Question RTX 4090 or Wait for the 5090?

[Heat_Fan89]

I have a chance to buy a fully loaded Alienware R15 with a 7950X, 32GB RAM, 2TB SSD, RTX 4090 brand new from Dell with discounts for $2370 plus tax. My question is, buy now or wait for the 5090? The price is tempting.

What leans me on buying now is that rumors say the 5090 will be more expensive than the 4090 and we don't know the generational leap in performance. Will the leap be as big with the 5090 as it was going from the 3090 to the 4090?

Talk me down off the ledge.

 

[PrivilegeYT]

Just get the RTX 4090, truth if this is just going to be a normal workstation such as gaming, streaming, and blah blah then you'll be sitting pretty. If you opt into the 5090 what I feat is that the 6090 will be released one day and you'll want that too. It's going to be an endless rabbit hole. Now if you try to hype youself up by saying " but it's for cad" then you shouldn't be looking at the RTX series anyways. By the best of what is in your budget and available and stick with it for at least 4 years.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

Just get the RTX 4090, truth if this is just going to be a normal workstation such as gaming, streaming, and blah blah then you'll be sitting pretty. If you opt into the 5090 what I feat is that the 6090 will be released one day and you'll want that too. It's going to be an endless rabbit hole. Now if you try to hype youself up by saying " but it's for cad" then you shouldn't be looking at the RTX series anyways. By the best of what is in your budget and available and stick with it for at least 4 years.

Strictly for gaming!

 

[Eximo]

Considering that price is quite reasonable for a whole system with a 4090, I would say it is worth it. Not like the 4090 will stop being relevant anytime soon.

Currently looks like the 5080 is going to launch this year. There may not be a 5090 at launch as rumors suggest it will be a multichip GPU anyway. The opportunity cost of production would be a huge hit to Nvidia. They are better off using that fab space for AI accelerators.

In times past, the top tier card wasn't released until a year after the generational launch. We could be seeing that again.

 

[faalin]

Just get the RTX 4090, truth if this is just going to be a normal workstation such as gaming, streaming, and blah blah then you'll be sitting pretty. If you opt into the 5090 what I feat is that the 6090 will be released one day and you'll want that too. It's going to be an endless rabbit hole. Now if you try to hype youself up by saying " but it's for cad" then you shouldn't be looking at the RTX series anyways. By the best of what is in your budget and available and stick with it for at least 4 years.

Technically all of Nvidia's cards are RTX cards now. Their CAD cards went from Quadro (card #) to Quadro RTX (card #) to fully dropping the Quadro name (i think around 2021) and just went with RTX A(card #)

 

[Eximo]

Well, the A comes from the architecture. A for Ampere RTX A2000. (GA)

RTX 2000 Ada For Ada Lovelace (AD).

Quadro RTX were Turing, the last to use that name (TU),

You can expect the next wave of RTX "Quadros" to be the B series for Blackwell. Looks like they are going to follow the single letter chip names like Hopper and Volta, so it will just be B100/B102 etc.

 

[Silas Sanchez]

2K? or 4K? High fps? 4K is super demanding. Id strongly reco you take a good look at that system as it's from alienware, enough said! Some really awful horry stories out there with pre built. If you wanna play games coming out in the next few years with full ray tracing at 4K from what I can tell even the 5090 will struggle, certainly the 4090 aint gonna cut it. But the fear of the 5090 is very high price and lacking performance. But if history is any guide its going to be another big jump, using an all new fab process that affords this.
In gaming you need the absolute most graphics power you can possible get, its never enough. My 4080 gets destroyed at 2K with path tracing, completely unplayable frame rates. The whole DLSS thing is misleading and overhyped, it simply don't look as good as native.
Another issue perhaps is the cpu might bottle neck the 5090, the gap between the two is getting big enough. The 7950x is laughable powerful yes, but it most likely will bottle neck even at 4K.
Is the PSU big enough? that 5090 is gonna pull some power, my humble 4080 draws near 320watts at full load.
If your spending that much, one might assume your gonna want a long life out of your system, might be worth considering 64gb ram as games are gonna start using alot more by the time ps6 hits.
The 4090s have so much mark up on them if a bargain comes up might be worth going for it. That is how i got my 4080.

 

[geofelt]

If you wait for the next best thing, you will wait forever.

5090 specs and pricing are rumors.
If the price or performance is wonderful, you can expect to pay a premium for it.

My main concern with a prebuilt is that they are not designed to be upgraded.

 

[Eximo]

7950X and 4090 with 32GB of memory, going to be a while before an upgrade is necessary.

That said, you could build a comparable system with parts of your choice for about the same.

I managed $2600 by sticking part for part matching. But a more optimized build is also acheivable.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 4.2 GHz 8-Core Processor ($278.49 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE 66.17 CFM CPU Cooler ($33.90 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI B650 GAMING PLUS WIFI ATX AM5 Motherboard ($169.99 @ MSI)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws S5 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 Memory ($104.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($169.97 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Gigabyte GAMING OC GeForce RTX 4090 24 GB Video Card ($1499.00 @ Amazon)
Case: Deepcool MATREXX 50 ADD-RGB 4F ATX Mid Tower Case ($74.06 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: be quiet! Pure Power 12 M 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($129.90 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 11 Home OEM - DVD 64-bit ($109.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $2570.29
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-05-22 11:37 EDT-0400

 

[RodroX]

2K? or 4K? High fps? 4K is super demanding. Id strongly reco you take a good look at that system as it's from alienware, enough said! Some really awful horry stories out there with pre built. If you wanna play games coming out in the next few years with full ray tracing at 4K from what I can tell even the 5090 will struggle, certainly the 4090 aint gonna cut it. But the fear of the 5090 is very high price and lacking performance. But if history is any guide its going to be another big jump, using an all new fab process that affords this.
In gaming you need the absolute most graphics power you can possible get, its never enough. My 4080 gets destroyed at 2K with path tracing, completely unplayable frame rates. The whole DLSS thing is misleading and overhyped, it simply don't look as good as native.
Another issue perhaps is the cpu might bottle neck the 5090, the gap between the two is getting big enough. The 7950x is laughable powerful yes, but it most likely will bottle neck even at 4K.
Is the PSU big enough? that 5090 is gonna pull some power, my humble 4080 draws near 320watts at full load.
If your spending that much, one might assume your gonna want a long life out of your system, might be worth considering 64gb ram as games are gonna start using alot more by the time ps6 hits.
The 4090s have so much mark up on them if a bargain comes up might be worth going for it. That is how i got my 4080.

Talking about CPU bottleneck at 4K vs a GPU that is not even announced yet is sorta pointless. Also botleneck should be changed to " X may limit Z performance". Now, Is it posible that such a thing happend next year if the RTX 5090 launch?, Yes it is, but theres no real reason to stop building a PC today just because this or that may happend.
In such a high CPU segment: (i7 13700/14700, i9 13900/14900, R7 7800, R9 7900/7950 and even more for the X3D parts, as of right now most AAA games (even older ones too) at 4K are usually limited by the GPU, not the CPU (with some horrible optimized exceptions).
And such we have stuff like AMD FSR, nvidia DLSS and intel XeSS to fill the gap.
As for the power requirements I do agree. And I would be more worry about current PSU vs the yet unkonwn CPU limiting performance.

7950X and 4090 with 32GB of memory, going to be a while before an upgrade is necessary.

That said, you could build a comparable system with parts of your choice for about the same.

I managed $2600 by sticking part for part matching. But a more optimized build is also acheivable.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 4.2 GHz 8-Core Processor ($278.49 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE 66.17 CFM CPU Cooler ($33.90 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI B650 GAMING PLUS WIFI ATX AM5 Motherboard ($169.99 @ MSI)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws S5 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 Memory ($104.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($169.97 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Gigabyte GAMING OC GeForce RTX 4090 24 GB Video Card ($1499.00 @ Amazon)
Case: Deepcool MATREXX 50 ADD-RGB 4F ATX Mid Tower Case ($74.06 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: be quiet! Pure Power 12 M 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($129.90 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 11 Home OEM - DVD 64-bit ($109.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $2570.29
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-05-22 11:37 EDT-0400

Thats an awesome gaming build with the R7 7800X3D.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

I’d say build as well. You then have more control over stuff. Have you ever tried working in some of the Alienware PCs from recent years? Some of them the psu is mounted on the side and you have to swing it out to get into the system and airflow could probably be better.

My one concern with a 4090 would potentially be the connector and reports of melting/fire etc.