Indiana Jones and the Great Circle at 8K – a fitting swansong for the Nvidia RTX 4090, or a sign that we need the RTX 5090?

Is this one of the most graphically-ambitious titles ever?

11 Jan 2025, 15:00 · TechRadar

Features By Matt Hanson published 11 January 2025

(Image credit: Bethesda / Future)

So, it's official: with Nvidia announcing the RTX 5090 at CES 2025, the RTX 4090's reign as the most powerful consumer graphics card in the world is drawing to a close. Team Green's new flagship GPU could get us tantalizingly close to native 8K gaming, if Nvidia's boasts are to be believed. The 5090's 32GB of GDDR7 memory, compared to the 4090's 24GB of GDDR6X could have a huge impact when pushing extreme resolutions (and not only is there more memory, it's much faster as well).

However, until the RTX 5090 goes on sale on January 30, the RTX 4090 remains the top GPU when it comes to pure performance – which means that it's still your best chance of doing justice to the lofty ambitions of modern, graphically intensive, games.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is exactly that; a graphically demanding game that could either prove to be either a great showcase for the aging card, or a sign that the RTX 5090's time has indeed come.

The new Indy is one of those all-too-rare licensed games that completely nails the vibes of the thing it's based on – an especially impressive feat considering just how iconic the first three Indiana Jones films are.

Much of its charm likes in the way that the story, acting and music all combine to make you really feel like you're Dr Jones. The fact that it's also one of the most graphically impressive games of all time certainly helps up the immersion as you walk around photo-realistic locations around the globe.

A recent patch added full ray tracing (also known as Path Tracing) to the game, which ups the realism of the graphics even further with stunning lighting effects and reflections. As a graphical showpiece, then, I was keen to see just how well it plays on our RTX 4090-equipped testing rig at 8K. However, before the game even launched I was struck with a fear that I've never had before when playing on an RTX 4090 PC: will Nvidia's (currently) most powerful gaming GPU be enough?

Rough specs

This fear was ignited when Bethesda released the PC requirements for the game ahead of its release; these stated that an Nvidia RTX 4090 is required to run the game at full ray tracing at ultra settings.

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