5090 vs 4090 in VR - what's the performance improvement?

[slughead]

Has anyone upgraded from a 4090 to a 5090, and if so, what is the performance difference in VR?

Ignore cost, that's for another topic of conversation. This is purely about performance concerning DCS in VR.

Conjecture of performance is also not relevant. First-hand experience replies with the two cards only please. Youtube videos are also not your first hand experience and I can search youtube myself for that thanks.

Edited April 4 by slughead

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

Please check the forums before opening another thread:

 

[slughead]

Thanks for the link. However, that thread has gone far off-topic about cost. I specifically said that cost is not a relevant factor for me, and I'd like to cut to the chase. I also asked specifically about use in DCS VR. Hence, I posted in the VR section of the forum, not the hardware section. Not all VR users look in the hardware section, but all DCS VR users are more likely to look in the VR section. But mainly, I couldn't find a single person in that thread who has made the upgrade. Maybe I missed it.

[Tensorial_Architect]

I have an RTX 5090 and the improvement overall with DCS in Vr is anywhere from 17% to 24% depending upon DLSS or DLAA and settings. Overall, I find the gains to be minimal. Aside from bumping up MSAA slightly, there is nothing you can do with the 5090 you cannot do with the 4090. You can read more here:

I do not recommend the RTX 5090. It consumes 33% more electricity for less than a 33% gain in resolution. It is also slightly louder, slightly hotter, and far more expensive than the 4090. The 4090 release was arguably the best of the last decade or more. The 5090 release is arguably the worst in the past decade. Thanks to Trump tanking the entire economy and the massive recession that is coming, the RTX 5090 will be selling for over $4000 for some time to come. $4000 for marginal gains even with MBucchia's Quad Views is not worth it.

Edited April 4 by Tensorial_Architect

[slughead]

Thank you.

[kacper80]

Here is an interesting video on this topic.

 

[Tensorial_Architect]

Excellent find kacper! I used the Intel 13900k in my tests on an Aorus motherboard with DDR 6400 RAM. It is interesting to see how much better he does with the 9800X3D. AMD really is the sweet spot right now for latency. Overall, I am averaging 22% higher FPS with the 5090 whereas he is at about 27% higher. This is one of the best videos I have ever seen showing the exact side-by-side comparison of CPU limited vs GPU limited. I might just have to get myself an AMD chip.

[kerlcat]

I ordered a next gen VR headset(5K per eye) and also look for GPU upgrade recently. Found a few YouTubers have 50+% of perf gain from 4090 with ultra high rendering res setting(~5000-6000 Res). Also saw similar feedback from VR Discord who received their 5090.

No matter how true is that, to me (still on 3090), it is not IF but HOW to get a 5090 without paying a fortune to a scalper. I guess it would be a much easier decision to all VR users if 5090 dropped to its MSRP.

[Aapje]

22 hours ago, kerlcat said:

it is not IF but HOW to get a 5090 without paying a fortune to a scalper. 

Wait. And hope.

[skywalker22]

On 4/5/2025 at 10:57 AM, Tensorial_Architect said:

Excellent find kacper! I used the Intel 13900k in my tests on an Aorus motherboard with DDR 6400 RAM. It is interesting to see how much better he does with the 9800X3D. AMD really is the sweet spot right now for latency. Overall, I am averaging 22% higher FPS with the 5090 whereas he is at about 27% higher. This is one of the best videos I have ever seen showing the exact side-by-side comparison of CPU limited vs GPU limited. I might just have to get myself an AMD chip.

How hot 5090 gets? Which card exactly do you have?

I have MSI's Suprim X 4090, and it get max to 60degC (140degF). But I undervolted it, so it consumes max 350W, most of the time its under 300W.

Did you also undervolted it?

[Tensorial_Architect]

On 4/5/2025 at 5:24 PM, kerlcat said:

I ordered a next gen VR headset(5K per eye) and also look for GPU upgrade recently. Found a few YouTubers have 50+% of perf gain from 4090 with ultra high rendering res setting(~5000-6000 Res). Also saw similar feedback from VR Discord who received their 5090.

No matter how true is that, to me (still on 3090), it is not IF but HOW to get a 5090 without paying a fortune to a scalper. I guess it would be a much easier decision to all VR users if 5090 dropped to its MSRP.

I can, ... assuredly, ... say that using ultra-high rendering does not net a 50% performance gain with the RTX 5090 over the 4090. The best I have personally seen with everything maxed on the Crystal is 21% over the 4090. I should add though that I don't fly helos which seems to be where so many guys have massive problems.

On 4/7/2025 at 3:58 AM, skywalker22 said:

How hot 5090 gets? Which card exactly do you have?

I have MSI's Suprim X 4090, and it get max to 60degC (140degF). But I undervolted it, so it consumes max 350W, most of the time its under 300W.

Did you also undervolted it?

I have an ASUS TUF 5090. With regular voltage and high resolutions with the Crystal or Somnium, it gets up to 75 deg C for the GPU and 84 to 85 deg C for the memory. (On the Marianas map or Syria) I have not tried under or over volting yet, ... I have a wife and son    Fooling with endless graphics card settings is about priority #183 in life at the moment.

Edited April 17 by Tensorial_Architect

[AdrianL]

VR Flight Sim Guy just did a comparison in DCS between 4090 and 5090

 

[Tensorial_Architect]

VR Flight Sim Guy sometimes comes off as a bit sus.

Not saying the dude is lying but I specifically flew the Apache on the Marianas map and cannot reproduce his gains with my ASUS TUF 5090. My gains are about 25% greater than the 4090.

Edited April 17 by Tensorial_Architect

[Mr_sukebe]

3 hours ago, Tensorial_Architect said:

VR Flight Sim sometimes comes off as a bit sus.

 

That's a lovely piece of understatement.

[slughead]

Which is one reason I specifically an asked for no YouTube videos. Pity people can’t stick to the script.

[oqvist]

On 4/4/2025 at 11:31 PM, Tensorial_Architect said:

I have an RTX 5090 and the improvement overall with DCS in Vr is anywhere from 17% to 24% depending upon DLSS or DLAA and settings. Overall, I find the gains to be minimal. Aside from bumping up MSAA slightly, there is nothing you can do with the 5090 you cannot do with the 4090. You can read more here:

I do not recommend the RTX 5090. It consumes 33% more electricity for less than a 33% gain in resolution. It is also slightly louder, slightly hotter, and far more expensive than the 4090. The 4090 release was arguably the best of the last decade or more. The 5090 release is arguably the worst in the past decade. Thanks to Trump tanking the entire economy and the massive recession that is coming, the RTX 5090 will be selling for over $4000 for some time to come. $4000 for marginal gains even with MBucchia's Quad Views is not worth it.

That performance gain is not insignificant? Of course the pricing is over the roof but forgetting that? I am curious about a 4090 vs 5080? Will the memory make a big difference. I am going to run 4k panels in the meganex so I fear I might have a bottleneck there with my 5080 or how heavy is dcs on memory?

[Mr_sukebe]

17 minutes ago, oqvist said:

That performance gain is not insignificant? Of course the pricing is over the roof but forgetting that? I am curious about a 4090 vs 5080? Will the memory make a big difference. I am going to run 4k panels in the meganex so I fear I might have a bottleneck there with my 5080 or how heavy is dcs on memory?

 

DCS now provides the info on not just VRAM reserved, but also VRAM in use.  If you open the FPS counter in DCS, it's visible in the more detailed box.  To date, I've yet to see more than 12GB of VRAM in use.

[Tensorial_Architect]

Well said Mr Sukebe.

I don't have a 5080 to compare to either at home or in my lab but the word on the street seems to be that the 4090 beats the 5080 by roughly 10%.

@Oqvist - I guess it depends upon what you mean by in or over-significant. A great many folks I think were hoping that the 5090 would be another monster like the 4090 was over the 3000 series. That is, ... most definitely, ... not the case. I repeated several of the helo missions (Apache and Huey) down low on the Marianas map just to see under max conditions what performance I could get, ... and it turns out that the 5090 exceeds the 4090 by about 25% with DLSS and about 19% with DLAA. With everything maxed to the hilt (high/ultra settings) and using my Varjo Aero, I am getting about 30 FPS average with the 4090 and about 37 FPS with the 5090. Is it noticeable, ... ehh, ... perhaps? It is a very small difference to my eye.

Edited April 19 by Tensorial_Architect

[Derbysieger]

On 4/7/2025 at 12:58 PM, skywalker22 said:

How hot 5090 gets? Which card exactly do you have?

Just so you can get another data point, I have an Asus 5090 ROG Astral. With the OC BIOS in DCS VR (Reverb G2) it pulls about 400-470W, temps rarely go above 65°C on the GPU and 70°C on the memory. I was flying the Phantom over the Cold War Germany map today and GPU temps were mostly around 60°C +/- and memory around 65-70°C with an ambient temperature of around 20°C. This is with the middle fan and rear fan limited to 55% RPM, if I'd have it on auto it would be few degrees cooler.

It's a huge expensive brick but I am quite happy with the VR Performance. I tuned it to get mostly 90fps on a Reverb G2 but of course flying low over big cities I do see quite a few drops, for example flying in formation with three Phantoms over Berlin in MP I saw drops down to 70ish fps in some situations when I had the mirrors active, jumps between 80-90fps without the mirrors.

Of course coming from a 3080TI the 5090 is a massive upgrade but I don't think it's worth it if you already have a 4090.

[Qcumber]

17 hours ago, oqvist said:

That performance gain is not insignificant? Of course the pricing is over the roof but forgetting that? I am curious about a 4090 vs 5080? Will the memory make a big difference. I am going to run 4k panels in the meganex so I fear I might have a bottleneck there with my 5080 or how heavy is dcs on memory?

I can also confirm that VRAM use on the 5080 is very good. I have not seen it go over 12 Gb either. At launch the 5080 was about 12% behind the 4090. The latest NVIDIA driver (276) has given me a 5% boost in stock performance. Overclocked I get a 10% boost which translates to almost 17% increase relative to stock speed using the previous driver. In theory this puts the 5080 very close to the 4090 stock performance. Of course this is with synthetic benchmarks. In DCS (VR) the overclock is comparable but I have not tested if the latest driver update shows any meaningful change. 

 

 

Edited April 20 by Qcumber