GoKawiilI have some very sad news. Nvidia's GeForce RTX 5090 is no longer fast enough for the ultimate gaming experience. This is a truly devastating day for PC gaming. What hope do everyday buyers have when Nvidia's $4,700 model is no longer good enough? Maintaining 60 fps at ultra settings is off the table, even with upscaling, while path tracing remains a challenge. It's difficult to see a way forward for the RTX 5090. Even though this unit survived the 12VHPWR melting wars, it may be time to put it out of its misery.
Jokes aside, the RTX 5090 genuinely isn't fast enough for the type of gaming we'll be exploring here: gaming at resolutions beyond 4K. You'll see the results shortly, but the situation is particularly funny when you look back at September 2020.
Would you look at that? "The New Pinnacle Is Here," Nvidia proclaimed, because the GeForce RTX 3090 could deliver 8K HDR gaming. It was, according to the company, the world's first 8K gaming GPU.
"At 8K, detail is so crisp and clear that we can discern individual bricks and blades of grass, distant game elements are instantly recognizable, and from behind the shoulder of your player character, individual hairs, stitching on clothes and wrinkles on skin are appreciable." ... "8K enables you to view your games with unprecedented detail and clarity."
Nvidia went on to claim that the RTX 3090 made 8K possible through a huge leap in GPU horsepower and new technologies such as DLSS Ultra Performance. The company promised "smooth 8K gameplay across a host of both ray-traced and non-ray-traced games."
Some media outlets echoed those claims. Engadget said Nvidia had "finally cracked 8K gaming." Even Marques Brownlee got his hands on an RTX 3090 and, one day before regular reviews went live, described 8K gaming on the card as "surprisingly impressive." That video has 11.5 million views, by the way.
This was all a bit of a joke because no gamer would realistically use an RTX 3090 for 8K gaming. At the time, the main way to play games at 8K was on a very expensive 8K TV, and models such as the LG Z9 used in MKBHD's video were limited to just 60Hz at that resolution.
That was quite a downgrade for high-end gamers accustomed to high-refresh-rate monitors. By then, 1440p at 144Hz was common, while 4K at 144Hz was an emerging category that might have appealed to RTX 3090 buyers in a far more practical way. Even the LG Z9 could operate at 4K 120Hz, which was the obvious choice over 8K 60Hz for gaming.
How Viable Is 8K Gaming?
As time went on, the entire concept of 8K gaming became sillier and sillier. 8K TVs never really took off. Even today, most respected TV reviewers recommend 4K models as the best options on the market, while the 8K monitor category remains almost exclusively aimed at professionals.
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