RTX 5090 Laptop GPU performance: The frame-gen future has arrived

Is the RTX 5090 worth the hype?

Nvidia’s RTX 50-series is arriving on laptops this week, and we got a chance to spend some time with an RTX 5090 gaming laptop to see how the Blackwell architecture handles on mobile.

While the GPU’s pure silicon performance is solid across the board, Nvidia’s big push with the Blackwell mobile GPUs comes down to supersampling and AI frame generation, which can help smooth performance. This is especially helpful with games that are poorly optimized and highly demanding, like Black Myth: Wukong, Cyberpunk 2077, and Monster Hunter: Wilds.

Nvidia has also upgraded its power efficiency models with an updated Battery Boost system that offers up to 40% better battery life while gaming using the discrete RTX 50-series GPU.

But is all that worth the RTX 5090 price tag? Let’s take a look.

Pure silicon performance

In our hardware testing lab, we benchmark GPUs on laptops and desktops with no software support enabled. Super sampling, frame generation, and vertical sync are all toggled off for our benchmarking, and we run games at high graphic settings on both 1080p and the native resolution.

As we expected, with pure silicon power, the RTX 5090 struggled to surpass the 60-fps mark on some of the more demanding games. Our RTX 5090 laptop managed just 58 frames per second in Black Myth: Wukong on the Cinematic preset at 1080p, and 44 fps at its native 1600p resolution. Older and more well-optimized titles like DiRT 5 and Grand Theft Auto V were well above 120 fps, hitting 170 fps and 165 fps at 1080p, respectively.

While most gamers won’t upgrade their hardware every year, we did take a look at the gen-to-gen performance just to see the pure power upgrade of the RTX 5090. We compared our 5090 laptop to the previous generation of the same model, since both featured 32GB of RAM, a 2TB SSD, and 240Hz, 2560 x 1600, OLED display. The key differences are the GPUs and CPUs, though the 50-series version is also in a slimmer chassis. Our RTX 5090 laptop is powered by an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor, meanwhile, our RTX 4090 laptop was powered by an Intel Core i9-14900HX CPU.

In most cases, the RTX 5090 outperformed the 4090, but there were a few cases where the non-gaming CPU and slimmed down chassis of the RTX 5090 laptop underperformed compared to the previous generation. Assassin’s Creed Mirage and Far Cry 6 were the most notable exceptions, with the RTX 4090 laptop outperforming its newer counterpart by up to 15 fps.

DLSS 4 and frame generation

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As a gamer, I tend to be skeptical of graphics upscaling and AI-generated frame technology.

Frame generation is a client-side performance boost that can be helpful in some single-player games, especially if you have low system latency. Nvidia’s Reflex Low Latency can also help smooth out the frame-gen experience. However, because it’s a client-side AI feature, frame generation can be problematic for competitive multiplayer gaming.

Graphics upscaling technology like DLSS 4 - the fourth generation of Nvidia’s deep learning super sampling tech - uses AI to increase performance and enhance visuals, but it may give you less graphic detail than playing without DLSS enabled.

For years now, Nvidia has invested a lot of time in the software side of its GPU architecture. After all, Nvida’s Jensen Huang is a known believer in the death of Moore’s Law of semiconductor design. Technologies like DLSS 4 and frame generation are intended to extend the performance of hardware past the physical limits of pure silicon.

So for this Blackwell mobile deep-dive, I spent a solid amount of my game time testing out Nvidia’s DLSS and frame-generation tech on the RTX 5090. With DLSS and frame-generation, I saw massive improvements in performance on Cyberpunk 2077 and Monster Hunter Wilds.

Cyberpunk offers the latest version of DLSS 4 and thus saw the greatest improvement with frame-generation enabled, scaling from 72 fps to 290 fps on RTX Medium settings at 1080p. Monster Hunter offers only DLSS 3.7, and saw a jump from 71 fps to 148 fps with DLSS 3 and frame-generation enabled.

But benchmarks aren’t everything. I also spent some time running around Night City and hunting monsters in the Forbidden Lands. While DLSS gaming can be occasionally clunky, both games were pretty darn smooth with DLSS and frame-gen enabled.

I did have the occasional stutter with Monster Hunter Wilds, but that could have been network fluctuations when answering SOS signal flares and entering my squad lobby rather than issues with the frame generation tech. I had no trouble at all with Cyberpunk 2077. DLSS 4 offered smooth frame rates even when set to Quality, and easily hit 200 fps with DLSS 4 set to Balanced and frame-gen enabled.

I also didn’t notice much graphic degradation in Cyberpunk 2077 between running the game with DLSS off compared to either DLSS 4 model, especially with ray reconstruction on for the ray-traced reflections, light diffusion, and shadows.

While Avowed doesn’t have a benchmarking tool, I did run around and make a note of my average frame rates on a fresh character. With the graphics set to Epic and the resolution set to 1600p, I got frame rates in the 42 to 44 fps range. With DLSS 4 set to Quality, I saw my frame rates jump to 62 to 72 fps, and adding frame generation saw peaks of 110 to 120 fps.

Nvidia Battery Boost

Gaming laptops have poor battery life. That’s just facts. Discrete GPUs are power-hungry pieces of hardware, and that’s always going to come at the expense of power efficiency.

With the RTX 50-series mobile GPUs, Nvidia revamped its Battery Boost optimization. The system has pre-optimized settings for the games installed on the laptop, and they are aimed to give you the best balance of performance and battery longevity possible. To enable the Battery Boost settings, you need to disconnect the laptop from AC power and then launch the game you want to play. This should automatically boot into the Battery Boost preset, though you can also adjust these settings in the Nvidia app or in the game settings as well.

Nvidia’s Battery Boost is designed to lower performance during idle times or when watching pre-rendered cutscenes, so I figured it was ideal for an MMORPG like Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail.

I launched FFXIV in 1600p on the Nvidia BatteryBoost optimized presets, which enabled FSR (because DLSS optimization in Final Fantasy XIV is notoriously terrible). My frame rates dropped to 30 fps during idle wait times and kicked up to 50 to 60 fps during gameplay. The transition wasn’t always smooth, but it was playable. About an hour of my daily roulettes took me from 100% battery down to 45%, and I got about 2 hours of total game time.

This isn’t fantastic battery life. There are handheld gaming PCs that get better gaming battery life, but it’s a lot better than what we’d seen previously, where gaming laptops really couldn’t game when on battery power.

Bottom line

As a former lab tester and hardware enthusiast, I’m still selective about what games I play with super sampling and frame-gen tech enabled. But most of the games that are notoriously difficult benchmarks are single-player, and in that case, I think it's worth using the AI upscaling.

I wouldn’t recommend using DLSS 4 with the latest frame-generation technology on a MOBA like Smite. It can be helpful for Monster Hunter Wilds, but if you have an older Nvidia GPU, you may be better off using AMD’s FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) instead of Nvidia’s DLSS model.

That said, gaming AI software like DLSS and frame-gen are only getting better and smoother. And it can get you absolutely wild performance in a thin and lightweight gaming laptop.

The RTX 5090’s pure performance is, overall, better than the RTX 4090 in most cases. And there will be more powerful iterations of the GPU in other laptops coming soon.

But access to the enhanced battery efficiency and software upscaling tech are nothing to scoff at.

For all of my grouchiness about AI upscaling, DLSS has gotten better and better over the years and is a solid solution for many games. It can also help mobile GPUs keep up with desktop-level performance.