The first Geekbench 6 results (via BenchLeaks on X) for Nvidia’s RTX 5090 laptop GPU are here. They show extremely poor performance consistency, though.
The RTX 5090 laptop GPU was tested in Geekbench’s GPU Vulkan compute benchmark and ran in MSI’s Vector 17 HX AI laptop, which also features a Core Ultra 9 275HX. The machine was tested five times in about ten minutes, which is usually a good time for reasonably consistent performance in a scored test.
The RTX 5090 laptop GPU scored between 51,831 and 114,821 points on the Vulkan test. According to Geekbench’s data, the RTX 4090 laptop GPU has an average performance of around 167,577 points. The RTX 5090 laptop GPU results were all over the place. The performance of run four was over twice as much as what the RTX 5090 laptop GPU achieved in the first run. As far as Geekbench is aware, nothing changed concerning the CPU or the Windows power plan (set to the balanced profile), leaving no concrete evidence of what happened with Nvidia’s flagship laptop GPU in this specific batch of benchmarks.
Interestingly, runs one to four gradually increase the score, and then run five shows a score almost the same as run two. It’s plausible that the user was flicking through different profiles between each run. These profiles may not even alter anything related to Windows’ power plan settings, which Geekbench refers to when collecting power plan data; that all five runs used the balanced power plan may not mean anything.
| Benchmark | Score |
|---|---|
| Run 1 | 51,831 |
| Run 2 | 75,544 |
| Run 3 | 95,291 |
| Run 4 | 114,821 |
| Run 5 | 77,989 |
Inconsistent performance can be a symptom of immature drivers and poor optimization. Still, the RTX 5090 laptop chip is slated for a March release, and two months before launch, we’d expect Nvidia’s drivers to be in a good place.
Driver issues seem unlikely, judging from Nvidia’s track record, but there may be factors specific to this MSI laptop. Perhaps whoever tested the device was playing around with different performance profiles that MSI offers through its custom software. The RTX 5090 laptop GPU ranges from 95 to 150 watts, and the RTX 5080 is rated for 360, so the GPU would likely perform very differently depending on its power limit.
But for all we know, the laptop hosting the RTX 5090 laptop GPU could have been malfunctioning somehow. We only have the benchmark scores and a little extra testing data, so we’d have no idea if there were some cooling issues, buggy firmware, or something else at play. In that case, that might mean these benchmark scores are pointless to dissect.
