The world’s fastest gaming CPU, the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, might be at the root of some unusual benchmark metrics for the NVIDIA RTX 5090. The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D quickly earned the title as the world’s fastest gaming processor back when it launched in November. AMD shocked the PC community with its launch when it was discovered that AMD re-engineered the X3D line by flipping its 3D V-cache to the bottom of the package thus allowing more efficient cooling for the CCD and in turn higher clock rates. This 2nd gen 3D V-cache ushered in a swath of reviews giving praise to the gaming processor’s high framerates at 1080p and 1440p resolutions. However, a number of reviews for NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 5090 are revealing some unusual results at 4K.
For a quick refresher please be sure to check our reviews for the NVIDIA RTX 5090 Founders Edition, here, and an overclocking review here. Reviews across the internet have been somewhat consistent in their reported framerates of the RTX 5090 vs the previous king of GPUs, the RTX 4090. However, there have been some outlier results regarding 4K performance that is leaving some scratching their heads. CPU bottlenecks are to be expected at 1080p and 1440p where framerates go well into the hundreds of FPS but are fairly rare when it comes to 4K when tasks tend to be more GPU bound but that may not be the case for the new flagship card.
Per our own review:
- RE: Indiana Jones and The Great Circle: “Even though we had this game at the “Supreme” quality setting, this is a bit of a lower-than-expected performance number as well in this game. It could be another case of the CPU holding it back, as a possibility.”
- RE: S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2: “In Stalker 2 the RTX 5090 was 20% faster than the RTX 4090. We know that Stalker 2 is quite CPU-bound, so this could be another case of that happening. Regardless, that’s more than a few games there where the performance difference is a bit below expectations.”
Per TechSpot:
RE: Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered: “At 4K, the CPU bottleneck is mostly removed, but the RTX 5090 still appears slightly limited, averaging 212 fps. As a result, the RTX 5090 is just 26% faster than the RTX 4090.”
Per Hardware Canucks:
“This is a story of unrealized potential because even with today’s most powerful gaming CPU, the 9800X3D, this thing, in a lot of situations is still bottlenecked at the highest settings at 1440p, and even in some scenarios at 4K.”
PCIe issues?
Before going further it should be noted that multiple reviewers have done PCIe scaling testing for 3.0/4.0/5.0 and found minimal to no differences across 1080p/1440p/4K resolutions. In fact, the only real detail noted is that those with motherboards supporting 5.0 and using riser cards/cable for alternative mounting options of their RTX 50 series graphics card, may need to manually configure their motherboard’s PCIe version setting to match that of the riser card/cable else performance issues or crashing could occur. TechPowerUp did notice a bit of a difference for those using 3.0 when gaming at 1080p or 1440p with a 4% delta but that shrank to roughly 2% at 4K.
Per TechPowerUp:
“The 4% delta is only observed in 1080p and 1440p, resolutions where the bottleneck tilts closer to the CPU—in our case, an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D which is the fastest gaming CPU. It’s only with 4K Ultra HD that the performance loss is closer to 2% on average.”
Driver issues, DLSS4, poor optimizations?
Now while it is possible that a CPU bottleneck is happening at 4K, something nearly every reviewer on the planet has adamantly denied happening for many years now, there could be other issues at play. A number of reviewers stated getting their FE review samples days just before the embargo lifted. NVIDIA has also coincided with releasing DLSS 4 which some games have adopted and between new drivers, and perhaps beta versions for DLSS 4, there could be problems at this level. It’s also a possibility that the increased power of the RTX 5090 is further exposing optimization issues for games at FPS reaching limits not previously available. One thing that is likely is that reviewers could end up updating their test results in the coming weeks, or months, as updates roll out. It will also interesting to see what happens when AMD’s 9900X3D and 9950X3D processors are tested with the RTX 5090.