The King Returns

The RTX 4090 was a titan. The RTX 5090 is a god. After weeks of testing NVIDIA’s latest “Blackwell” flagship, one thing is clear: consumer hardware has finally caught up to the demands of Generative AI, but at a thermal cost that might require a new case.

The Specs: Blackwell Unleashed

Specification	RTX 4090	RTX 5090
Architecture	Ada Lovelace	Blackwell
VRAM	24GB GDDR6X	48GB GDDR7
CUDA Cores	16,384	24,576
TDP	450W	600W

The jump to GDDR7 memory provides a massive bandwidth increase, hitting nearly 2 TB/s. For gamers, this is negligible. For local LLM runners using Llama-4-70B, this is the difference between 15 tokens/sec and 50 tokens/sec.

Gaming Performance

We tested Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty (Path Tracing ON) at 4K.

• RTX 4090: 72 FPS (DLSS 3)
• RTX 5090: 115 FPS (DLSS 4)

DLSS 4 introduces “Physics Interpolation,” predicting object collisions before they happen to reduce CPU load. It feels magical, though ghosting is still present in fast-paced shooters.

The AI Verdict

This isn’t just a gaming card; it’s a workstation replacement. Running a quantized 70B parameter model entirely in VRAM allows for instant, offline chat. If you are an AI engineer, the 5090 is actually a bargain compared to the A6000 Ada.

Rating: 9/10 (Points deducted for requiring a dedicated power circuit).