MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Suprim Liquid SOC Review: Fast, Frigid Blackwell

And with the AI, creator, and synthetic tests out of the way, let's move on to some actual game tests. Homeworld 3 is the latest installment in the long-running real-time strategy (RTS) series, developed by Blackbird Interactive and published by Gearbox Software. Released in mid-2024, Homeworld 3 continues the space saga that began with the original Homeworld game. We tested Homeworld 3 at a couple of resolutions -- up to 4K -- with and without resolutions scaling enabled.

Homeworld 3 Benchmarks

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Homeworld 3

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Homeworld 3 was mostly CPU limited at the lower resolution, but the MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Suprim Liquid SOC still came out on top. The GPU is a somewhat larger bottleneck in this game at 4K, but framerates remain high and the MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Suprim Liquid SOC is the fastest overall.

hw3 msi 5090 performance

With FSR 2 or DLSS enabled (sans frame generation, Balanced preset), the MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Suprim Liquid SOC remains the leader, just slightly beating out the Founders Edition card.

Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered Benchmarks

Next up, we’ve got some benchmarks from Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered. The original Horizon Zero Dawn was initially released as an exclusive on the PlayStation 4, but was ported to the PC a couple of years back. A few months ago, however, a remastered version of the game was released, with upgraded visuals and support for more advanced graphics technologies. For those unfamiliar with the game, it follows a character named Aloy, who is on a quest to unravel mysteries of a future Earth ruled by machines. She is outcast from her tribe and fights to uncover her past and stop an impending threat to the future.

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Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered

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The MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Suprim Liquid SOC and NVIDIA Founders Edition traded blows depending on the resolution in this game, though the MSI card did put up a better 1% low score at 4K.


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Will DLSS or FSR enabled, the ranking don't change, but the framerates go way up -- the MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Suprim Liquid SOC is right there alongside NVIDIA's Founder's Edition.

The Talos Principle II Testing

Croteam’s The Talos Principle II is a sequel to the original first-person, puzzle-based adventure game that features philosophical themes and expansive environments with increasingly more difficult challenges as the game progresses. It was originally released for multiple platforms but has been continually updated on the PC.

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The Talos Principle II

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The Talos Principle II was the complete opposite of Horizon Zero Dawn. Once again, the MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Suprim Liquid SOC and NVIDIA card trade victories, but the MSI card comes out on top at the more taxing 4K resolution.

talos3 msi 5090 performance

Turn on DLSS or FSR (in balanced mode) and MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Suprim Liquid SOC remains in the lead, topping the charts yet again.

Assassin's Creed Mirage Benchmarks

Ubisoft’s Assassin's Creed Mirage is an action-adventure game set in 9th century Baghdad, Iraq. It is the thirteenth major installment in the storied Assassin's Creed franchise and the successor to 2020's Assassin's Creed Valhalla.

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Assassin's Creed Mirage

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The MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Suprim Liquid SOC's higher clocks give it a more pronounced edge in Assassin's Creed Mirage. The deltas are small, of course, but the MSI card still manages another win.

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Enabling DLSS or FSR in Assassin's Creed Mirage significantly increases framerates, but the rankings remain unchanged -- the MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Suprim Liquid SOC is the fastest card of the bunch.

Black Myth: Wukong Benchmarks

Black Myth: Wukong is a title with a storied history. It began development way back in 2018, and was first showed to the public with an incredible trailer in 2020, but the pandemic and other internal struggles delayed the game's development and it wasn't released until last year. Black Myth: Wukong supports a variety of upscalers, including NVIDIA's DLSS, AMD's FSR3, Intel's XeSS, and Epic's own TSR. Using DLSS, FSR3, or TSR gives you the option of enabling frame generation too, which you'll need if you want to crank up the visuals in this stunning title.

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Black Myth: Wukong

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Chalk up another victory for the MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Suprim Liquid SOC in Black Myth: Wukong. It's lead is small in the punshing title, but the MSI card still manages a few more frames per second than the NVIDIA Founders Edition.

bm3 msi 5090 performance

If you want to play Black Myth: Wukong with smooth framerates with all of the eye candy turned on, resolution scaling is basically a necessity. With DLSS on, the MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Suprim Liquid SOC puts up buttery smooth framerates at 4K and continues to the lead the pack.

F1 24 Benchmarks

F1 24 is Codemaster’s latest Formula One racing simulation, and like previous version of the game, it sports impressive visuals. This latest addition to the franchise supports DirectX 12 with ray tracing, and it incorporates support for a number of AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) features and NVIDIA technologies, like DLSS with frame generation. We tested the games with its Ultra High graphics preset, with ray tracing and TAA enabled at a couple of resolutions to see what these graphics cards could do.

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F1 24

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The MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Suprim Liquid SOC pull off a couple more narrow victories in the F1 24, at both resolutions.

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With DLSS or FSR 2 (Balanced) enabled in F1 24, the same rings true, with the MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Suprim Liquid SOC taking the pole position yet again.

Cyberpunk 2077 Benchmarks

Cyberpunk 2077 is based on the Cyberpunk tabletop role-playing game franchise. The tabletop game was published for the first time all the way back in 1988, and the intervening 30-odd years has not changed the game world all that much. As a result, Cyberpunk 2077 looks somewhat retro-futuristic, as this is how people in the '80s imagined what the future would look like.

The PC game make use of virtually every advanced DirectX graphics technology and features support for DLSS, FSR and XeSS, and after a somewhat rocky release, it has been significantly updated and optimized for a multitude of hardware configurations. Although it is no longer considered a new title, Cyberpunk 2077 remains a showcase for many advanced graphics technologies.

We tested a pre-release version of Cyberpunk 2077 that's been updated with support for DLSS 4's transformer model and multi-frame generation. This is an important note because this game foreshadows how future games, that are optimized for Blackwell and the RTX 50 series, may perform relative to previous-gen GPUs. 

cyberpunk 2077 benchmarks
Cyberpunk 2077

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cp2 msi 5090 performance

First up, we have some results with native rendering. As you can see, the MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Suprim Liquid SOC takes the lead over the Founders Edition and is the fastest card overall by a couple of percentage points.

What happens when you enabled DLSS 4 and leverage some of that new technology in Blackwell, though? Let's find out...

cp3 msi 5090 performance

With the pre-release beta we tested, Cyberpunk 2077 supports DLSS 4 using the new transformer model, and multi-frame generation. As you can see, injecting those frames boosts performance dramatically and the MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Suprim Liquid SOC tops out at over 250 FPS, which is about a 4.5X increase over native rendering. To go from tunder 60 FPS to saturating a 4K 240Hz display is eye-opening and helps explain why AI-accerated rending technologies are the path forward for now.

Because this game also supports NVIDIA Reflex technology, latency is also low enough that you still fill engaged while playing, even with milti-frame generation enabled. Image quality is also excellent; you can see some of the ways the new transformer model helps DLSS image quality here.

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