Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 beats 4090 by up to 53% in shock 3DMark benchmark leak

It’s not long until the official Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 reviews will appear, but a new leaked 3DMark benchmark run of the card has already revealed some of the new GPU’s performance. While this RTX 5090 benchmark leak doesn’t tell the full story, it paints a surprisingly complete picture.

Yes, we don’t have long to wait for the RTX 5090 release date but with the performance of Nvidia‘s new best graphics card king in waiting officially under wraps for now, we’re still relying on leaked data to get a hint of its upcoming prowess. And, while in many ways the performance on show here is mighty impressive, there’s certainly going to be cause for some concern for some potential buyers.

The leaked data comes from regular tech leak site, Videocardz, which claims it has obtained 3DMark test run scores from “a few reviewers.” We have our own RTX 5090 being tested right now – check out the card in all its glory in our RTX 5090 unboxing – but review embargoes for the card mean we can’t confirm or deny these scores. However, if these leaked 3DMark scores are true, they show the card’s power and limitations all at once.

Let’s start with the most demanding tests first. The Port Royal and Speed Way tests both use ray tracing and strongly show the RTX 5090’s prowess over the RTX 4090. Across these tests, the card was an average of 41.7% faster, which is a strong showing.

Looking next at the non-ray traced DirectX 12 benchmarks, Steel Nomad and Time Spy, these show a healthy 39% performance increase. In fact, for the newest Steel Nomad test, the RTX 5090 pulls out an enormous 53% lead over the RTX 4090.

Finally, we come to the oldest of the 3DMark tests, the Fire Strike trio that uses DirectX 11 and doesn’t feature ray tracing. These show an average increase in score from the RTX 4090 to the RTX 5090 of 36%, with the highest increase actually being in the 1080p Fire Strike test where it hits an increase of 39.6%. Based on these test results, the RTX 5090 appears to be slightly more powerful than most recent rumors had expected.

While Nvidia has been pushing the power of DLSS 4 frame generation and other whizzy AI technologies, in its own RTX 5090 ray tracing tests Nvidia showed that raw ray tracing performance was only around 30% higher than the RTX 4090. Considering the card has 33% more CUDA cores – and proportionally as many more RT cores – with Nvidia claiming the RT cores are even more capable than before, a 30% increase would have been somewhat disappointing.

However, with these tests showing a 41.7% increase, it’s well ahead of expectations. It’s perhaps not quite as far ahead as some might have hoped, but it does mean that, despite the card also being 33% more expensive than its predecessor, it could at least get you a decent increase in ray tracing performance.

Meanwhile, for non ray-traced workloads, the picture is even brighter than had been expected. Previous rumors had pointed to the new card being only around 15-30% faster than the old one in conventional rendering workloads, which would mean that without ray tracing and the AI-generated frames of DLSS 4, the RTX 5090 would be worse value than the RTX 4090. However, these 3DMark tests suggest that isn’t the case, with an average score increase across all five non-ray tracing tests of over 37%.

There are two huge caveats here, though. The first is that this is still just a leak so can’t yet be taken at face value. The second is that synthetic benchmarks such as 3DMark are notoriously unreliable as a reflection of real-world frame rates. They’re a useful very broad guide, but graphics card makers have long been known to optimize GPU performance for these tests to the point where they can become out of line with typical real-world frame rates by significant margins.

As such, don’t count your chickens and place your pre-order just yet. You only have a very short time to wait to get the full picture and decide for yourself if Nvidia’s latest and greatest is actually the best way for you to spend $2,000.

For more on what other tech Nvidia has packed into the RTX 5090, and what other choices of GPU will soon be available, check out our RTX 5000 guide for the full range lowdown.