RTX 5090 vs RTX 4090 The Efficiency Takes a Hit in Power-Limited Showdown

Hold onto your hats, folks—Nvidia’s RTX 5090 has arrived, and it’s packing a punch with a staggering 28% higher TDP than its predecessor, the RTX 4090.

Add in a hefty boost in CUDA cores, and you’d think the Nvidia 5090 would leave the 4090 in the dust with a 27% performance increase, right? Well, not so fast!

When you factor in power consumption, that shiny performance edge starts to look a whole lot less impressive. Suddenly, the gap begins to close, exposing a shocking truth: the raw power might not be the whole story after all.

In terms of pure performance, the RTX 5090 is a beast. For gamers who are willing to sacrifice power efficiency in the pursuit of uncompromising 4K gaming at blistering speeds, the 5090 is unbeatable.

Rasterisation, ray tracing, DLSS 4, and Multi-Frame Generation all combine to push frame rates above 200 FPS in 4K titles that fully support Nvidia’s cutting-edge technologies. Nvidia has certainly outdone itself with this flagship card.

But here’s where things get interesting. The leap forward with the RTX 5090 is nowhere near as dramatic as the jump the RTX 4090 made over the 3090.

Despite the 27% performance gain, the 5090’s massive increase in power consumption—575W compared to the RTX 4090’s 450W—raises some eyebrows. What happens when you limit both cards to the same power?

An efficiency regression of 8% for the 5090 compared to the 4090, despite the latter’s lower power consumption.

Testing uncovers some shocking results. When both GPUs are capped at 450W, the RTX 5090 only outperforms the RTX 4090 by 17% in rasterisation workloads—less than expected given the 33% increase in CUDA cores.

This discrepancy can likely be attributed to the RTX 5090’s slightly lower GPU clock speeds (113 MHz slower than the RTX 4090), but it highlights a larger issue: the 5090’s power-hungry nature.

Nvidia is, in a sense, forcing its way to performance gains at the cost of efficiency. While the 5090 shows a 27% increase in performance, it’s achieved with a 28% increase in energy consumption—scaling almost exactly with its TDP.

For context, the RTX 4090, with its 29% higher TDP than the RTX 3090, delivered over a 50% performance boost, showcasing far better efficiency.

GeForce RTX 5090 Vs RTX 4090 Blender Benchmark

A new listing on Blender Open Data has just dropped, showing how the RTX 5090 fares in Blender using the OptiX rendering engine. And surprise, surprise – it lines up almost perfectly with what we expected from Nvidia’s Blackwell flagship.

Now, the GeForce RTX 5090 has already made waves with its promise of major gaming performance boosts, thanks to AI-powered frame generation.

Sure, the ongoing debate over Nvidia’s AI-heavy approach to performance improvements continues to rage on. But when it comes to render artists, the RTX 5090’s performance gains look like the real deal – if Blender Open Data is anything to go by.

More cores, more power, and of course, more of your cash. We already have a pretty clear picture of how the RTX 5090 stacks up in Geekbench’s OpenCL and Vulkan benchmarks, with the Blackwell beast pulling ahead by 37% and 16% over its predecessor.

While not earth-shattering, these numbers point to a solid generational performance bump. But the Blender Open Data listing adds another layer to the story: the RTX 5090 is significantly faster than the RTX 4090, at least when using Nvidia’s OptiX rendering engine.

Blender 3.6.0 saw the RTX 4090 hitting a median score of 13,000 points, while the RTX 5090 crushed it with a jaw-dropping 17,800 points. That’s a 37% boost in performance, and it’s clear that the 33% increase in RT cores on the Blackwell card is making a huge difference in ray-traced rendering.

RTX 5090 vs RTX 4090 - 5090 outperforms in blending

Of course, with only one benchmark result to go on, it’s possible that the RTX 5090’s median score could shift as more results roll in. Still, the initial data suggests the RTX 5090 is already outshining its predecessor in a big way.

Nvidia’s 55% net income margin generates $63 billion from $113 billion in revenue, but a 2025 downcycle reducing revenue to $100 billion and margins to 40% would drop net income to $40 billion, yielding a lofty P/E ratio of 84 against a $3.37 trillion market cap.

It’s clear that while the RTX 5090 is an absolute powerhouse, it’s not as impressive when you consider power consumption. For those looking for efficiency alongside performance, the 4090 still has the edge in the real world.