RTX 5090 reviews went live a few days ago – one week ahead of the release date on January 30th. Nvidia’s new flagship GeForce graphics card promises incredibly strong performance, backed up by its latest DLSS 4 technology which comes packaged with series-exclusive Multi Frame Generation support. This has been a massive boon for the 50 series, as evident in first-party benchmarks from Nvidia. However, how well does the 5090 hold up with pure rasterization?

One of the most popular hardware reviewers on the web is LTT (Linus Tech Tips), and their review of the 5090 reveals some interesting details about the card’s performance. Without help from DLSS 4 upscaling and frame generation, the 5090 isn’t miles ahead of the RTX 4090 – particularly disappointing when you consider we’re talking about a $1,999 GPU here.

Black Myth: Wukong fails to reach 60 FPS at 4K max settings (minus RT)

Running at native 4K (100% scaling) on the maximum ‘Cinematic’ preset without ray tracing, the RTX 5090 managed an average of 57 FPS, while the RTX 4090 averaged 44 FPS. It’s worth keeping in mind if you’re looking for the best graphics settings for Black Myth: Wukong, the cinematic preset is best avoided. We tested the game when it was released on a 4080 Super, and we had to tone down a few settings at 4K.

We would have liked to see the RTX 5090 easily surpass that 60 FPS milestone for a game like Black Myth: Wukong, especially if it wants to represent the next generation of PC hardware. Instead, LTT labels the 5090 as “a 4090++”. Some people will suggest that Nvidia is relying too much on DLSS technology, but it’s clear that Team Green doesn’t see this as a downside.

Nvidia’s Bryan Catanzaro recently said that Neural rendering will overcome “the limitations of today's graphics” and admitted that they’re going to be using “a lot of frame gen to get to 1000Hz” by the time even higher refresh rate monitors become commonplace.

The 5090 does offer some notable specs improvements over its predecessor. When comparing RTX 5090 vs RTX 4090, we can see that it has a ton more CUDA cores (21,760 versus 16,384), improved 32GB GDDR7 memory, and a massive 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth. Even still, this doesn’t seem enough to push some of the most demanding games on the market further. We should note that Black Myth: Wukong will have DLSS 4 support, but it’s not coming at launch, so there’s at least a ton of AI to fall back on if you want to maximize performance on this Blackwell GPU.

About the Author

Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.