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 whether a $549 RTX 5070 will truly deliver the performance of a $1599 RTX 4090. But it’s 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, into a video card just two slots wide.

It almost has to be seen to be believed, and we sent my colleague Antonio G. Di Benedetto around the CES show floor in Las Vegas in what was initially a fruitless 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 spotted the real deal at Nvidia’s offsite event — and then some. It’s heavy, and the uniquely desirable $2,000 card may wind up being rare, but it’s here, and it works.

Below, find our pictures 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 5090, 5080, and 5070 Founder’s Editions side by side; and some examples of just how bulky every other partner’s cards can be compared to Nvidia’s own.