The official release date of the Nvidia RTX 5090 graphics card is coming up very soon. While we can’t dive deep into the card’s performance until they launch at the end of this month, you don’t have long to wait. However, in the meantime, we can finally show you a hands-on with the Nvidia RTX 5090 Founders Edition that we have in the office. But rest assured, we’re already busy benchmarking the new cards to see what they’re capable of. However, I am not part of that testing myself so as not to colour my opinions of this preview. Any insights in this article are purely my speculation based on what I can see while unboxing the GPU, and based on any pre-existing information from Nvidia’s reveal stream and product pages.
Nvidia RTX 5090 Founders Edition Graphics Card
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics cards certainly look powerful though, with the new Blackwell architecture at their heart, these GPUs are set to dominate the high-performance market. Both with improved rendering performance, and an upgraded and expanded suite of AI technologies, such as DLSS 4 and Multi-Frame Generation technology. With new gaming monitors for 2025 sporting both high resolutions and extremely high refresh rates, these flagship cards look like the prime solution to get the most out of these new displays.
Key Features
- Blackwell Architecture: The new Blackwell architecture boasts significant improvements in performance and efficiency.
- AI-Powered Rendering: Features like neural shaders and DLSS 4 leverage AI for groundbreaking graphics rendering.
- DLSS 4: This technology uses AI to generate more frames, leading to up to 8x performance boosts compared to traditional rendering.
- RTX Neural Shaders: Introduce AI networks into programmable shaders, enabling film-quality materials and lighting in games.
- RTX Neural Faces: Renders high-quality digital faces in real-time using AI.
- Reflex 2 with Frame Warp: Reduces latency in games by up to 75% for a more responsive experience.
- Autonomous Game Characters: New NVIDIA ACE technologies allow for AI-powered non-player characters (NPCs) that can perceive, plan, and act more like human players.
- AI Foundation Models: Support for NVIDIA NIM microservices enables users to build AI agents and assistants on their RTX AI PCs.
- FP4 Precision: Boosts AI image generation performance and allows for running generative AI models locally.
- Enhanced NVIDIA Broadcast App: Includes new AI-powered features like Studio Voice and Virtual Key Light for improved live streaming.
Blackwell
Jensen Huang, NVIDIA’s CEO, has already proclaimed that Blackwell is the most significant computer graphics innovation since programmable shaders hit the scene 25 years ago. That’s a bald claim, and while some of that might be the performance of the card, I suspect the new Naural Shaders, Naural Faces, and similar technologies are a big part of this too; such technologies are sure to develop over the coming years, much like DLSS and Ray Tracing have, and should see significant improvements in gaming fidelity and realism in the coming years.
The card is no slouch when it comes to hardware though, with the flagship RTX 5090 boasting 92 billion transistors, that are capable of 3,352 trillion AI operations per second (TOPS). Thanks to architectural improvements and the new DLSS 4 technology, NVIDIA claims the 5090 delivers up to twice the performance of the previous champ, the RTX 4090 thanks to innovations with Multi Frame Gen technology.
Specifications
The Nvidia RTX 5090 will be the first out of the gate, with further cards launching over the coming weeks, such as the RTX 5080, 5070 Ti and the RTX 5070. However, we won’t be sharing more information on those until closer to their respective release dates.
- GeForce RTX 5090:
- 92 billion transistors
- Over 3,352 trillion AI operations per second (TOPS)
- Up to 2x faster than the GeForce RTX 4090
- Price: $1,999
- Availability: January 30th
- GeForce RTX 5080:
- Price: $999
- Availability: January 30th
- GeForce RTX 5070 Ti:
- Price: $749
- Availability: February
- GeForce RTX 5070:
- Price: $549
- Availability: February
Video Unboxing
If you want the written unboxing, and some lovely photos, follow on to the next page!
