If you're on a desktop browser that gets the full video embeds for each game we tested, you may have noticed that we've selected the 4K runs from the RTX 5090, RTX 4090, RTX 3090 Ti and RX 7900 XTX to appear by default. However, you can use the tick boxes to the right of the video to make your own selections too. Why not select your own graphics card if we've tested it, or opt for the resolution of your current monitor? The choice is yours.

Our final trio of RT games includes two titles that require ray tracing to even run: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, one of our best game graphics of 2024 winners, and Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, the first game to make an RT-capable graphics card a requirement. We round out the selection with A Plague Tale: Requiem, which is tested with RT engaged here but doesn't require it.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Supreme Settings

Indy is up next. This recent release is one of the most demanding in our arsenal, and in fact our automated benchmark scene wouldn't run at all on the RTX 2080 Ti. Turning down the texture pool setting from supreme to high fixed the issue, with other settings matched. We don't typically see much difference between the two settings in actual play, but just be aware that this test comes with an asterisk on the 2080 Ti results.

With that said, there's a 23.4 percent boost for the 5090 over the 4090, rising to 86 percent against the RTX 3090 Ti, both of which are on the low end of what we've observed so far. The 2080 Ti is still more than capable of running the game with DLSS, but in these results we're looking at a 3.1x speed-up by opting for the 5090.

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, Extreme, Nvidia Features Off

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition was the first major release to require an RT-capable card thanks to its inclusion of RTGI, and remains an interesting test even four years later. There's a 26 percent lead for the RTX 5090 over the 4090, a 2.1x lead for the 3090 Ti which lifts again to 3.5x against the 2080 Ti.

A Plague Tale: Requiem

A Plague Tale: Requiem, Max Settings, RT Shadows

A Plague Tale: Requiem is the hardest to spell of our test suite, and it's also something of an outlier when it comes to the results. We see a 35 percent improvement for the RTX 5090 versus the 4090, with the opening scene of the second chapter seeming to hammer memory bandwidth - which is the largest spec bump with the new card. Beyond this, there's a 2.3x performance lead against the 3090 Ti and 4.7x the frame-rate versus the 2080 Ti.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Analysis