Following the unboxing embargo earlier this week for the [1]NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 , today the review embargo lifts for the GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition review embargo is now up and so there will be a number of Windows gaming reviews up any minute on various publications. While having the GeForce RTX 5090 FE review sample in advance thanks to NVIDIA, it turns out the Linux packaged driver isn't quite ready yet.

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The current public NVIDIA 565 Linux graphics driver build does not work with the GeForce RTX 50 series.

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I have been waiting on a NVIDIA Linux packaged driver for the GeForce RTX 5090 to try out this beautifully crafted graphics card. But there isn't yet a press preview driver available for Linux yet. I am told on 30 January for the retail availability launch date they will have a Linux driver available -- just as we have been used to seeing for many years and NVIDIA product generations. So worst case scenario is waiting until the end of next week to be able to begin testing the GeForce RTX 5090 under Linux. Otherwise hopefully in the days ahead there will be a "press preview" Linux driver so that I am able to begin putting this $1999 USD graphics card to use.

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Besides introducing GeForce RTX 50 series support, it will be interesting to see what other new features and improvements might be found in this next NVIDIA Linux driver release. Currently on the NVIDIA R565 driver series for Linux users, presumably this next NVIDIA Linux driver release will usher in the R570 driver branch.

So long story short, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Linux benchmarks will begin in the days ahead once having a Linux driver build. Sorry for not being able to share any early data today alongside all of the RTX 5090 Windows reviews being published. That at least is one benefit of the open-source driver stacks from AMD and Intel is not having to worry about any "preview" driver builds but rather simply relying on the very latest upstream open-source code within the Linux kernel and Mesa -- sans of course the exceptions when firmware blobs aren't yet published or other caveats of years passed when the support hasn't been quite baked for launch-day. In any event stay tuned for the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Linux review and benchmarks as I am very eager to see how this new high-end desktop graphics card will perform across Linux graphics/gaming and compute workloads.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-5090-pre

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=2025&image=rtx_5090_ubuntu_lrg

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=2025&image=rtx_5090_fail_lrg

[4] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=2025&image=rtx_5090_pci_lrg