Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 are actual, and properly, they’re not as spectacular as many avid gamers hoped at first look – not less than whenever you aren’t utilizing DLSS 4.
I’m anxious about what which means for the $550 RTX 5070 PC that avid gamers appeared so jazzed about, and whether or not the whole RTX 50-series might wind up being a flop if DLSS 4’s incredible new Multi Body Era fails to choose 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 technology to technology, full cease. The GeForce RTX 5090 brute forces its means atop the benchmark charts because of Nvidia cramming it with 33 p.c extra CUDA cores than the RTX 4090, which helps it obtain 27 p.c quicker speeds at 4K decision – for an 18 p.c enhance in worth and a lot greater energy consumption. It’s positively brutal and badass, however meh for a brand new technology.
The RTX 5080 is much less spectacular, delivering solely 15 p.c extra efficiency than the RTX 4080 Tremendous it replaces at 4K, and a paltry 11 p.c 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 good points supplied by Nvidia’s new DLSS 4, and extra particularly, its Multi Body Era characteristic. DLSS is the title 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 defined all of the tech in DLSS 4 right here.
The brand new Multi Body Era 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 stated in our RTX 5090 assessment, it’s a real, literal game-changer, and it’ll work in 75 video games and apps from day one.
However the RTX 5080 exhibits that Nvidia is keen to wager a whole graphics card’s existence on DLSS 4’s promise. And the RTX 5080 isn’t the one one.
Worrying concerning the RTX 5070 collection
Shortly after Nvidia revealed the Blackwell technology, 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 p.c quicker (it wound up at 27 p.c) and the 5080 would wind up 10 to fifteen p.c quicker (actuality: 11.5 to fifteen p.c).
How’d we try this? Easy: 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 simple uplift coming from a transistor node bounce. And as an alternative of prioritizing conventional efficiency good points, 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 Body Era characteristic, in addition to extra future-looking applied sciences like Neural Rendering and Mega Geometry.
Once more: 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 obtainable to press earlier than launch. AI upscaling is killing native rendering now, and it is smart for Nvidia to prioritize it in a technology the place AMD’s Radeon crew already admitted that it isn’t concentrating on highest-end efficiency.
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 avid gamers reject the additional latency AI frames require, 1,000,000 different ifs – the RTX 50-series might wind up being one of the crucial 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 collection, regardless of being priced $50 decrease than earlier than — although notice that once more, these are simply estimates and will show inaccurate.
The identical CUDA comparisons undertaking the $750 RTX 5070 Ti as being the “star” of this technology, with a roughly 17 p.c enhance over its predecessor, plus an improve to reminiscence capability, bandwidth, and velocity that might assist enhance efficiency much more. A ~20 p.c efficiency enhance generation-to-generation continues 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 might be even frostier if our estimates proceed to carry; that GPU solely has 4 p.c extra cores than the prevailing 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 good points look comparatively large.
Nvidia hasn’t introduced lower-end GPUs but. What we’ve seen from the RTX 5070 laptop computer GPU makes us nervous concerning the RTX 5060, as a graphics card with simply 8GB of VRAM in 2025 doesn’t minimize it. We will’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 dwell or die based mostly on DLSS 4’s reception.
Betting all of it on DLSS 4
Excellent news! I completely adore DLSS 4’s Multi Body Gen in follow. So do Adam Patrick Murray and Will Smith, my cohorts on PCWorld’s video crew who’ve been knee-deep testing RTX 50-series GPUs for weeks now. Take a look at our lengthy dialogue about DLSS 4 within the time-stamped video under if you wish to hear our deeper ideas.
However make no mistake: Nvidia’s total RTX 50-series lineup bets that DLSS 4’s humongous, AI-powered good points in fluidness and body charges will likely be embraced by PC avid gamers. And that’s certainly a raffle.
DLSS 4 blew my hair again throughout testing, however many PC avid gamers derisively name AI-generated frames “fake frames.” The RTX 40-series’ Single Body Era confronted withering criticism at launch as a result of visible glitches and latency issues. I’ve seen many, many fewer of these with my hands-on time with Multi Body Era – 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 technology, DLSS 3’s Single Body Gen might 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 obtainable in 75 video games and apps at launch will put a lot of software program in avid gamers’ 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
The way to allow DLSS 4 in all these video games gained’t essentially be apparent, both. Whereas 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” choices deep within the Nvidia App, which tells the software program to switch older DLSS 3 information with the brand new DLSS 4 capabilities.
Will avid gamers 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 can be merely inconceivable with conventional rendering. But when Nvidia can’t persuade avid gamers that AI-generated frames are greater than merely “fake frames,” the whole GeForce RTX 50-series might wind up being seen as a flop – as a result of as we’ve already seen from the RTX 5080 and 5090, Nvidia wager this technology’s future on AI and DLSS, not conventional rendering.
Additional studying: AI upscaling killed native graphics gaming. We’re higher off for it
