A $2,000 video card for consumers shouldn't exist. The GeForce RTX 5090, like the $1,599 RTX 4090 before it, is more a flex by NVIDIA than anything truly meaningful for most gamers. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said as much when he revealed the GPU at CES 2025,

To accelerate V-Ray, Autodesk Arnold, Lumion, and other 3D renderers supported by NVIDIA Studio Drivers, the new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs inside BOXX systems feature DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation which also delivers superior image quality by multiplying frame rates by up to eight times over traditional rendering.

That extra processing power naturally translates to better performance, making the RTX 5090 the new king of 4K gaming. It’s a $1,999 GPU for anyone who wants the best 4K gaming experience, developers interested in AI performance, and creators who want to accelerate video editing.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 is a powerful upgrade to an already overpowered enthusiast-grade GPU, and in a lot of ways, this card is so good that it's largely superfluous for just about anyone who isn't in it for the pure flex of owning it.

The GPU itself is a decent improvement over the RTX 4090, with more, faster memory, more cores, and a gorgeous chassis. But in terms of brute force rendering it's only incrementally faster in comparison with the performance bumps from Turing to Ampere to Ada.

A powerhouse Blackwell GPU with impressive specs and performance, but at a premium price. Is it worth the investment?