Nvidia RTX 5090D vs RTX 4090: 20% boost in gaming performance without DLSS or frame generation
It would be fair to say that the gaming community has been rather displeased with Nvidia's utilization of AI-driven frame generation wizardry to drive much of the gaming performance uplift it claimed at the launch event for its RTX 5090, RTX 5080, and RTX 5070 gaming GPUs. Whether or not DLSS 4 is worthy enough to sway gamers in its favor remains to be seen, but one thing is clear - the actual raw performance improvement with Blackwell is far more modest than what was initially thought.
We already have a rough idea of how the GeForce RTX 5090 performs in Cyberpunk 2077 with and without DLSS 4 and MFG, but a single game is hardly enough to conclude. As spotted by Chiphell forum memberrs, it appears that a reviewer got their hands on the RTX 5090D China-specific GPU, and managed to share some excerpts from their review. For those who are out of the loop, the RTX 5090D is essentially an RTX 5090, but with significantly lower AI TOPS and a 3-second cutoff for AI and Crypto-related workloads.
According to the reviewer, the raw performance uplifts with this generation, unsurprisingly, are rather modest. With DLSS and ray tracing turned off, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090D managed to outperform its predecessor by roughly around 20%. While that is certainly not awful for a generational update, there is no doubt that the gaming community had expected a larger jump. That said, with DLSS 4 and MFG set to maximum, the reviewer noted that the GeForce RTX 5090D managed to perform almost exactly as well as Nvidia had promised.
Moreover, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090D is unlikely to have configurable power limits. Such adjustments might be possible in the future, albeit the chances are limited. The reviewer also managed to overclock the card to 2600 MHz, while having downclocked the memory, resulting in a memory bandwidth of 896 GB/s, effective neutralizing the GDDR7-related benefits. The RTX 4090, on the other hand, was also overclocked to around 2610 MHz, and memory bandwidth set to 912 GB/s. Other details of the testing setup include a Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU paired with memory clocked at 6000 MHz. The exact in-game FPS values are blurred out, which is disappointing, but understandable.
Source(s)
Chiphell, via HXL
