I noticed on forum recently that flightsimmers have been considering upgrading to the RTX 5090. I’ll leave out the price of this GPU because it’s high and honestly a bit crazy.
I’d rather focus on the performance gain: higher FPS, fewer stutters, smoother gameplay overall.
Soon there will be tests of MSFS 2020 and MSFS 2024 on both the RTX 4090 and RTX 5090, so you can see whether the increase in FPS and reduction in stuttering is actually noticeable.
Feel free to join the discussion.
Definitely not worth it. The price of new hardware is very inflated. Excellent performance can be had with the 4090 now. I run a 4080 Super in VR 3492x3880, and I run Ultra Settings with DLSS Performance, Foveated Rendering 50, and Max Frame Rate 40. Even the FBW a380 works well. There’s no reason to buy a 5090 right now unless you are coming from something less than a 40 series card.
I run a similar VR setup and settings, except a 4090, and the only times I am not hitting 40 FPS my GPU isn’t fully loaded anyway, so a faster GPU would just be a waste. If my 4090 ever dies, I will replace it with a 5080 because IMO a 5090 isn’t worth 3-4 times more cost here in Oz for only a 30% boost over a 4090/5080.
@OldpondGL @ResetXPDR
It depends. There are users who don’t use DLSS or Frame Generation because these technologies simply aren’t for them.
There are also users who play in native 4K and are mainly interested in raw performance without “fake FPS”.
That’s exactly why I decided to run these tests - to see how both GPUs perform in real conditions without relying on upscaling or frame generation.
As I mentioned earlier, I’m not focusing on the price of the RTX 5090 since everyone knows it’s currently insane - that’s why I’m focusing purely on performance, not GPU pricing.
Okay, so users with the same motivations as you would want a 5090. But, you asked is it worth it? Perhaps you should ask, “is it possible to get 60fps at 4k with Ultra settings with a 5090?”
Well of course if you exclude price, then yes the 5090 obviously performs better with “real” FPS, but for users like @OldpondGL and myself who cap FPS, are very happy with DLSS and have our FPS doubled elsewhere (VR) and have our needs met by lesser GPUs, then that extra performance is a waste. And when you add ridiculous prices in, it becomes a very poor value proposition as well.
Is the 5090 faster and better? For sure.
Is the 5090 a good buy? Absolutely not.
I am not totally sure what you want to achieve with this post. Discussing whether something is ‘worth it’ and insisting on ignoring the price seems utterly pointless. Why not include the NVIDIA RTX 6000 in the discussion, as it is a better graphics card for MSFS (and before we start that discussion, it actually is)? Who cares that it costs $10k?
Mathijs Kok
PMDG
The topic is clearly titled RTX 4090 vs RTX 5090, so it’s not just about “buying new hardware at any cost”. For current RTX 4090 owners, the situation is actually quite simple - they can sell their GPU and in many cases recover a significant part of the upgrade cost, which completely changes the perspective on the upgrade.
For example, I already sold my RTX 4090 and I basically have two days to complete the tests. After that, the buyer will pick up GPU.
I sold the RTX 4090 for around €2125, and I bought the RTX 5090 for about €3800. So in my case, the real “upgrade cost” of the RTX 5090 is €1675. And that’s exactly how I think the cost of an upgrade should be calculated when you’re swapping from a 4090 - not the full price of the new GPU, but the difference after selling the old one.
Anyway, I’ll be doing the tests in a consistent scenario: flying KLGA-KLGA over Manhattan in the default Cessna Skyhawk G1000 and then repeating the same test in the Fenix.
@TheFalconOne
Mathijs you might be wondering why I chose Fenix instead of PMDG. The answer is actually simple: on some configurations the 777 and 737 suffer from a stutter every 5 seconds, which makes them unsuitable as stable test aircraft.
But that’s not really the main topic here.
EDIT
Thanks everyone for the replies - I appreciate all of them and respect your opinions, even if they differ from mine or from other users.
When talking about the upgrade, what really matters is the actual cost after selling the RTX 4090. That’s the number that should be used when judging whether the upgrade is worth it.
And keep in mind, this isn’t about buying an RTX 5090 for some crazy full price - it’s about the difference you pay when upgrading from an RTX 4090 to an RTX 5090.
Of course, if someone is coming from an RTX 3090, RTX 4080, RTX 5070 or RTX 5080, the value of the upgrade may look completely different.
I have a gaming laptop with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 and 32 GB memory. FS20 runs fine at high settings.
Even at €1675 you are paying a lot, a serious lot, for very modest gains. If I were willing to spend so much money on hardware, I would spend it on other things. For example, on the best possible display. Going to a top-end OLED screen is something most people do not think of when updating, but it is a massive upgrade. I would gladly (GLADLY) lose 25% FPS if I could move from a good screen to a great screen. The Dell UltraSharp U3226Q is freaking amazing, you see so much more detail in MSFS, and the solid blacks just make it pop.
Your update to my settings would get me about 5 FPS more on average, from a steady 70 to a steady 75. In a first-person shooter, that is something you might see. In MSFS, I dare say you would be hard-pressed to see the difference, even if you have them side by side. The low 1% and stutters will not be affected, as they are all caused in the graphics pipeline BEFORE the data is sent to the GPU.
As a professional in this hobby, all my hardware is tax-deductible, so the price is not really relevant. Yet I just see no reason to upgrade my 4060Ti. It gets me the FPS I need, it is very stable, totally silent, and utterly reliable. I spend my money on the screen, keyboard etc. Those are the things you will, day in and day out, see and feel the quality in.
Mathijs
At the same time the RTX 5080 isn’t exactly cheap either and sits not that far below that price range in many cases.
So in this example, for around €1650 I’m getting an RTX 5090, not an RTX 5080. I haven’t finished the tests yet. Because of that, I don’t really understand on what basis you concluded that the improvement will be modest. I’m still in the process of testing and collecting results, so I’m not drawing any final conclusions yet.
I actually already have two OLED monitors - one 2K and one 4K. And it’s specifically because of the 4K monitor that I decided to switch from the RTX 4090 to the RTX 5090, since the RTX 4090 was starting to struggle in some scenarios without DLSS and Frame Generation.
Was thinking the same.
Which configurations? Just curious. I’ve never experienced this nor heard of it for that matter. Personally I checked the Fenix yesterday for a video I was working on and the CPU load was almost 50% higher on the Fenix compared the 738, so I came to the exact opposite conclusion: that the Fenix wasn’t a good testbed.
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/pmdg-777-stuttering/742376
Just a reminder - this isn’t really the main topic of the discussion.
The topic is whether it’s worth upgrading from an RTX 4090 to an RTX 5090 for smooth gameplay on ultra settings without DLSS, Frame Generation, or other similar features.
EDIT
Out of curiosity, I will also check how CPU usage differs between the Fenix and the PMDG 737-800 and whether the difference between them really reaches up to 50%.
EDIT2
FENIX A321 - KLGA 31
PMDG 737-800 KLGA 31
CPU utilization is roughly at a similar level, although slightly lower on the PMDG. In any case, I don’t see anywhere near a 50% difference.
I went from an Asus 4090 to 5090 (nearly the best version). My computer isn’t new, but is still very powerful but the performance actually went DOWN. I think that is due to my board uses PCIe v3. But, it’s 18 cores +18 hyperthreads, 128gb of DDR4, NVMe Corsair 4tb drive. My plan was to game on the 5090 and do folding@home on the 4090 but they wouldn’t both fit in the case. So, I am still folding with the 3090 and the 4090 is in one of my Dell PowerEdge servers for folding.
Not for me personally. I play at 1440p with an RTX 4090 which is plenty.
I used to say exactly the same when I still had a 1440p monitor - RTX 4090 is basically perfectly matched for 1440p.
That changed when I bought a second OLED 4K monitor. In that case I started to feel that the RTX 4090 was struggling in some situations, and I didn’t want to rely on DLSS or Fake Frames just to maintain smooth performance. That’s why I decided to upgrade to the RTX 5090 and sell the RTX 4090, which in my case brought the effective cost of the RTX 5090 down to around €1650 - which I think is a pretty good deal.
I could have made it even cheaper if I had bought the RTX 5090 as a company purchase in the country I live in, since I would have been able to reclaim 22% VAT. But there is a downside to that - the warranty is only 1 year instead of 4 years.
So I chose to buy the RTX 5090 as a consumer rather than as a company purchase, because I preferred having 4 years of warranty instead of just 1 year.
That still seems very costly especially I see it was with a sale of the old GPU.
The 5090 here in my country is ridiculously costly - it’s almost the same price as the Apple AMD Radeon W6800X Duo 64GB card when that was still available. 
It’s in between Radeon Pro W7800 and W7900 as well (closer to 7900 48GB price). Great card yes, but phew, $$$$.
I personally was interested in a 5080FE and had a couple I was looking at (they fit in my computer) but I just thought the price was too high and I would have had compatibility issues with my setup on the windows side (not to mention the MacOS side). So RX9070XT was it. The 5080 also has pretty high power use, given I already have a GPU that can draw 300w in the same machine. The PSU is 1400w but I didn’t want to chance that.
I run 6K screens (two of them) so that works the poor computer and GPU very hard. I turn the resolution down to 4K, 6144 x 3456 is just too much for the RX9070XT, 96GB RAM and a W3275M Xeon to handle.
I don’t know how a 5090RTX would go (even with a better gaming suitable CPU).
Honestly that’s silly question!
Is it worth it? That depends on your needs and expectation.
For some 0.1% improvement is important, for other they need 25% etc…
A mich better question would be to ask how much improvement a 5090 is compared to a 4090 in a specific environment (VR, triple, single, 4K, airliners, heli, etc…)
I fully agree that the RTX 5090 is insanely expensive - no question about that.
The situation changes, however, when you sell an RTX 4090 and upgrade to an RTX 5090. In that case, the actual cost is much lower and in that scenario I personally think it becomes worth it.
