This can be seen very clearly in a new RTX 5090 gaming test, in which the behemoth flagship couldn’t even maintain an average of 30 frames per second (fps) in Cyberpunk 2077 at maximum settings when DLSS was toggled off.

The first of NVIDIA's RTX 5000 GPUs is expected at the end of January, and the company has released details surrounding non-DLSS performance. Here's what you need to know.

The RTX 5090D delivers about a 20% boost in raw gaming performance over RTX 4090. No DLSS, no frame generation—just raw, unassisted performance.

Nvidia has provided some more concrete performance estimates for its upcoming RTX 50-series graphics cards without DLSS turned on.

Honestly, I'm not sure, at least regarding the wallet-busting RTX 5080 or 5090 for now. While we’re still awaiting actual performance results, there's a strong chance that DLSS 4 will prove to be a massive benefit to the older GPUs.

That's where DLSS 4 comes in. With the latest iteration of Nvidia's frame generation technology, you'll be able to game in 4K with frame rates over 200 fps. Of course, you're relying on software performance to generate all of those additional frames rather than pure silicon, and not all games offer DLSS 4 support.

NVIDIA's RTX 5090 has been spotted in apparent Geekbench Vulkan and OpenCL runs, but the next-gen flagship doesn't impress all that much here.

Not convinced RTX 5000 is a winner? Folks worried about a reliance on ‘fake frames’ may not be that impressed with these fresh benchmarks.