Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition Review
Cost Per Frame
![](/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Cost-Per-Frame-MSRP-2160p-880x495.png)
Before I mention the cost per frame data, it’s worth noting that the likes of the RTX 4090 that is being “replaced” is and has been a nightmare to get hold of for quite some time along with shortages on other high-end cards, and because of that it’s hard to compare the pricing of the 5090 to these wildly inflated prices, because in all honesty, if you’re looking to spend anything over MSRP, short of it being slightly higher being a custom version of the card, then you shouldn’t, so for the purposes of transparency, we have two charts, one using MSRP pricing and another with the typical selling price.
With this in mind, and purely looking at 4K data, because of CPU bottleneck issues at lower resolutions, the RTX 5090 based upon MSRP launch pricing comes in with a cost per frame of $9.17, which is essentially on par with the RTX 4090 when that launched at $1599, meaning that if you were looking at the 4090 being anything above that price, then it’s just not worth it. The 5090 being the new kid on the block has got the obvious early adopter tax, and typically, at least with other product segments, you’d see pricing fall as time goes on, but with GPUs in the sad sorry state of affairs that is the current market, they end up going up in price, and this will all change once we likely see the 5090 released for sale. There are obviously much better value cards to buy if value for money is your end goal, but the 5090 was never made to be aimed at that end of the market.
When we look at a typical selling price, things actually look better for the 5090. Not because its cost per frame changes, but because of other cards that increase quite rapidly like the RTX 4090 now coming in at $16.04 per frame compared to $9.17 of the new 5090. With such inflated prices across the board, this actually puts the 5090 slightly better value than the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, along with all NVIDIA GPUs that are higher up in the 40 series stack. Compared to AMD, they still hold the torch when it comes to value for money on what is arguably the “high-end” but can’t compete in terms of raw performance which is where the 5090 shines, though if you’ll be able to get one for the $1999 price tag will be something we’ll find out when they go on sale.