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RTX 5090 Laptop Barely Beats RTX 4090 in First Head-to-Head Test

The Nvidia RTX 5090 mobile GPU isn't much of an upgrade over its predecessor, according to some early post-release comparison tests from Jarrod's Tech. Pitting a new XMG Neo 16 with an RTX 5090 against a Neo 16 with an RTX 4090 and an older CPU found little difference between the two. Indeed, at 1080p the laptop with the RTX 4090 proved to be faster, delivering a slightly higher FPS benchmark across a range of games. When Nvidia debuted the RTX 5090 in January at CES 2025, it promised double the performance of the RTX 4090. When upscaling wasn't being used, its real-world performance was more like a 30% uplift. That came from a 32% increase in CUDA cores, an extra 33% memory, and at 33% higher clock speeds, too. The RTX 5090 mobile doesn't have the same uptick in specifications, only offering 8% more CUDA cores, though it does have 50% more VRAM and 55% more memory bandwidth. But that's not enough to equate to a big increase in performance. Across a 25-game average, Jarrod's Tech found the RTX 5090-equipped laptop managed just over 66 frames per second at 4K. The RTX 4090 version of the same laptop (also using an older CPU and slower DDR5 memory) managed 65fps. At 1440p, the two laptops managed 107 and 106fps, respectively, while at 1080p the leaders were reversed with the 5090 and 4090 managing 132.9fps and 133.1fps, averages. The difference there is margin-of-error small, but it's kind of nuts to see any last-generation card beating the new king of Nvidia's hill. Digging into the details a little more, it's interesting to note which games the newer GPU struggled with—and it wasn't just older titles. While the worst performer was Red Dead Redemption 2, where the RTX 4090 laptop held a massive 12.5% advantage over its newer brethren, other newer games like Alan Wake 2 and Stalker 2 also ran better on the older 4090. The RTX 5090 did hold a huge advantage in some games, though. In Cyberpunk 2077 it had a more-than 20% advantage in FPS, and it was over 18% ahead of the 4090 in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2. The newer Neo 16 with the 5090 was also much more power efficient. That's partly down to the newer CPU, which Intel designed specifically to improve performance per watt—even if the 14900HX is arguably more effective for gaming in some cases. Overall, the newer laptop had a much more impressive battery life than the one with the 4090. Blow for blow, though? The mobile RTX 5090 does not impress on performance, making it a tricky upgrade to recommend for any laptop gamers.