Facepalm: If you happen to’re planning to purchase a brand new gaming laptop computer powered by the RTX 5090 cellular, you may wish to maintain onto your pockets just a little longer. A famous {hardware} reviewer who examined the brand new GPU claims that it does not provide a lot of a efficiency increase over its predecessor in dozens of standard video games.
In response to early comparability exams carried out by Australian tech reviewer and YouTuber Jarrod Farncomb, the RTX 5090 cellular presents solely a minor efficiency uplift over the RTX 4090 in most video games. On common, an RTX 5090-equipped laptop computer managed round 66 frames per second at 4K throughout 25 standard titles, whereas an RTX 4090 laptop computer with an older CPU and slower DDR5 RAM achieved 65 fps.
Issues bought worse at 1080p, the place the RTX 4090 laptop computer managed to outperform the newer system, hitting 133 fps in comparison with the 132 fps clocked by the RTX 5090. At 1440p, the 2 laptops managed 106 and 107 fps, respectively. The distinction in every case is negligible, however the exams recommend that the brand new GPU does not provide any real-world efficiency profit over the last-gen mannequin.
Farncomb notes that the RTX 5090 struggled not solely with older video games, but in addition with newer titles like Pink Useless Redemption 2, Alan Wake 2, and Stalker 2, the place the RTX 4090 was as much as 12.5 p.c quicker than its successor.
The RTX 5090 did have its standout moments, because it proved quicker than the 4090 in a number of standard video games. For instance, it had a 20 p.c benefit over the RTX 4090 cellular in Cyberpunk 2077 and an 18 p.c lead in Warhammer 40,000: Area Marine 2.
The primary distinction between the 2 GPUs is energy effectivity, with the RTX 5090 laptop computer providing considerably higher battery life than the one with the RTX 4090. Nonetheless, Farncomb believes that this might be partly attributed to the newer Arrow Lake-HX CPU, which was particularly designed to be extra energy environment friendly than the older Raptor Lake Refresh chips.
Each the laptops used on this comparability have been XMG Neo 16s, however with very completely different {hardware}. The older XMG Neo 16 (2024) was outfitted with an Intel Core i9-14900HX paired with 32 GB of DDR5-5600 RAM and an RTX 4090, whereas the newer XMG Neo 16 (2025) was powered by an Intel Core Extremely 9 275HX with 32 GB of DDR5-6400 RAM and an RTX 5090.
