Black Myth: Wukong - 240 FPS on the GeForce RTX 5090 in 4K, 29 FPS without DLSS 4

The GeForce RTX 5090 struggles to hit 30 FPS in Black Myth: Wukong without DLSS 4 enabled. But that's because Path Tracing was designed for AI.

Black Myth: Wukong - 240 FPS on the GeForce RTX 5090 in 4K, 29 FPS without DLSS 4
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TL;DR: NVIDIA announced the GeForce RTX 50 Series, featuring the RTX 5090 and 5080, launching January 30 for $1999 and $999. Key features include DLSS 4 and DLSS Multi Frame Generation, enhancing performance and reducing latency. Despite high expectations, the RTX 5090's raw performance could be modest, as DLSS 4 significantly improves image quality and frame rates in games like Black Myth: Wukong and Cyberpunk 2077 with Path Tracing.

The GeForce RTX 50 Series has been announced, with the flagship GeForce RTX 5090 and GeForce RTX 5080 launching on January 30 for $1999 and $999, respectively. As part of NVIDIA's announcement, one of the big features of the next generation GeForce RTX 50 Series is DLSS 4 and the new DLSS Multi Frame Generation.

This builds on the initial Frame Generation we saw with the GeForce RTX 40 Series, where AI is leveraged to generate new frames to boost performance. NVIDA Reflex is used to great effect to reduce latency. With DLSS Multi Frame Generation, the advanced AI hardware of the GeForce RTX 50 Series is now rendering three frames instead of one, which is why we're seeing games like Black Myth: Wukong hit 240 FPS.

This includes the use of DLSS Performance, which, as a whole, delivers an 8X increase in performance compared to running the game natively in 4K. This is where the GeForce RTX 5090 only delivers 29 FPS with Full Ray Tracing enabled. And it's a $2000 GeForce RTX gaming GPU.

Black Myth Wukong - 243 FPS on the GeForce RTX 5090 in 4K with DLSS 4.
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Black Myth Wukong - 243 FPS on the GeForce RTX 5090 in 4K with DLSS 4.

At a glance, it's very easy to see how this could be disappointing. Compared to the GeForce RTX 4090, it would seem that the GeForce RTX 5090's raw performance uplift isn't quite where people expected it to be. We'll have to wait a bit to get those numbers from NVIDIA.

However, Black Myth: Wukong running natively in 4K with Full Ray Tracing doesn't really make sense for many reasons - outside of it barely hitting 30 FPS.

Black Myth Wukong - 29 FPS on the GeForce RTX 5090 in 4K running natively.
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Black Myth Wukong - 29 FPS on the GeForce RTX 5090 in 4K running natively.

Without DLSS Multi Frame Generation, the game looks noticeably better running in DLSS Performance mode on the GeForce RTX 5090 thanks to the DLSS Super Resolution transformer model (DLSS has been given a major upgrade with the 50 Series). In addition to improved image quality, overall performance would hover at around 60 FPS with much better latency.

DLSS 4 has technology like Ray Reconstruction and the brand-new Neural Rendering that enhances lighting quality and detail compared to native and what DLSS looked like when Black Myth: Wukong launched. Path Tracing or Full Ray Tracing modes are now being designed with AI in mind, and DLSS 4 will probably usher in more games like Black Myth: Wukong that go all-in on ray tracing.

We also saw one of those, Black State, running at 240 FPS on a GeForce RTX 5090 with DLSS 4 enabled. Cyberpunk 2077's RT Overdrive mode, enhanced with DLSS 4 features, also hits 240 FPS in 4K.