Hello everyone,
We are currently evaluating hardware options for a new CST Studio Suite 2025/2026 workstation, where the vast majority of our workload consists of Time Domain Solver (FIT) simulations, including antenna design, RIS structures, waveguide components, antenna arrays, and radio propagation studies.
According to the latest SIMULIA hardware recommendations, professional GPUs such as the RTX 5000 Ada, RTX 6000 Ada and RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell are officially validated. However, the GeForce RTX 5090 is not currently listed among the validated devices.
What makes the decision difficult is that, on paper, the RTX 5090 offers extremely attractive specifications for FIT-based simulations:
- 32 GB GDDR7 VRAM
- Very high memory bandwidth (comparable to or exceeding some professional solutions)
- Outstanding FP32 performance
- Significantly lower acquisition cost than RTX 6000 Ada or RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell
- Excellent performance-per-euro ratio
Since the Time Domain Solver is generally considered to benefit primarily from memory bandwidth, FP32 throughput and available VRAM, the RTX 5090 appears to be a potentially compelling alternative to professional RTX boards for many electromagnetic simulation workloads.
I would therefore appreciate feedback from users who have practical experience with CST and the RTX 5090:
- Does hardware acceleration work reliably?
- Is the GPU correctly detected and utilized by CST?
- Have you experienced any stability issues during long simulations?
- Are there any limitations compared to RTX 6000 Ada or RTX PRO cards?
- Have you compared performance directly against professional RTX solutions?
- Have you encountered VRAM limitations with large FIT models?
- Would you consider the RTX 5090 a viable workstation-class solution for CST research and engineering work?
We are particularly interested in understanding whether the lack of official validation is merely a support/certification issue, or whether there are practical reasons to prefer professional RTX boards despite the RTX 5090's impressive specifications.
Thank you.
