Our 8K test system
PC built by Stormforce Gaming
Motherboard: Asus PRIME Z-790P LGA 1700
Processor: Intel Core i9-13900K, 24 Cores / 32 Threads
CPU Cooler: Corsair iCUE H100i 240mm ELITE CAPELLIX Liquid CPU Cooler
GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 FE
Storage: 1.0TB Seagate FireCuda 530 M.2 NVMe SSD
Case: Corsair iCue 5000X RGB
RAM: Corsair Vengence 32GB DDR5 4800MHz
Screen: LG 55NANO966PA
As soon as Nvidia announced the RTX 5090 at CES 2025, I couldn’t wait to get hold of the premium GPU and install it in our 8K test rig – and that’s exactly what I’ve done.
Since the unveiling, Nvidia has talked up how powerful the 5090 is, claiming that it offers around twice the performance of the RTX 4090, its predecessor, in certain games. If you’ve read any of my recent 8K gaming features, you’ll know how impressive the 4090 was (and to be fair, still is), and with help from DLSS 3 and Frame Generation, it was the first GPU that made gaming at 8K a real possibility.
Our full Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 review dives into the overall performance (and more) of the new GPU, so here we’ll look at how it performs when gaming at the incredibly demanding resolution of 7,680 x 4,320 – and (spoiler alert) it’s incredibly impressive and could be the start of 8K gaming finally becoming mainstream.
Of course, selling at $1,999 / £1,939 / AU$4,039 for the Nvidia Founders Edition I’ve tested here means this GPU is far from being a mainstream card, and is aimed at enthusiasts and even professionals, but many of the features that the RTX 5090 comes with that makes 8K gaming possible, especially DLSS 4 and Multi-Frame Generation, will be coming to other RTX 50-series cards, including the much more affordable RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5070 GPUs.
For this article, I installed the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 into our existing 8K test rig, directly swapping out the RTX 4090 so I could compare the two GPUs running games at 8K fairly. In the coming month, I aim to build a new 8K setup that will take full advantage of the RTX 5090 (it’s the first GPU to use PCI 5.0, for example), but this should give us a good head-to-head comparison between the two cards.
Because I wanted to test out the difference DLSS 4 and Multi-Frame Generation makes at 8K, I’ve stuck to three games that will support those new technologies at launch (or close to) with the RTX 5090: Cyberpunk 2077, Hogwarts Legacy and Star Wars Outlaws.
Cyberpunk 2077
Since its rather disastrous launch back in 2020, Cyberpunk 2077 has turned into one of the best games I’ve ever played, as well as a graphical showcase, with developer CD Projekt Red updating the game over the years to take advantage of new graphical effects and technology – including support for DLSS 4 and Multi-Frame Generation.
Running the game on the RTX 4090 with graphics set to RT Over Drive – essentially the highest possible graphics settings which makes liberal use of advanced ray tracing for realistic lighting and reflection – and DLSS set to ‘Ultra Performance’, I got 39.57fps (frames per second) on average. This setting renders the game at a lower resolution, then uses DLSS to upscale it via AI to 8K, and while around 40fps is certainly impressive considering the graphical splendor on show, as always I’m looking to get as close to 60fps as possible, as all 8K-capable displays max out at 60Hz for the moment.
Turning on Frame Generation, which adds an AI-generated frame in between ‘real’ generated frames, gave me a decent boost to 53.19fps, showing the RTX 4090, with a bit of tweaking, is still a supremely capable GPU.
With the RTX 5090 FE installed and DLSS 4 set to ‘Auto’, we got 54.56fps – a big leap over the 39.57fps the RTX 4090 managed with the same settings. While you might be disappointed that it didn’t hit 60fps, remember this is at 8K – an extremely demanding resolution.
I also hadn’t turned on the RTX 5090’s Multi-Frame Generation feature, and this is where things get very fun. Doing so boosted the frame rates to an incredible 86.48fps, and there was a noticeable improvement in image quality between the 5090 and 4090 thanks to the new Transformer-based AI upscaling tech and improved Frame Generation techniques. This meant that some of the visual oddities DLSS and Frame Generation can sometimes cause were essentially eliminated.
But that’s not all – as the name ‘Multi-Frame Generation’ suggests, this feature isn’t just capable of generating one frame between rendered frames, but up to three frames. So, turning up Multi-Frame Generation to its ‘3X’ setting, which is two generated frames per rendered frame, the RTX 5090 FE hit an incredible 121.05 fps.
Best of all, I couldn’t distinguish between real and generated frames while playing. Previous versions of Frame Generation could sometimes introduce a bit of blurring. That appears to be fixed here. Even though the RTX 5090 FE was now putting out 8K content at a frame rate that we just can’t see at the moment (due to the 8K@60Hz limitation of current 8K TVs), I cranked up Multi-Frame Generation to 4X, so it was now generating three frames for every one rendered frame, allowing the RTX 5090 FE to hit 148.89fps, and without any noticeable reduction in image quality.
That’s one of the best-looking games in the world right now with the maximum graphics settings outputting at 7,680 x 4,320 (with upscaling) and managing 148.89fps. That’s a remarkable achievement, and something that’s extremely exciting for the future of PC gaming.
Hogwarts Legacy
I’ve not played Hogwarts Legacy, but it is one of the first games to support DLSS 4 and Multi-Frame Generation, and it’s another graphically-ambitious game with open world elements and support for some of the latest graphical effects.
First, I loaded it up with the RTX 4090 installed, and with DLSS set to Ultra Performance but Frame Generation left off, the RTX 4090 hit 77fps on average. That’s pretty great, and the grounds around the iconic Hogwarts school (as well as the school itself) looked excellent – with interiors looking especially impressive thanks to shadow and lighting effects. Turning on Frame Generation and DLSS to Auto, we hit 81.90fps, again highlighting just how good the RTX 4090 remains.
Still using DLSS, but set to Quality, which upscales from a higher initial resolution to preserve graphical fidelity as much as possible, the RTX 5090 hit 92fps – while the RTX 4090 managed 52fps with the same settings (but with the older version of Frame Generation). Turning on Multi-Frame Generation to 4X boosted frame rates to an impressive 156fps.
Changing DLSS to Auto with the RTX 5090, I managed to get 150fps without Multi-Frame Generation. Turning it back on to 4X got the 5090 hitting a frankly ridiculous 235fps.
Star Wars Outlaws
Star Wars Outlaws is another game I’ve yet to sit down and play, mainly due to a mix of Star Wars fatigue and a well-publicized rocky launch. It’s also one of the first games to support RTX 50-series features, so I loaded it up and got testing.
With DLSS set to ‘Performance’, the RTX 4090 hit 63fps with Frame Generation on, while the RTX 5090 with same settings hit 79fps.
While Star Wars Outlaws didn’t offer the same level of graphical options as the other games I tried, it’s a good looking game, and hitting around 80fps at 8K is, again, very, very impressive.
One thing I noticed, however, is that there were quite a few graphical artifacts around characters and objects on both cards. I was playing using an early beta version of Star Wars Outlaws so I could test the new features before the RTX 5090 launched, so these glitches will hopefully be ironed out quickly, but I found that turning off Ray Reconstruction eliminated the problem – though at a slight cost to performance.
Conclusion: 8K gaming is finally here – and Multi-Frame Generation is incredible
I had high hopes for the Nvidia RTX 5090’s 8K performance based on the hype we’d been hearing from Team Green, especially when it came to hardware improvements over the RTX 4090, such as including more, faster, memory (32GB of GDDR7 with 1,790GB/s bandwidth, versus 24GB of GDDR6X and a 1,010GB/s bandwidth), and it’s safe to say the Nvidia RTX 5090 surpassed those hopes – by a big margin.
Seeing Cyberpunk 2077 hit 148fps at 8K with graphical settings set to max was an incredible moment that really did make me feel like I was witnessing the future of gaming.
And, while the hardware side of RTX 5090 was extremely impressive, what I learned from this was just how much potential Multi-Frame Generation has. In this early showing it boosted frame rates beyond what I had thought possible – and it also addressed many of the issues I’ve previously had with Frame Generation.
When the original Frame Generation feature launched, I was a bit disappointed. Using it in Cyberpunk 2077 led to a blurry experience where the hit to graphical fidelity was too much to justify the better performance. Since then, Frame Generation has improved, but I did notice in Hogwarts Legacy that there was still some graphical issues when using Frame Generation, especially when it came to running up and down stairs, and rendering backgrounds when partially obscured by fast-moving objects in the foreground.
With Multi-Frame Generation, I was extremely happy to see these issues seemingly fixed. Cyberpunk 2077 looked crisp and clear, and those graphical artifacts in Hogwarts Legacy did not appear. By boosting the performance so much while minimizing the impact on graphic performance so well, it looks like Nvidia has got its hands on the holy grail of gaming. I should also point out that during my time pushing the RTX 5090 FE to the extremes with 8K gaming, it remained impressively quiet. Sure, there’s fan noise as there’s to be expected when using a powerful gaming rig, but I can safely say that there’s none of the distracting extreme noise that some rumors were suggesting.
The fact that we’ll be seeing Multi-Frame Generation come to more and more games, and more affordable GPUs from Nvidia make use of this feature, is extremely exciting – especially if Nvidia continues to improve and refine Multi-Frame Generation as it has done with Frame Generation. The future of PC gaming at 8K is extremely exciting.
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matthew.hanson@futurenet.com (Matt Hanson)
