Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 are actual, and properly, they’re not as spectacular as many players hoped at first look – not less than if you aren’t utilizing DLSS 4.
I’m fearful about what meaning for the $550 RTX 5070 PC that players appeared so jazzed about, and whether or not the complete RTX 50-series may wind up being a flop if DLSS 4’s unbelievable new Multi Frame Generation fails to select up steam quick. (It ought to!) And I’ve the numbers to again up my fears.
The “Blackwell”-powered RTX 50-series doesn’t ship a lot enchancment in worth or uncooked rendering efficiency from era to era, full cease. The GeForce RTX 5090 brute forces its means atop the benchmark charts because of Nvidia cramming it with 33 % extra CUDA cores than the RTX 4090, which helps it obtain 27 % quicker speeds at 4K decision – for an 18 % improve in value and a lot greater energy consumption. It’s undoubtedly brutal and badass, however meh for a brand new era.
The RTX 5080 is much less spectacular, delivering solely 15 % extra efficiency than the RTX 4080 Super it replaces at 4K, and a paltry 11 % enchancment at 1440p. Plus, it nonetheless solely has 16GB of GDDR7 reminiscence regardless of costing $1,000. Meh.
Balancing this out, in fact, are the large efficiency positive factors offered by Nvidia’s new DLSS 4, and extra particularly, its Multi Frame Generation characteristic. DLSS is the identify of a set of AI-powered options, tapping into the devoted tensor cores in RTX graphics playing cards, that builders can choose to incorporate to their video games. DLSS encompasses options like AI upscaling for elevated efficiency, “ray reconstruction” to enhance the look of ray traced video games, and including AI-generated frames to supercharge body charges. We’ve explained all the tech in DLSS 4 here.
The new Multi Frame Generation characteristic for RTX 50-series GPUs inserts as much as three AI frames between two “traditionally” rendered frames to ship body charges and visible smoothness hovering. The tightly paced frames it spits out could make even janky video games like Star Wars Outlaws really feel as snappy because the legendary Doom 2016. As I mentioned in our RTX 5090 review, it’s a real, literal game-changer, and it’ll work in 75 video games and apps from day one.
But the RTX 5080 exhibits that Nvidia is keen to bet an entire graphics card’s existence on DLSS 4’s promise. And the RTX 5080 isn’t the one one.
Worrying concerning the RTX 5070 sequence
Shortly after Nvidia revealed the Blackwell era, we analyzed the RTX 50-series specs, making an attempt to estimate the place “traditional” gaming enhancements will fall. We got here rattling near nailing it, guessing that the RTX 5090 would wind up roughly 33 % quicker (it wound up at 27 %) and the 5080 would wind up 10 to 15 % quicker (actuality: 11.5 to 15 %).
How’d we try this? Simple: We merely in contrast their CUDA core counts to their predecessors, leaving some wiggle room for extra energy and quicker clock speeds. Blackwell GPUs are constructed utilizing the identical 4N course of at TSMC, so there was no straightforward uplift coming from a transistor node bounce. And as a substitute of prioritizing conventional efficiency positive factors, Nvidia centered a lot of its consideration on beefing up the RTX 50-series’ AI tensor cores to accommodate DLSS 4’s pleasant DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation characteristic, in addition to extra future-looking applied sciences like Neural Rendering and Mega Geometry.
Again: DLSS 4 is a lot extra than simply “fake frames.” It drastically improved gaming fluidity and smoothness in our playtesting in a handful of video games made accessible to press earlier than launch. AI upscaling is killing native rendering now, and it is sensible for Nvidia to prioritize it in a era the place AMD’s Radeon crew already admitted that it isn’t targeting highest-end performance.
If the DLSS 4 dream fails to materialize, nonetheless – if the remainder of the 75 launch video games exhibit visible artifacts or glitches extra pronounced than we’ve seen, if players reject the additional latency AI frames require, 1,000,000 different ifs – the RTX 50-series may wind up being some of the disappointing GPU generations in latest reminiscence.
Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry
We’ve already seen CUDA core counts correlate to the RTX 5090 and 5080’s efficiency. That’s a foul omen for the RTX 5070 sequence, regardless of being priced $50 decrease than earlier than — although be aware that once more, these are simply estimates and will show inaccurate.
The similar CUDA comparisons venture the $750 RTX 5070 Ti as being the “star” of this era, with a roughly 17 % improve over its predecessor, plus an improve to reminiscence capability, bandwidth, and velocity that might assist increase efficiency much more. A ~20 % efficiency improve generation-to-generation remains to be fairly meh so far as a progress goes, but it surely’s a extra tangible enchancment.
The reception for the $550 RTX 5070 may very well be even frostier if our estimates proceed to carry; that GPU solely has 4 % extra cores than the existing 4070. It sticks to the identical 12GB of reminiscence as its predecessor, too, albeit of the quicker GDDR7 selection. We’ll have to attend to see the way it handles in actual life when it launches later this spring, however the 5070 has the potential to make the RTX 5080’s minuscule generational positive factors look comparatively huge.
Nvidia hasn’t introduced lower-end GPUs but. What we’ve seen from the RTX 5070 laptop GPU makes us nervous about the RTX 5060, as a graphics card with simply 8GB of VRAM in 2025 doesn’t reduce it. We can’t opine an excessive amount of about that till the cardboard is introduced and examined although.
What’s clear is that Blackwell’s conventional rendering efficiency doesn’t transfer the needle ahead by a lot. The RTX 50-series was constructed for an AI-augmented future and it’ll stay or die based mostly on DLSS 4’s reception.
Betting all of it on DLSS 4
Good information! I completely adore DLSS 4’s Multi Frame Gen in follow. So do Adam Patrick Murray and Will Smith, my cohorts on PCWorld’s video staff who’ve been knee-deep testing RTX 50-series GPUs for weeks now. Check out our lengthy dialogue about DLSS 4 within the time-stamped video beneath if you wish to hear our deeper ideas.
But make no mistake: Nvidia’s total RTX 50-series lineup bets that DLSS 4’s humongous, AI-powered positive factors in fluidness and body charges will likely be embraced by PC players. And that’s certainly of venture.
DLSS 4 blew my hair again throughout testing, however many PC players derisively name AI-generated frames “fake frames.” The RTX 40-series’ Single Frame Generation confronted withering criticism at launch on account of visible glitches and latency issues. I’ve seen many, many fewer of these with my hands-on time with Multi Frame Generation – or maybe they’ve merely blown by too quick for my eyes to note, churning out at insanely excessive body charges.
We’ve solely had entry to a handful of MFG-equipped video games, and final era, DLSS 3’s Single Frame Gen may very well be very hit and miss relying on the sport you’re taking part in. (Microsoft Flight Sim notoriously had points with glitchy textual content, for instance). Making DLSS 4 accessible in 75 games and apps at launch will put a lot of software program in players’ palms for testing, which is wonderful and an enormous enchancment from previous norms, but it surely stays to be seen if all of them ship the identical finger-licking efficiency as Cyberpunk 2077, Star Wars Outlaws, and Alan Wake 2.
Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry
How to allow DLSS 4 in all these video games received’t essentially be apparent, both. While some video games are being up to date for DLSS 4 by builders, lots of the 75 video games and apps would require you to allow “DLSS Override” options deep in the Nvidia App, which tells the software program to interchange older DLSS 3 recordsdata with the brand new DLSS 4 capabilities.
Will players know to do this? Will these DLSS Override video games carry out as easily as native DLSS 4 titles? Will lower-tier playing cards just like the RTX 5070 and 5060 ship sufficient uncooked efficiency to hit 60 or extra frames per second, the baseline wanted to mitigate MFG inflicting devastating, swimmy-feeling lag? Will builders rush so as to add DLSS 4 to much more titles?
Nvidia clearly is playing on “yes” to all the above. From what I’ve performed, DLSS 4 can ship heavenly, snappy gaming experiences which are merely unattainable with conventional rendering. But if Nvidia can’t persuade players that AI-generated frames are greater than merely “fake frames,” the complete GeForce RTX 50-series may wind up being seen as a flop – as a result of as we’ve already seen from the RTX 5080 and 5090, Nvidia guess this era’s future on AI and DLSS, not conventional rendering.
Further studying: AI upscaling killed native graphics gaming. We’re better off for it