The Nvidia RTX 50 series isn’t just facing stock issues anymore. Performance criticism is also catching up as more reviewers get their hands on the new GPUs. A recent example of this was the RTX 5070 Ti, where benchmarks showed it being outperformed by the RTX 4080 and failing to deliver a “generational uplift” in performance compared to even the RTX 4070 Ti.

However, the flagship of the series, the RTX 5090, which gamers are paying thousands to get their hands on, is now also seen lagging behind the last-gen flagship in a popular new video card benchmark leaderboard. This comes from PassMark Software, where the RTX 5090 is seen sitting in second place on the leaderboard, while the RTX 4090 has managed to pull ahead as the clear winner.

RTX 4090 stays on top with 23 more points

Before we get to the scores, the “PassMark – G3D Mark” test refers to a benchmark score generated by the PassMark PerformanceTest software. The test specifically measures the 3D graphics performance of your GPU and helps you understand how well your graphics card can render complex 3D scenes. And yes, a higher score indicates better performance. With that out of the way, the RTX 5090 managed to score a total of 38,407, whereas the RTX 4090 pulled ahead thanks to its score of 38,430.

While this is just a single benchmark where the RTX 4090 seems to have taken the lead, the fact that Nvidia marketed the GPU saying “2X Faster Than The GeForce RTX 4090” but failed to deliver that in rasterization tests is not a great look. On top of that, this isn’t the only GPU in the leaderboard that caught our eye, as the RTX 5070 Ti was also seen being outperformed by not just the 4070 Ti Super but even the 4070 Ti, showing that the 50 series might not be the best at rendering 3D scenes. However it’s worth taking into account that the 5090 has plenty of time to catch up – especially if more people start overclocking it.

RTX 50 series at least offers the best AI acceleration to date

These benchmarks for the RTX 50 series that have started to surface show that the green team might have been slightly misleading when they used the “twice as better” comparison when showcasing these GPUs. Because when put to the test, the pure rasterized performance of these GPUs isn’t off the charts compared to the RTX 40 series.

And yes, if you use DLSS 4 and the new Multi Frame Gen, even the RTX 5070 can become on par with the 4090, but without all the help, things turn out to be quite different. Perhaps this generation, Nvidia is bringing AI implementation to the forefront with minimal raw performance improvement, and in the future, we might see a better balance of both, but for now, things are not looking amazing for the green team.

About the Author

Hassam Nasir

Hassam boasts over seven years of professional experience as a dedicated PC hardware reviewer and writer.