Whether you call this a win or not will depend on your refresh rate. People with 4K monitors with 60-Hz refresh rates will probably be happy with most of this, but I can imagine that some people with 120-Hz displays will have to adjust the settings to stay above 100 fps. It feels like true 4K gaming is finally out of reach with current hardware, at least not without the help of technologies like frame-based rendering.
My primary gaming monitor is 1440p ultrawide with a 120-Hz refresh rate, and I know many of my friends have gone in the same direction. It’s easy to achieve consistently high frame rates, but it’s also a cinematic experience, on a single display, that easily handles two windows of passive activity.
Chart screenshot courtesy of Brad Bourque
It’s safe to expect 90- to 120-fps performance in all games at this resolution, which is good news for gamers who want to outperform their existing monitor. Single-player, cinematic-heavy games like Cyberpunk 2022 again Star Wars Outlaws they’re still at a high level of image fidelity, so I’m not really frustrated that they have some room to grow, especially if they already look good. Online games and shooters like Marvel Rivals work well without much help, and it’s very important to have consistent frame rates in those games.
Is It Worth It?
Anyone considering the RTX 5090, Founders Edition or otherwise, should consider their budget first. The FE version of the card will set you back $2,000 if you buy it directly from Nvidia, and partner cards with overclocking and liquid cooling will likely be more expensive. You’ll also need to spend around $1,000 for a monitor that really takes advantage of your new graphics capabilities, and a new 1,000-watt or 1,200-watt GPU. That means you could be looking at a $3,500 build before you have any parts, and regardless of performance, I have trouble imagining starting any such build.
Photo: Brad Bourque
The RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 will hit the market at the end of January, with budget-friendly cards coming soon after. Without spending time with other RTX 50 Series cards, I can’t speak to their relative performance, but I do know that their price tags look very attractive. I expect these cards to support multiple framerates out of the box, and that’s good news if you just want to sit down and experience smooth gameplay.
Previous Founders Edition releases didn’t stay in stock for long, so you may have to get up early on the 30th to grab one of these if you want one. The whole situation makes the RTX 5090 feel less like a high-end 50 Series, and more like a showpiece.
It’s a GPU I can fix while dreaming up a new machine, not the first part I’d pick from a real build in PCPartPicker. If the price tag doesn’t give you pause, then, enjoy your new GPU. For everyone else, I would wait and see what the other new GPUs look like before you jump.
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