NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 32GB Founders Edition

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5090 is one of the first consumer graphics cards in the GeForce RTX 50 Series, which is based on the Blackwell architecture. This top-end model offers a large boost in performance over the previous-generation RTX 4090, and includes 33% more VRAM (32GB vs 24GB), but all of that comes at the cost of a substantial increase in power consumption and heat output. The RTX 5090 is rated for up to 575W, which is 125W higher than its predecessor, and that increase will make multi-GPU configurations much more difficult to achieve.

Alongside the rise in performance and power, the RTX 5090 also includes several major feature upgrades. There are improved video encoding and decoding capabilities, with added support for 4:2:2 chroma subsampling, as well as new generations of CUDA, tensor, and ray tracing cores. The 32GB of VRAM is also made up of new, high-speed GDDR7 memory. For detailed performance info across a wide range of professional applications, check out our RTX 5090 Content Creation Review.

This Founders Edition of the RTX 5090 uses a multi-fan cooling layout, which is ideal for keeping these cards as cool and quiet as 575W of power dissipation will allow... but that massive amount of heat being pumped into the computer creates several new challenges. In most chassis, the 5090's exhaust is directed toward the CPU - meaning traditional air-cooling for the processor will have to give way to liquid cooling instead. Dual-GPU configurations will be complicated as well, both because of the added heat as well as the higher power consumption which may exceed what traditional power supplies can provide.

Finally, in regards to connectivity, there are one HDMI 2.1a and three DisplayPort 2.1 plugs supporting a total of up to four displays at a maximum resolution of 7680x4320 (8K).