Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 5090 Solid review: Zotac's flagship GPU vs. Nvidia's Founders Edition

The Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 5090 Solid, powered by Nvidia’s Blackwell architecture, outperforms the RTX 4090. It delivers over 100 fps in 4K with max settings and ray tracing, enhanced by DLSS 4.0. Its strong gaming and creative performance make it ideal for demanding users.

The cooling performance of the Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 5090 Solid is outstanding. Zotac’s cooling solution keeps temperatures low even under heavy load while maintaining quiet operation for an uninterrupted gaming experience. The card’s minimalist design, complemented by subtle lighting, adds a modern yet unobtrusive touch.
However, the included power adapter is a drawback, as its cables are too short and feel inferior compared to those provided with Nvidia’s reference models.

Blackwell graphics cards remain in short supply. Overpriced listings on eBay and other marketplaces should be avoided. In Germany, limited stock occasionally appears at retailers like Notebooksbilliger or Alternate. It is unclear when availability will improve.

The Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 5090 SOLID is a high-end graphics card designed for enthusiasts, gamers, and content creators. Built on Nvidia’s Blackwell architecture, it offers improved efficiency, significantly enhanced ray tracing performance, and supports DLSS 4.0 with AI-driven multi-frame generation (MFG) to ensure smooth 4K gaming with all ray tracing features enabled.

Zotac's Solid series features a robust cooling system with a triple-fan axial design, a thick vapor chamber, and a large aluminum heatsink. This setup aims to keep temperatures and noise levels low under load while preventing thermal throttling. Optimized airflow control also ensures quiet operation, even under intensive workloads. The card’s massive yet elegant design distinguishes it from previous RTX 4000 models.

The Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 5090 Solid makes an impressive impression as soon as it is unpacked. With its massive cooling design and high-quality workmanship, Zotac delivers a great product that leaves an extremely high-quality impression both visually and haptically. The huge heat sink, which extends over the entire length of the card, is particularly striking. Zotac relies on vapor-chamber cooling with three axial fans, which should not only ensure low temperatures but also quiet operation. The RGB lighting is discreet, giving the card an elegant look.

With a length of just 33 cm, the graphics card is one of the shorter models, although the 4-slot design looks much bulkier than the slim dual-slot design of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition. As a result, Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 5090 Solid requires a lot of space in the case and may cover other connections on the motherboard. The high-quality backplate provides additional stability and supports heat dissipation.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 redefines performance and efficiency with its Blackwell architecture. Featuring 32 GB of GDDR7 memory, an increased shader count, and advanced AI-driven technologies like multi-frame generation (MFG), it delivers unparalleled power. Enhanced ray tracing cores (RT cores) and DLSS 4.0 ensure smooth gameplay, while PCIe 5.0 support and optimized energy efficiency help maintain competitive power consumption despite its immense performance.

The Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 5090 Solid delivers raw performance with an effective cooling solution. Unlike Nvidia’s reference design, Zotac uses a traditional GPU layout, with the rear section dedicated to cooling, allowing for better airflow and heat dissipation. As the most affordable option in Zotac's RTX 5090 lineup, it shares identical technical specifications with the Nvidia Founders Edition. Zotac also offers the Solid OC and AMP Extreme Infinity variants, which differ mainly in boost clock speeds and lighting elements. Despite these differences, all models maintain a 575-watt power consumption.

With the Firestorm tool, Zotac offers user-friendly software for managing and optimizing its graphics cards. Users can adjust GPU and memory clock speeds, control fan settings, and customize RGB lighting effects. The tool also supports user-defined profiles for personalized configurations. Alternatively, the card's lighting can be synchronized via the ARGB connection on the motherboard, with a compatible cable included in the package.

In synthetic benchmarks, the Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 5090 Solid holds a slight edge over the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 FE, though both perform nearly identically.
Compared to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090, the Zotac model delivers around 30% more performance. Meanwhile, the Asus TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 5080 OC lags by approximately 42%, and AMD's current flagship, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, falls even further behind, remaining non-competitive in this segment.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 clearly outperforms the RTX 4090 in SPECviewperf 2020, benefiting from the Blackwell architecture, increased CUDA cores, and higher memory throughput. In specific sub-tests like 3dsmax-07 and energy-03, it achieves gains of 20 to 56% over its predecessor.

AMD traditionally performs well in this area and can sometimes surpass Nvidia’s top models. However, as usual, AMD’s specialized driver optimizations remain exclusive to workstation GPUs, leaving consumer models without the same benefits.

The performance gain of the Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 5090 Solid over the RTX 4090 is less dramatic than the leap from the RTX 3090, mainly because Nvidia has not further reduced the manufacturing process. Compared to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition, Zotac’s model holds a slight three-percent advantage, though the difference is negligible in real-world use.
In 4K resolution, the RTX 5090 maintains over 100 fps in AAA titles like Cyberpunk 2077 and Indiana Jones. However, demanding games such as Black Myth: Wukong and Star Wars Outlaws push even the new flagship below 60 fps without ray tracing enabled, showing how modern games continue to challenge GPUs.
AI-driven enhancements like DLSS and frame generation are becoming essential, as Nvidia’s Blackwell models demonstrate. The raw performance increase is moderate, with Nvidia focusing more on optimizing AI-based features, which will be examined in the next section.

DLSS 4 and Multi Frame Generation provide a significant performance boost, with DLSS 4.0 sometimes even surpassing the quality of natively rendered images. While Nvidia allows DLSS 4.0 on older GPUs, Multi Frame Generation is exclusive to Blackwell graphics cards. Our tests show that the Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 5090 Solid gains only a slight advantage over the RTX 4090 with DLSS 4 alone. However, when combined with frame generation, performance improves noticeably, though the previous Ada Lovelace flagship is only significantly outpaced with multi-frame generation enabled.

That said, high average fps alone don’t guarantee a flawless gaming experience. P1 values play a crucial role in ensuring smooth gameplay. While the RTX 5090 delivers excellent results in most titles, Alan Wake 2 reveals clear gaps between average fps and P1 values, though the experience remains subjectively smooth. In contrast, Star Wars Outlaws maintains consistently strong performance across both metrics. The key takeaway is that AI-powered features are becoming essential for achieving maximum graphical fidelity and full ray tracing in 4K without major performance trade-offs.

Despite consuming up to 575 watts, the Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 5090 Solid remains surprisingly quiet, outperforming the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition in noise levels. In 2D mode and under light load, the fans remain completely silent, with the recorded 34.4 dB(A) mainly attributed to coil whine. Under full load, noise levels reach 43.5 dB(A), an impressive result given the card's high power draw. All noise measurements were conducted in an open setup, meaning that in a closed system, the card remains nearly inaudible at idle and under low load.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 FE already set new energy consumption records in our tests, and the Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 5090 Solid, being technically identical to the reference version, remains at a similar level. In gaming scenarios, our test system consistently exceeded 600 watts, peaking at 766 watts under stress conditions— a significant jump compared to the RTX 4090.

Power is supplied via the 12V-2x6 connector, which has been widely criticized. Zotac includes an adapter for power supplies lacking a native 12V-2x6 connection, which functioned without issues in our test. However, Nvidia's Founders Edition adapter felt higher quality, with a longer and more flexible cable. The Zotac adapter complicates cable management considerably.

For installation, Zotac recommends a power supply of at least 1,000 watts—a recommendation we strongly endorse. To avoid cable clutter and improve aesthetics, using a native 12V-2x6 power cable instead of the adapter is preferable.

The Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 5090 Solid matches the performance of Nvidia’s Founders Edition while offering quieter and more efficient cooling. Its design remains classic, incorporating modern and future-proof connections. As the most affordable RTX 5090 variant from Zotac, it lacks factory overclocking—though this is hardly necessary given its already exceptional performance.