RTX 5090D tested with nine-years-old Xeon CPU that cost $7 — it does surprisingly well in some games, if you enable MFG

A Chinese tech reviewer benchmarked Nvidia's all-new "for China" RTX 5090D against a variety of CPUs, from AMD's flagship Ryzen 7 9800X3D, one of the best CPUs for gaming, to Intel's Core Ultra 9 285K, and all the way down to a nine-years-old 14-core Xeon E5-2680 v4 based on the Broadwell architecture. Despite its age, the $7 chip was at least moderately competitive with modern CPUs when using DLSS frame generation, especially with DLSS4 MFG.

The reviewer tested Counter-Strike 2, Marvel Rivals, and Cyberpunk 2077 on an assortment of CPUs paired to the RTX 5090D. The list of CPUs consists of the Core Ultra 9 285K, Core Ultra 7 265K, Core Ultra 5 245K, Core i7-14700KF, Core i5-14600KF, Core i5-12400F, Core i3-12100F, and Xeon E5-2680 v4. On the AMD side, Ryzen 9 9900X, Ryzen 7 9800X3D, Ryzen 5 9600X, Ryzen 9 7900X, Ryzen 7 7800X3D, Ryzen 5 7500F, and Ryzen 5 5600 were tested. That's a wide range of processors extending back nearly a decade.

Counter-Strike 2 showcased the lowest results for the Xeon E5-2680 v4. At 4K maximum settings, the CPU's average frame rate was 33% slower than the next-closest Core i3-12100F, never mind higher performance chips like the Ryzen 7 9800X3D that were almost twice as fast. The Broadwell-based chip delivered an average frame rate of 168 FPS, with the Core i3-12100F at 248 FPS. The fastest CPUs topped out at up to 322 FPS — all without any frame generation. 1% Low framerates were even worse, with the Xeon E5-2680 v4 netting just 72 FPS, with the fastest CPU landing at 163 FPS — 2.26X faster.

The Xeon chip's awful frame rate in CS2 shows the problem with pairing such a powerful GPU with an "archaic" processor. But this testing of the RTX 5090D also serves as the foundation for the other tests.

Marvel Rivals at 4K highest quality settings almost completely reverses the CS2 results. All the CPUs, from the Core i3-12100F to the Core Ultra 9 285K, shared virtually identical frame rates of 111-115 FPS, revealing a bottleneck that's not CPU related. The Xeon E5-2680 v4 wasn't far behind, with an average frame rate of 101. That makes the fastest Ryzen 7 9800X3D only 14% quicker than the nine-years-old Xeon chip. But again, minimum FPS is important, and the Xeon only managed 65 FPS compared to 80–99 FPS on the other processors. It's up to 34% slower on minimum framerates.

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Interestingly, DLSS 3 frame generation more than doubled the performance of all the CPUs, with most of the chips at 238–242 FPS. (We have to assume DLSS upscaling was also enabled, as otherwise performance shouldn't be more than 80~90 percent faster at best from framegen.) With DLSS3 framegen, the Xeon E5-2680 v4 closed the gap slightly, averaging 218 FPS. Minimums were still up to 38% slower, however.

And DLSS4 with MFG4X in Marvel Rivals pushed everything into the 400+ FPS range on average. The Xeon this time was only 6% behind the fastest chips. And of course, the 1% lows were still quite a bit worse, at 164 FPS compared to 298–308 FPS on the fastest CPUs. So that's still a big 40–47 percent deficit, and as we pointed out in our DLSS4 and MFG testing, when you divide by four to get the base framerate and input rate, it was only running at 41 FPS before framegen.

Cyberpunk 2077, at 4K maximum RT-Overdrive (possibly Psycho) settings ran at just 34 FPS on the best CPUs, including the Ryzen 7 9800X3D. The slower chips like the Ryzen 5 5600 and Core i3-12100F landed at 32 and 31 FPS, respectively. The Xeon E5-2680 v4 was the lowest again, but still with an average framerate of 29 FPS. In other words, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D outperformed the Xeon E5-2680 v4 by 17%. Minimum FPS was 19 on the Xeon versus up to 24 on the other CPUs, a 26% lead.

DLSS3 framegen and upscaling gives a massive boost to framerates, with the Xeon landing at 95 FPS compared to 125–132 FPS on the other chips. It was up to 28% slower in that case. But then DLSS 4 with multi frame generation (MFG) boosts framerates even more.

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D managed 255 FPS, with around 250 FPS on all the other AMD chips save for the Ryzen 5 5600. DLSS 4 with MFG4X on the Xeon E5-2680 v4 allowed the ancient CPU to nearly match the other Intel chips on average FPS. It scored 213 FPS, compared to 219–226 FPS on the other Intel CPUs. That's only a 6% difference, at most... unless you look at minimum FPS. In that case, the Xeon only managed 78 FPS (basically tying the 12100F), while most of the other CPUs were in the 120–150 FPS range.

In short, no, the nine-years-old Xeon processor is not going to keep up with the latest chips, with or without framegen and MFG and upscaling. But it does better than you might expect, at least in the three games that were tested on the RTX 5090D. Frame generation can prove particularly helping in games that are completely CPU limited, as that means the GPU has plenty of headroom to run the AI routines for frame generation. It's particularly helpful with the Xeon E5-2680 v4, as that's going to be a severely CPU-constrained environment.

That doesn't mean MFG and framegen are the solution to CPU bottlenecks, though. If you take some of the minimum FPS results and divide by four (like in Cyberpunk 2077), the base framerate was under 20 FPS. It might be playable, technically, after quadrupling that to 78 FPS, but it's not the smoothest experience at all.