Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5070 Doesn’t Quite Have the Muscle

Nvidia’s 50 Series releases are chugging right along, even though things haven’t exactly been smooth. The top end of the series has shown impressive 4K performance, but finding one in stock for close to MSRP requires active effort or plenty of patience.

At just $549, the RTX 5070 is currently the least expensive graphics card in the 50 Series to be officially announced. It can handle 1080p gaming just fine, but it struggles to keep up at 1440p, and especially with high-refresh-rate monitors becoming more common. It’s a nice size, but I’d recommend saving up for the more expensive GPUs, or looking at previous generations.

Compact Shape

This new card is noticeably smaller than the RTX 5080 FE (8/10, WIRED Recommends) and RTX 5090 FE (7/10, WIRED Recommends), rising just barely above the top of the PCIe plate, with a true two-slot width and a length that’s a full 62 millimeters (2.4 inches) shorter. It’s also smaller than the Asus Prime RTX 5070 Ti (8/10, WIRED Recommends), which uses a more traditional cooler setup. While the larger cards would fit in most builds, the RTX 5070 should have no issues finding its way into even the most compact cases.

It’s a shame these Founders Editions aren’t an unlimited offering, because I think this generation is quite nice. I’m a big fan of the design, which has an understated look that feels really premium. I’m not a fan of brightly lit cards with designs that can’t be matched to other parts, and I think the Founders Edition cards will look right at home in almost any case.

Like the other 50 Series cards, the RTX 5070 FE uses the new 12V-2×6 connector, and includes a braided nylon adapter for your existing PSU. You should only need a 650-watt power supply for this card, down from 750 watts for the 5070 Ti, which will once again benefit small and budget system builders.

Gaming Performance

I’ve dug into the effects of multiframe generation in the other reviews, the RTX 5090 FE in particular, so for this review I focused on performance with the feature turned off. If you’re trying to ensure smooth performance, the extra frames per second (fps) it provides will probably be worth it for this card more than the others.

Chart courtesy of Brad Bourque