RTX 5090 – Has A New Driver Improved Performance & The 1% Lows?
How Much Does it Cost?
For further pricing and analysis, please check out our full RTX 5090 graphics card review here. Or you can head over to Scan.co.uk for the latest stock and pricing information on RTX 5090 cards.
Overview
So what have we shown here today? Well, in all honesty, I think it goes to show how vital driver updates can be. The funny thing is, as the RTX 5090 launched, we were given a driver, and at the time, I was pretty sceptical about the performance I was seeing because of the 1% lows. It just seemed inconsistent when compared to previous-generation cards. At the time, I thought that maybe NVIDIA had somehow nerfed the performance on the RTX 5090 and spent all their efforts focussing on upscaling and DLSS because let’s be honest, we don’t see as much of an uplift generation to generation when it comes to rasterisation, at least, not like we used to, but that’s not a fault of NVIDIA, that’s just the landscape, and how things have changed with the introduction of new technologies like raytracing.
Retesting
What we have found today is that driver updates can really work in conjunction with graphics cards to bring out the very best in them. I still think there’s a little way to go, but it’s definitely on the right track, especially as we see upwards of 27% increases in places. Sure you can argue that testing, retesting and retesting again can make a big difference with shifting frame rates, but even then we’re talking low single-digit percentage differences, and definitely nothing higher. So, even in cases where we saw 27% uplifts, you could comment that it’s closer to 25%, but even that’s still super impressive considering we’re talking about free performance.
Improved 1% Lows
Yes, the performance should have been there to start with, but I always like to give brands some kind of leeway with new technologies and architectures. We as consumers obviously hold them to high regard, but I think some form of slack can be given, but not too much, because the likes of the 5090 is still a very expensive piece of hardware, so yes, it should be right from the get go, but considering the card isn’t even out yet and at the time of this content coming out, the latest driver is 566.36, I’m kind of holding NVIDIA to account for an unreleased product with an unreleased driver, but at least you know if you do manage to secure an RTX 5090, that performance is going to be better than 99% of the results you’ve seen so far. Yes, I’m implying that we’re the 1%, but unless other outlets go back and test again, they will just reuse the data that they had from before, so if that’s what you’re looking at, just add on a few FPS and see it in a slightly better light.
In all seriousness, we always want to make sure that we’re bringing you the very best content with the most accurate information possible, and if that means working 16 to 18-hour days retesting something that we’d only tested a couple of days before, then so be it. This is the job we do, and that’s why we stick with it, though if you do appreciate that effort, you can always sign up to our Patreon to show your appreciation.
