Up close with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 FE, an incredibly compact flagship video card

We might be skeptical of some of Nvidia’s claims, like if a $549 RTX 5070 it will really deliver the performance of a $1599 RTX 4090. But it is almost impossible not to be impressed by the RTX 5090 Founder’s Edition, where Nvidia fit 575 watts of graphics power, including 21,760 CUDA cores and 32GB of GDDR7 memory, in a video card only two slots wide.

It almost has to be seen to be believed, and we deliver my partner Antonio around the CES show floor in Las Vegas in what was initially a futile search. No PC manufacturer seemed to have an interactive game demo running on a 5090, much less the two-slot card.

But on Wednesday, we finally got to see the real deal at Nvidia’s offsite event — and then. It’s heavy, and the only desired The $2,000 card may be rare, but it’s there, and it works.

Below, find our photos of the relatively compact 5090; its incredibly compact PCB with the Blackwell chip on top; a game demo running on the 5090; a picture of the Founder’s Editions 5090, 5080 and 5070 side by side; and some examples of how bulky cards from any other partner can be compared to Nvidia’s own.