RTX 5090 gets 12% gaming boost in Ubuntu 26.04, thanks to optimizations with Gnome 50 — latest popular distro update brings significant performance uplift for Nvidia's top GPU

Ubuntu 26.04 brings a significant gaming performance boost of up to 12% for Nvidia's RTX 5090 GPU, thanks to optimizations with Gnome 50. Phoronix tested the new Ubuntu version against 25.10 and found improvements in various games and benchmarks. The update includes Mesa 26 with performance optimizations and bug fixes, as well as ray tracing optimizations for Vulkan. While the enhancements are most noticeable on the RTX 5090, other Nvidia GPUs may see less benefit from the optimizations.