for other cards will probably be rather modest. The only standout feature, to me, is the 2 slot cooler. I am not a fan of how big graphics cards have gotten and the impressive cooling performance despite the size is really cool.
Lucas
2025-01-23 22:21:58 +0000 UTCAre we really surprised with these 5090 reviews? Once it was confirmed that the 50 series was developed on the same 3nm TSMC process as the 40 series, the only improvements to be had were really from increasing memory throughput and power consumption
Jeffrey Reyes
2025-01-23 22:17:08 +0000 UTCLooks like an AI accelerator with a thin coat of Geforce paint on it.
AdanFS
2025-01-23 22:15:56 +0000 UTCI'll make some effort try and get one from BestBuy, but I'll almost certainly fail and then still have my 4090 to enjoy for another two years. Since I'm gaming at 3840x1600 (~74% of 4k) the 4090 is enough to get high frames with high settings already, especially with DLSS.
Pacal
2025-01-23 22:13:45 +0000 UTCLike Nvidia said, the 5070ti and up are for professionals. Disappointed ones at that
Dig Wiggler
2025-01-23 22:12:56 +0000 UTCShould Nvidia have waited until 3nm was ready? Should the successor wait until 2nm is ready?
Chris Rijk
2025-01-23 22:12:53 +0000 UTCMy overall reaction to the 5090 from the reviews is “that’s all”? I was particularly surprised at the modest improvement in content creation and AI performance given the specs.
Chris Rijk
2025-01-23 22:11:23 +0000 UTCNot bad, not impressive. 50 series launch is all about the software launch and they're trying to attach GPU sales to it.
magneticmanul
2025-01-23 22:08:44 +0000 UTC30% more core, 50%more bandwidth for 25% more performance. Blackwell is not very impressive. It does not bold well for the rest of the lineup. And Ray tracing improvement is a concern. It is the 4th generation of Ray tracing core and you still need a $2000 monster card to run certain settings on 5 years games at a low fps.
Nicolas Terroir
2025-01-23 22:07:29 +0000 UTCIt's not overwhelming. If they managed the same performance uplift without increasing power consumption, that would be great new generation. 30% increase in performance, price and power consumption. Nvidia should have been allowed to choose only two of them. But still it's not bad. We know it will be sold out anyway.
Kator
2025-01-23 22:06:25 +0000 UTCAs a 4090 owner, that barely gets to use it, no, I had a plan to sell mine and get the 5090, when I saw that the uplift was not generational, I decided to not deal with the scalping issues and simply keep my card.
AnotherChris
2025-01-23 22:02:03 +0000 UTCThe 5090 is rather disappointing. Two years of waiting with impressive specs and not much to show for it. At least, I expected the raytracing performance to be significantly better, but it seems that too is limited to the performance gains seen with raster. Perhaps there is an onerous bottleneck with the architecture (like the scheduling of cores) as the gains in CUDA cores and especially memory are tremendous. I now understand Nvidia's superficial showing and aggressive pricing of the 5000 series from CES. They intended to ride on the hype train by focusing on features and AI, not so much on raw performance as they were keenly aware of the shortcomings. For the price, it's no better than the 4090; it's arguably worse as it consumes more power and is late to the party. As Steve from Hardware Unboxed called it: the RTX 4090 Ti. Personally, I'm much more interested in the RTX 5080 and the upcoming 9070 XT and 9070. Those seem to be the value offerings for high-end gaming without breaking the bank.
Hugo Ander Kivi
2025-01-23 22:01:44 +0000 UTCAs a 4090 owner , I don't really feel like I'm potentially missing out on the 5090. It (the 4090) remains the second fastest consumer GPU on the market and does the job well. I checked TPU's review today and wasn't really impressed with the results: - No increase in clock speeds (core clock). Not as big of a leap (in gaming performance) as the 30 series vs 40 series yet quite a price increase (not terribly greedy as I was expecting 2500 USD minimum). - Speaking of price, the only reason I guess is that is has 32GB of vram that is now GDDR7 with a 512-bit bus and it must be a monster for professional work (especially AI). - For thermals and noise, I'd rather have fat bricks that keep the GPU cool and quiet than slim cards that are loud home heaters. If you want slim, cool and quiet, then All-In-One watercooled or custom loops is the way to go. Jensen did say at CES that buying a GeForce GPU is an investment, after all. I bought my 4090 because I needed CUDA for my work, but the card being the best (second best now) at gaming is really nice to have (I play at 4K@144Hz). Will I sell my 4090 to buy one eventually? If I can make use of it for professional work (be it AI, 3D graphics and/or compute), then I would perhaps be tempted. Gaming? What a waste of money...
Samuel
2025-01-23 21:57:00 +0000 UTCNot worth 2k. Fake frames are BS. As HUB said, its a 4090Ti.
Thalo215
2025-01-23 21:56:08 +0000 UTCFor 4090 owners, its not worth it.
Jesse Jaskowiak
2025-01-23 21:50:49 +0000 UTC5090 in techpowerup review gets over 2x 4090 with DLSS4! Sometimes almost 2.5x! This is the largest leap in decades!!!! Being serious, this seems like Blackwell is either broken, or the 5090 is to wide (ALU count) for 4K.
Jen-Hsun Huang
2025-01-23 21:47:21 +0000 UTC
