Linus Tech Tips - The RTX 5090 - Our Biggest Review Ever
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 590 is a high-performance graphics card that promises significant improvements over its predecessors, particularly in AI and ray tracing capabilities. It features more GPU cores, enhanced RT and AI cores, and a wider memory bus with PCI Gen 5 support. The card excels in newer, graphically intensive games, offering substantial performance gains over previous models. However, its high price and power consumption make it less appealing for average gamers. The card's AI capabilities are enhanced with new tensor cores and support for neural shaders, allowing for more efficient ray tracing and geometry generation. Despite these advancements, the performance gains are not as dramatic as expected, with only a 30% improvement over the previous generation in some benchmarks. The card also introduces DLSS 4 and multiframe generation, which significantly boost frame rates but may introduce visual artifacts. For professionals, the card offers improved video encoding and decoding capabilities, making it a valuable tool for video editing and AI applications. However, the high power consumption and price may limit its appeal to a niche market.
Key Points:
- The RTX 590 offers a 30% performance improvement over its predecessor, but at a 25% higher price.
- Enhanced AI and ray tracing capabilities with new tensor cores and neural shaders.
- DLSS 4 and multiframe generation boost frame rates but can cause visual artifacts.
- High power consumption, averaging 554 watts, requires efficient cooling solutions.
- Ideal for professionals needing advanced video encoding and AI capabilities, but less appealing for average gamers due to cost.
Details:
1. 🚀 Introducing the RTX 590: Power and Speed Unleashed
1.1. Features of RTX 590
1.2. Performance of RTX 590
2. 🎮 Gaming Benchmark: 1440p and 4K Performance
2.1. 1440p Gaming Performance
2.2. 4K Gaming Performance
3. 🖥️ 4K Insights: Performance and Bottleneck Analysis
- The 590 GPU significantly outperforms others at 4K, emphasizing the need for better monitors over new CPUs for enhanced performance.
- In Cyberpunk 2077, the 590 achieves over 100 fps on Ultra settings, providing a 30 fps advantage over the 490, making it the first to reach this milestone.
- Alan Wake 2 benefits from the 590's improvements, offering a playable experience at higher settings compared to previous flagship models.
- Despite the 590's capabilities, Black Myth Wukong remains challenging at cinematic settings, struggling to maintain 60 fps, suggesting overclocking as a potential solution.
- In Red Dead Redemption 2, the 590's high cost does not translate to proportional performance benefits, indicating a cost-performance mismatch.
- The 590 maintains top performance in F1 24, though the performance increase is moderate, not fully meeting expectations of a substantial upgrade.
4. 📈 Next-Gen Features: Architectural Advances and AI Integration
- Nvidia's 590 card is presented as a 'neural rendering architecture' rather than a traditional GPU, highlighting significant advancements in AI integration.
- The integration with Microsoft's DirectX through the Cooperative Vector's API allows Nvidia's AI-accelerating tensor cores to be accessed by graphics APIs, enabling the use of neural shaders.
- Neural shaders allow geometry to be imbued with extra properties, such as a small neural network for generating more geometry or easing ray tracing calculations, improving performance significantly.
- The Mega geometry feature allows real-time generation of level of detail steps without normal maps, akin to UE 5's Nanite, which eases jarring LOD changes and saves developer time.
5. 🔧 Hardware Innovations: Tensor Cores and DLSS 4
- Fifth gen tensor cores drastically reduce memory usage for simpler AI models that don't require high precision, enabling more efficient processing and cost savings.
- Upgraded fourth gen RT cores double the ray triangle intersection rate with 75% of the memory footprint compared to previous versions, enhancing real-time graphics rendering and efficiency.
- The new chip achieves a 30% performance increase over its predecessor, largely due to a 33% higher GPU core count, improving overall computational power and gaming experience.
- GDDR7 doubles the data rate of GDDR6 while using half as much power per bit, thanks to PAM3 signaling, which improves signal integrity over PAM4, leading to better energy efficiency and performance.
6. 💡 The Role of Transformers in DLSS 4
- The introduction of 32 gigs of VRAM is poised to significantly benefit AI developers by providing more memory for complex calculations, and may also enhance gaming experiences.
- Nvidia's 9th generation encoders now support higher quality 422 10bit video, providing a substantial upgrade for users demanding superior video quality in applications such as streaming and video editing.
- The new DisplayPort standard, DP 2.1, supports 4K 240 Hz without the need for display stream compression, thereby improving the performance and visual quality of high-end monitors.
- PCIe Gen 5 offers enhanced communication with computers, crucial for supporting the latest advancements in graphics processing and computational tasks.
- Ray tracing has become a critical feature in modern gaming, with games like 'Jones' mandating its use for enhanced visual effects.
- Performance testing indicates a disparity in ray tracing capabilities, with Nvidia offering superior performance over AMD, particularly with the 590 model excelling at 1440p and 4K resolutions.
- In 'Cyberpunk', Nvidia's 59 model boasts a 20% performance advantage over AMD's 490 model, highlighting its strong price-to-performance ratio.
- AMD remains competitive in games with less intensive ray tracing, such as 'F1 24' and 'Returnal', but Nvidia's 590 model leads in comprehensive ray tracing scenarios.
- In demanding settings, the 590 model maintains performance around 50 FPS, ensuring a cinematic experience above 30 FPS in graphically intensive titles like 'Allen Wake 2'.
7. 🔍 Multiframe Generation: Revolutionizing Frame Rates
7.1. Performance and Cost Analysis of RT Cores
7.2. DLSS 4: Transition to Transformer Models
7.3. Multiframe Generation (MFG): Boosting Frame Rates
8. 🧩 Productivity and AI Performance Enhancements
- NVIDIA's new architecture offers significant improvements for high-end video file handling, particularly through 422 chroma sampling, enhancing speed for multi-camera video edits.
- Increased performance is evident with a 9% improvement in Premiere Pro and nearly 20% in Da Vinci Resolve compared to previous models.
- In Blender, the 590 reduces render times to under half a minute, more than doubling the speed of the 3090 TI.
- The 590 offers a 20-30% performance boost over the 4090 and 60-70% over the 3090 TI, depending on the benchmark.
- The 590 demonstrates powerful native hardware support, reducing image generation times to less than a quarter compared to the 490, particularly noticeable in fp4 precision benchmarks.
- Despite the enhancements, the performance in AI-specific tasks may not meet some expectations, requiring potential buyers to consider overall best performance.
9. ⚡ Power Efficiency: Cooling and Design Innovations
9.1. Power Efficiency Innovations
9.2. Cooling Design Innovations
10. 🤔 Final Thoughts: Is the RTX 590 Worth It?
- The RTX 590 offers approximately 30% more performance by utilizing 33% more hardware and power, with a 25% increase in price compared to its predecessor.
- The card is highly recommended for professional game developers and others who can capitalize on its performance and features for revenue generation.
- For gamers, the RTX 590 may not represent a significant value increase unless in a high-income bracket, suggesting a wait-and-see approach is advised for those with 30 series cards.