The New Generation: Can RTX 5090 Deliver in Competitive Esports?

With the newly hyped RTX 5090 blazing its way to the PC market soon, is it easy to expect that it will deliver massively in competitive esports games as well?

 

RTX 5090 image

📖 Published on: January 30th, 2025

✍️ Updated: January 30th, 2025

⏳ 11 mins read

Every once in a blue moon, Nvidia always manages to come up with an all-new, powerful graphics card that forges and ushers the gaming industry to a whole new era that prospers for many years to come. However, is the all-new RTX 5090 really worth the upgrade now more than ever, especially in its use in the competitive esports world?

Is the RTX 5090 a Generational Upgrade?

RTX 5090 comes as a massive brand to look at considering how well it has been really hyped to be the next generation of graphics cards that will shape the gaming and esports industry as a whole. Offering high-end performance, high-speed processing power, and max-level rendering in its overall power.

But let’s cut to the chase; the overall power of the RTX 5090 is hard to appreciate in comparison to the RTX 4090 if you are not playing the triple-A games or any other game that requires a high level of graphical performance. It is also worth noting that you would need to play on a 4K monitor that has at least 240Hz as its refresh rate. Without any of these two, upgrading to RTX 5090 isn’t going to be worth it at all.

Nvidia Geforce RTX 5090 image

But spoiler alert, let’s just say that 5090’s status as a “generational upgrade” is not going to be an easy call, nor should it be quite the discussion that gamers should upgrade all at once as soon as it releases, which makes it easy to say that RTX 5090 is definitely a cash-grabber at this point. But let’s dive deeper into what the new graphics card has to offer.

Specs and Features

Built on Nvidia’s high-end architecture of Blackwell, the RTX 5090 is quite the gold when it comes to its value. Blackwell is already powering a lot of data centers and supercomputers across various popular AI models, which says a lot about the strong performance that the 5090 offers.

RTX 5090 vs Lower Variants: A Stat Comparison

RTX 5090 vs 4090 image

GPU Core & Memory Specs RTX 5090 RTX 4090 RTX 5080 RTX 4080 SUPER
CUDA Cores 21,760 16,834 10,752 10,240
Boost Clock 2,410 MHz 2,520 MHz 2,617 MHz 2,550 MHz
Memory Bus Width 512-bit 384-bit 256-bit 256-bit
Memory Bandwidth 1,792 GB/s 1,008 GB/s 960 GB/s 736 GB/s
Power Consumption 575 W 450 W 360 W 320 W

The 5090 features more Streaming Multiprocessors and now has the same amount of Graphics Processing Clusters, which means that this card has more CUDA cores with 21,760, up from 16,384 in the RTX 4090. This accounts for a massive 32% uplift over the previous generation. There will be a total of 680 Tensor Cores and 170 RT cores as well, which is a huge jump from the previous gen and will offer less workload for dependence on VRAM.

The RTX 5090 is available today, starting at $1,999. This is a starting price for the Founders Edition of the card, and third-party cards from other brands may well be more expensive to begin with. As the PC gaming experience ushers to a whole new generation, one can say that this is indeed going to be quite the talk – not just the town, but the whole world as the RTX 5090 brings in a massive change in experience for gamers.

If you prefer a video review, we recommend watching Gamers Nexus review of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition. It includes detailed benchmarks on gaming performance, thermals, and power consumption.

AI-Powered Gaming

Esports is an industry full of promising and notable titles, and one can say that the RTX 5090 is setting up gamers for the future. It is worth noting that the 5th generation of Tensor Cores are made to boost the AI performance of the card, and since it is less dependent on VRAM, it should work like a charm that will elevate the gaming experience for players.

However, it is worth noting that AI-powered gaming can be quite a promising discussion to consider for another day. But with the 5090 being so expensive, you can already build a gaming PC with the next-best GPU in the 5080.

RTX 5090 AI-Powered gaming image

So far, the 5090 has been tested in over four big games so far. In Call of Duty Black Ops 6, there is a severe CPU bottleneck, considering that it is set at 4K Extreme settings, with DLSS set to ‘performance’, and yet the RTX 5090 gets 161 fps, compared to 146 fps from the RTX 4090.

Cyberpunk 2077, one of the most demanding games in the market so far, tracks 125 fps, compared to 112 fps from the RTX 4090 with the same settings at 4K, with the Ray Tracing Ultra preset and DLSS set to performance. This is just a 10% increase so far, which makes it quite hard to argue for the AI boost that the 5090 had to focus on.

Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition had to disable its DLSS to upscale, but at 4K Extreme, it offers 95 fps compared to 4090’s 76 fps, which is a 25% improvement over its predecessor. On Red Dead Redemption 2, on the other hand was tested with 4K settings maxed out – surprisingly getting only 167 fps, compared to 151 from the RTX 4090 and 92 fps from the RTX 3090.

While it is not tested in the high-level esports games that we know, such as CS2, StarCraft II, Dota 2, League of Legends, VALORANT, and so on, the recent results from the triple-A games say a lot about how we can expect to see the RTX 5090 deliver massive performances in the long run for the esports scene this time.

Multi-Frame Generation vs Fake Frames

So let’s talk about how the discussion for the RTX 5090 has been really quite a point of discussion for many analysts and even gamers out there. When it was revealed, the 5090 was claiming to be able to boost gaming performance by at least eight times. However, the actual number isn’t that high as most people think.

The 5090 offers a decent increase when it comes to the raw rasterization performance, but the real benefit on that regard is the enhanced ability to generate extra frames to level up the frame rate. With the DLSS 4 introducing a multi-frame generation, analysts were quick to speculate that it isn’t really a great nor massive upgrade to begin with.

In fact, the RTX 5090 boasts a new AI Management Processor, and it allows the card to essentially assign work across various parts of the GPU, which is originally handled by the CPU, thus allowing it to feed a better display at a much more efficient level. Based on Nvidia’s study, both the AMP and the 5th-gen Tensor cores are expected to bring at least 40% faster frame generation, all while needing less than 30% memory.

Since its announcement, people are calling the Multi-Frame Generation as the “Fake Frames”. But the hate isn’t that necessary. However, calling the RTX 5090 as the “next generation” of gaming can be quite a huge reach considering the fact that it is only around 30% faster than the 4090 and the 3090 based on test comparisons.

RTX 5090 multi-frame generation vs fake frames image

On top of that, the claim of being a generational video card may be too much for one that is not even tested yet for competitive esports games. Considering that esports games today usually have a strong need for consistent high frame rates, the 5090 resorting to its new multi-frame generation feature says a lot about how it is hard it is going to be to come up with true, game-defining video card.

What to Expect in the RTX 5090?

The RTX 20-series brought in the real-time ray tracing and DLSS to the table, the 30-series improved that and added a huge performance bump, and the latest 40-series added bigger capabilities with the help of AI. At this point, it may take more than just multi-frame generation to bring the graphics game to the next level.

  • RTX 20-series introduced real-time ray tracing and DLSS.
  • RTX 30-series improved performance and enhanced ray tracing.
  • RTX 40-series leveraged AI for greater capabilities.
  • RTX 5090 needs more than just multi-frame generation to push graphics further.

 

Role of GPUs in Esports:

When it comes to competitive esports, video cards play a critical role, though the focus isn’t always on having the absolute most powerful GPU. In esports, the goal is usually to achieve high, consistent frame rates with low latency and smooth, stutter-free performance, which can give players a competitive edge.

  • Competitive gaming prioritizes high, stable frame rates over sheer power.
  • Low latency and smooth performance are key for a competitive edge.

 

Is the RTX 5090 Necessary for Esports?

For esports-specific gaming, you likely don’t need the RTX 5090 unless you're really pushing for maximum performance in ultra-high-resolution gaming (like 4K) or you want to future-proof your system. Cards like the RTX 4070, RTX 4060 Ti, or even older RTX 30-series cards will already give you fantastic performance at 1080p and 1440p, with room for 240Hz gameplay at those resolutions.

  • Not essential unless targeting ultra-high-resolution gaming (4K+).
  • RTX 4070, 4060 Ti, or RTX 30-series cards already deliver excellent 1080p/1440p performance.
  • Current GPUs can support 240Hz gaming at lower resolutions effectively.

 

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