Let’s take a look at this card – the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070. We’re most excited about this GPU because of what the NVIDIA CEO, Jensen Huang, claimed that the new RTX 5070 has the “same performance as the RTX 4090” at 1/3 the price.
Is he serious? RTX 4090 performance but very nearly a third of the price? I mean seriously, within just one generation, the tiny RTX 5070 can compete against the beefy RTX 4090? Of course, you and I already know – or at least have an idea – on how this is achieved.
So, what we’re going to do here today is to compare a few GPUS against the RTX 5070 just to see how it compares against its predecessors – especially the RTX 4090.
Quick look at the card
So, first things first – the design. This time around, the RTX 5070 does have a Founders Edition model. At first glance, it looks like a miniature version of the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 FE, but some changes have also been made to the cooling system. That said, the RTX 5070 is actually a very compact card and it could be a great choice for small form factor builds.
Compared to its predecessor however, it is now rated for a slightly higher TDP of 250W and requires at least a 600W PSU. In the box of this RTX 5070 FE, we do have a 2x8pin to 12VHPWR converter included.
Testbench hardware used
Now, for our testbench hardware, we have this list as shown on the screen.
- CPU: Intel Core i9-14900K
- Motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 APEX ENCORE
- Memory: KLEVV CRAS V RGB ROG Certified DDR5 (24GB x2)
- Graphics Cards Tested: RTX 5070 FE, RTX 4070 SUPER FE, RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, RTX 4080 SUPER FE, RTX 4090 FE
- Power Supply: Cooler Master M2000 Platinum
- Storage: Kingston KC3000 2TB
- CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Liquid PL360 Flux
- Chassis: Cooler Master MasterFrame 700
- OS: Windows 11 Pro 64-bit 24H2
We are testing it against a lot of GPUs this time because we have them. Just like before, we’re splitting the benchmarks into 3 different segments – the first is pure raster performance, then ray-tracing performance without DLSS, and finally – DLSS turned on.
Raster performance
Starting with the raster performance – even though the RTX 5070 is marketed for 1440p gaming, it is surprisingly capable for 4K gaming too. It can maintain over 60FPS in most titles except for Alan Wake 2 and Cyberpunk 2077, which are known to be extremely demanding. Surprisingly though, Hogwarts Legacy can run over 60fps.
At 1440p, this is where the RTX 5070 performs much closer to the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, oftentimes matching it.
As for 1080p, compared to the RTX 4070, we can see a performance uplift of around 5-20% – and that is substantial.
Ray-tracing performance
Moving on to the ray-tracing performance, a similar pattern emerges once again. The RTX 5070 performs very well in most titles, averaging over 60FPS except for Alan Wake 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 which pushed the card to its limits.
At 1440p, it will once again match or outperform the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, except in Metro Exodus. Compared to the RTX 4070 SUPER though, the gap is more pronounced.
The 1080p results mirror this trend too – but seriously, do you still play games at 1080p if you have the RTX 5070? Let us know down in the comments below.
Once more, the RTX 5070 delivers a substantial uplift of around 2-28% depending on the game.
DLSS 4 – “RTX 4090 performance for 1/3 the price”
However, in both raster and ray-tracing performance tests, the RTX 5070 falls short of the RTX 4090 by a huge gap. So, what’s up? How does this card get the performance of an RTX 4090? Is NVIDIA doing some sort of false advertising?
Well, no. It is achievable – the answer is through DLSS 4.0. This new generation of DLSS has something called multi-frame generation that boosts the frame rate by like 4x with just a few clicks.
With this option, we can make demanding games to run at around 80-120fps with max settings in 4K resolution and still have superb responsiveness alongside amazing response time.
This is where the RTX 5070 achieves the “RTX 4090 performance”. I mean, the numbers don’t lie – it is achievable if the game supports DLSS 4 with multi-frame generation – but it’s not perfect. Some games like Cyberpunk 2077 has longer frametimes with path-tracing enabled. So, disable it and the issue is resolved.
Unsupported games can also be force-enabled with 4x multi-frame generation via the NVIDIA App’s DLSS Override feature, but the amount of titles supported is still far and few in between – for now, at least. I’m sure the list will grow as time passes.
Also, the frame generation feature isn’t perfect either. While it can make your FPS number fly off the chart, the AI-generated frame is not perfect as there will be some artifacts if we look closer. Though, most of the time, it’ll just whizz by and we don’t even realize a thing.
Power draw
The power draw of this new RTX 5070 though, is around 240W to 280W, which is a tad bit higher than its predecessor by around 20-40W. The time that we did observe 280W peak power consumption was while in Cyberpunk 2077.
For thermals, the GPU die can reach 82.6°C and the memory junction is at 84°C during synthetic benchmarks. While gaming though, the temperatures are at around 81.4°C to 82°C. It’s pretty good for a compact card like this.
Is the RTX 5070 worth the price?
So, if you skipped directly to this part – then I’ll just answer this question first. Can the RTX 5070 really deliver the same performance of an RTX 4090? Well… under the right conditions, yes. The conditions being DLSS 4 and multi-frame generation.
In terms of raw performance with no AI trickery, the RTX 5070 sits around the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER level. Like all the other RTX 50-series cards that we reviewed, the new Blackwell architecture doesn’t offer a massive generational leap in terms of performance when compared to the predecessors.
So, is the RTX 5070 worth the price at $549? I think that if you have anything older than the RTX 30-series cards, yes – it’s absolutely worth the upgrade.
The current adoption rate of DLSS 4 is still low, but we do believe that it will be adopted by many more upcoming games. I mean, just look at DLSS when it was first launched with the RTX 20-series.
