Over the past week I have published a number of GeForce RTX 5090 Linux compute benchmarks as well as the GeForce RTX 5080 on Linux. With that early NVIDIA R570 Linux driver build as part of the CUDA 12.8 package I was asked to wait on Linux gaming benchmarks until the proper RTX 50 Linux driver is released. Well, it was released this morning with the NVIDIA 570.86.16 Linux beta availability and have in turn been pushing the GeForce RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 through a number of Linux gaming/graphics benchmarks.
In this article is an initial look at the GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition and GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition graphics cards under various Linux gaming/graphics benchmarks for what I’ve been able to wrap up so far today compared to recently re-tested prior generation NVIDIA GeForce RTX and AMD Radeon RX graphics cards.
This initial benchmarking bout for NVIDIA Blackwell Linux gaming included:
– RTX 2070
– RTX 2070 SUPER
– RTX 2080
– RTX 2080 SUPER
– RTX 2080 Ti
– TITAN RTX
– RTX 3070
– RTX 3070 Ti
– RTX 3080
– RTX 3090
– RTX 4070
– RTX 4070 SUPER
– RTX 4070 Ti SUPER
– RTX 4080
– RTX 4080 SUPER
– RTX 4090
– RTX 5080
– RTX 5090
– RX 7800 XT
– RX 7900 GRE
– RX 7900 XT
– RX 7900 XTX
The GeForce RTX 5080/5090 were running with today’s NVIDIA 570.86.16 beta driver while the prior NVIDIA cards were on the NVIDIA R565 stable driver with being re-tested over the course of January. The AMD Radeon graphics cards were using their upstream state with the Linux 6.13 kernel and Mesa 25.0-devel from the Oibaf PPA.
The NVIDIA R570 packaged Linux driver is the only means of RTX 50 series support on Linux right now. There isn’t yet any Nouveau or experimental NOVA kernel driver support yet for these new Blackwell graphics cards even with leveraging the NVIDIA GSP firmware. Plus the promising Rust-based NOVA driver hasn’t even been upstreamed into the Linux kernel yet and will still likely be sometime before that is really primed for the mainline kernel. The NVK Vulkan driver does continue mature within Mesa. But for now those purchasing the $999 or $1999 USD graphics cards will really be wanting to use the NVIDIA packaged driver stack for Linux.
The NVIDIA 570.86.16 beta driver and the earlier 560.86.10 beta build wuithin the CUDA 12.8 driver package has been working out well for the GeForce RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 atop Ubuntu Linux. I haven’t encountered any stability issues, feature limitations, or other issues compared to prior generation NVIDIA GeForce RTX graphics cards on Linux. It’s been a great experience with my testing thus far.
So let’s continue on with an initial look at the GeForce RTX 5080/5090 Linux gaming/graphics performance in several titles that are benchmark-friendly and meet my requirements around reproducibility and automation. Thanks to NVIDIA for supplying these graphics cards for launch-day Linux testing.
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With Counter-Strike 2 on Linux at 4K, going from the RTX 4080 SUPER to RTX 5080 was a 10% improvement while going from the RTX 4090 to RTX 5090 was a 12% improvement. The GeForce RTX 5090 easily shoots well past AMD’s high-end Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card. For those still on an RTX 30 or RTX 20 series graphics card, the move to RTX 50 can represent a terrific upgrade.
The GeForce RTX 5080 for Counter-Strike 2 on Linux was delivering the best performance-per-Watt of the tested hardware.
Grand Theft Auto 5 on Linux by way of Steam Play enjoyed a terrific boost to performance for both of these initial GeForce RTX 50 graphics cards. The RTX 5080 nearly matched the RTX 4090 while the RTX 5090 was at 1.6x the performance of the RTX 4090 with our GTA 5 test configuration.
With HITMAN on Linux by way of Valve’s Steam Play (Proton) there was limited uplift from the RTX 4080 to RTX 5080 while going from the RTX 4090 to RTX 5090 was 1.22x the performance.
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Cyberpunk 2077 as another Windows game running on Linux by way of Steam Play (Proton) enjoyed very significant uplift with the GeForce RTX 5090.
Cyberpunk 2077 at high quality settings with 4K was able to run on the GeForce RTX 5090 at 1.37x the performance of the RTX 4090. The AMD RDNA3 graphics cards held a slight power efficiency advantage here.
Cyberpunk 2077 at ultra quality settings with a 4K resolution on Ubuntu Linux was still comfortably playable on the GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card.
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With the Linux native build of 3DMark Wild Life on Linux, the RTX 5090 had around 20% uplift over prior generation while the RTX 5080 advantage was around 9%.
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX graphics continue to maintain the strong advantage over AMD Radeon graphics on Linux when it comes to Vulkan ray-tracing performance. With the RTX 50 series, NVIDIA continues to extend its ray-tracing advantage over Radeon graphics on Linux in native tests like GPUScore: Breaking Limit.
Even running Breaking Limit with ray-tracing disabled still showed strong leads for NVIDIA over the Radeon RX 7000 series graphics.
For those curious about OpenGL performance with the GeForce RTX 50 Blackwell GPUs, stressing the GPUs with Unigine Superposition continued to show strong performance with a very nice upgrade from the RTX 4090 to RTX 5090 while the RTX 5080 nearly matched the RTX 4090.
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Quake 2 RTX was also used as another benchmark-friendly, Linux-native Vulkan ray-tracing gaming test case. NVIDIA graphics on Linux dominate over AMD with Vulkan ray-tracing capabilities.
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From the initial GeForce RTX 5080 / RTX 5090 Linux graphics/gaming benchmarks I was able to complete today with the new NVIDIA 570.86.16 beta Linux driver, here is the geometric mean based on all the raw benchmark results. With these tests not utilizing DLSS 4 and a limited subset of benchmark-friendly games running well on Linux by way of Steam Play, with this initial set of tests the RTX 5090 comes in at 1.33x the performance of the RTX 4090 while the RTX 5080 was at 1.14x the performance of the RTX 4080 SUPER. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition graphics card delivered 1.78x the performance of the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX on Linux.
Across the span of all these graphics benchmarks, the GeForce RTX 5090 on Linux had a peak power consumption of 578 Watts and an average around 372 Watts, a 37% increase on average from the RTX 4090. The GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition had a 234 Watt average and 359 Watt peak, a much smaller increase over the RTX 4080.
Even with the increased power draw of these NVIDIA Blackwell graphics cards, both of these Founders Edition graphics cards operated very efficiently thermal-wise and were running rather cool for being dual-slot graphics cards.
Thanks to NVIDIA for supplying these graphics cards for launch-day Linux testing at Phoronix. Additional benchmarks will be published on Phoronix in the coming days.
