The king is dead Long live the kingSince its launch in October 2022, Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090 has reigned as the flapship GPU It is a monstrously powerful card that even Team Green's rival AMD has yet to compete with It is truly a monopoly And now, it seems, it is about to be hit by an even faster graphics card

The long-rumored RTX 5090 has arrived Sources have begun whispering about a release date for Nvidia's finest horror, with the 5090 supposedly launching “late Q1 or early Q2 2025” (thanks, Notebookcheck) YouTuber “Moore's Law is Dead” also leaked the RTX 5090's The specs for the laptop version have been leaked (again, only a rumor at this point), and while obviously not as good as the desktop version, it's no potato

With the help of TechPowerUp and trusted X-leaker “kopite7kimi” and MLiD, a table comparing the rumored specs of the RTX 5090, RTX 5090 Laptop Edition, RTX 4090, and RTX 4090 Laptop Edition was I have compiled Spoiler alert: If you have a 4090, look between your fingers

As a fan of the best PC gaming, I should be drooling by now: 21,760 CUDA cores 512-bit bus 32GB of RAM 1097 TLOPs Some of the rumored RTX 5090 specs are downright scary And from what we currently know about the 5090 laptop GPU, it seems to be displacing the 4090 laptop version when it comes to memory performance

Thanks to the GDDR7 RAM, the mobile 5090 even outperforms my desktop 4090 Just remember to stuff your pockets with salt, as Moore's leaked specs were obviously not confirmed by Nvidia

For the record, the Xbox Series X has a TLOP of 12 Speaking of which, I noticed that my 4090 is longer than Microsoft's gaming console Yes, I was actually sad enough to take out my tape measure My giant INNO3D card is 13-5 inches long, the Series X is 1185 inches, imagine how much bigger the RTX 5090 is I had to buy a new full tower PC case to fit the 4090 because it is much larger than the RTX 3090 I previously owned

I imagine there are many hardcore PC players out there who are worried about whether the 5090 will fit in their current tower case I would also be shocked if the first batch of RTX 5090 laptops didn't bring chombo and serious heat

The rumored memory jump between the two models of the RTX 5090 seems quite large, to say the least, compared to the equivalent model of the RTX 4090 24GB of memory on the RTX 4090 already feels like overkill when it comes to gaming (typically, most modern (12GB is usually enough to play most modern titles at high quality levels) Therefore, the 32GB that the RTX 5090 is supposed to have is practically unsettling

And 24GB of onboard graphics memory on a laptop Amazing Prosumer video editors who have to render huge 4K video files will have a field day with both versions of the 5090

No doubt, so will the duffers; the RTX 4090 was officially available for $1,599, but was hard to buy at that price I would love to see Nvidia sell the RTX 5090 for the same price, but would be shocked if they did My opinion; I would be surprised if it was under $1,999

As for how much an RTX 5090 laptop would cost, given that something like the Alienware m18 in a 4090 configuration is $3,799, I'd venture to say “a lot”

With AI-driven DLSS 35 (frame generation, etc) becoming more and more advanced, my desire to buy a laptop with an RTX 5090 or its mobile GPU is actually quite low I bought the best gaming laptop I could afford six months ago, and I'm hardly likely to crave a laptop with RTX 5090

I have my heart set on the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2024), but there is no denying that even the “MacBook Pro of gaming laptops” (cheers, Tony Polanco) will be outclassed by the rumored 5090 mobile specs After all, the G14 laptop RTX 4070 only has 8GB of GDDR6 and a 128-bit bus Looking back at the numbers above, my beloved Zephyrus would go up in smoke

I am also happy with the RTX 4090, but this is hardly a “standard” GPU When I can run the bulk of my Steam library at 4K/120fps (admittedly with the help of Nvidia's supersampling), I'm not exactly fazed by the chance to throw Team Green 2000 Big Boys at it

There is no doubt that both the desktop and laptop versions of the RTX 5090 will be great cards However, as AI increasingly de-emphasizes pure hardware grunt when it comes to achieving high frame rates in the best Steam games, this PC player will have to “struggle” with the RTX 4090 and his laptop RTX 4070 on his awesome Zephyrus G14 to “get the most out of it” He will have to “struggle”

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to play the world's smallest violin