Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 review: definitely not a $549 RTX 4090

The RTX 50-series launch hasn’t gone smoothly so far. Severely limited stock, high prices, and manufacturing issues have left PC gamers frustrated. Now, Nvidia is trying to get things heading in the right direction with the RTX 5070, a GPU that it promised would deliver $1,599 RTX 4090-like performance for $549.

It doesn’t, and it was never going to. It’s about 20 percent faster than the RTX 4070 and a bare 4 percent faster than last year’s RTX 4070 Super. It’s a solid card for 1440p gaming, just like the RTX 4070, but as with the rest of the 50-series cards, Nvidia’s performance claims rely on Frame Generation rather than meaningful improvements to rendering.

At $549, the RTX 5070 will also come up against AMD’s new $549 Radeon RX 9070 and $599 Radeon RX 9070 XT when they launch on March 6th. If AMD manages to beat Nvidia’s RTX 5070 or come close to the $749 RTX 5070 Ti, that’s going to put a lot of much-needed pressure on Nvidia’s pricing.

You might want to wait a couple of days to purchase anything until we can talk about those AMD cards.

The RTX 5070 Founders Edition card I’ve been testing looks like a miniature RTX 5090 with a slightly darker paint job and no LEDs. It’s still a two-slot card, and it retains the two fans at the bottom that direct cooler air over the card and exhaust it out of the top, as well as the slightly angled 12V-2×6 power connector that makes it easier to fit into more cases.

I really like the size. It feels like the ideal companion for a small form factor PC, and I don’t think I’d be too worried about the heat this little GPU would generate or the power draw (more on that later).

I’ve been testing the RTX 5070 card with AMD’s Ryzen 9 9800X3D processor and Asus’ 32-inch 4K OLED PG32UCDP. I’ve put it up against the previous RTX 4070 and RTX 4070 Super cards, as well as the more expensive RTX 5070 Ti and AMD’s RX 7900 XT, which you can see in the benchmark charts below.

I’ve tested a variety of games at both 1440p and 4K, including more demanding titles like Black Myth: Wukong and benchmarking favorites like Cyberpunk 2077 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. All games have been tested at very high or Ultra settings, so you’ll get a good idea of the RTX 5070’s true capabilities, though you’ll probably want to drop the settings for better frame rates.

As with every other 50-series card, the 5070 isn’t much of an upgrade in raw performance over the last generation. Without DLSS or RT enabled, the RTX 5070 is 18 percent faster than an RTX 4070 at 1440p and 22 percent faster at 4K; compared to the 4070 Super, it’s only 3 percent faster at 1440p and 4 percent at 4K. You’ll see a solid boost if you’re coming from a 30-series card or older, though; it’s nearly 55 percent faster than the RTX 3070 Ti.

The RTX 5070 is still largely a 1440p card, which has been the sweet spot for Nvidia’s 70 lineup for a few generations. While it delivers playable frame rates for most games in my test suite at 4K resolution, you’ll need to enable DLSS in some titles if you want to be over 60fps consistently with all the settings maxed out. If you’re willing to drop some quality settings and enable DLSS, the RTX 5070 becomes a lot more capable.

If you’re looking for better 4K performance, stepping up to an RTX 5070 Ti gets you about 29 percent higher frame rates, but you’ll pay at least 35 percent more, assuming either card stays anywhere near MSRP.

My main concern about the RTX 5070 for 4K gaming is its 12GB of VRAM. I’ve already run into performance issues testing entry-level 4K gaming with the 8GB RTX 3070 Ti in certain games, and I don’t think 12GB of VRAM is going to fare well in the future, either. This is particularly relevant when AMD is about to ship its RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT with 16GB of VRAM. I wish Nvidia had done the same.

DLSS 4 and Multi Frame Gen

It was obvious from the start that Nvidia’s claims that the RTX 5070 would match the RTX 4090 relied entirely on DLSS 4’s Multi Frame Generation. The 50-series cards have up to 4x frame generation with DLSS 4, so they can generate up to three additional frames per frame rendered traditionally. The RTX 4090 can use DLSS 4, including Nvidia’s updated transformer models, but only has 2x frame generation.

It’s only the fact that the 5070 can generate three times as many interstitial frames as the RTX 4090 that lets it appear anywhere near as fast. In Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K with Ultra settings, ray tracing enabled, and 4x Frame Generation, the RTX 5070 averaged 122fps. The older RTX 4090, with 2x Frame Generation, managed 128fps, and it’s rendering far more of them the old-fashioned way.

If you take Nvidia at face value and assume performance equals frame rate, the RTX 4090 is still 5 to 10 percent faster than the RTX 5070 when frame generation is cranked up all the way on both cards. In traditional rendering, the RTX 4090 is 75 percent faster on average. Without ray tracing or frame generation, the RTX 4090 got 76fps in Cyberpunk 2077, and the RTX 4070 got 48fps.

As I’ve discussed in previous reviews, and as even Nvidia’s materials show, multi-frame generation makes gameplay look smoother, but the game will still feel sluggish if the base frame rate is low. You can really feel it on the RTX 5070, especially in 4K. With DLSS Super Resolution and x4 Multi Frame Generation, Cyberpunk 2077 hit 77fps at Ultra settings with full path tracing, but it still feels like the 24fps it is before Multi Frame Gen is applied.

Multi Frame Gen makes more sense at 1440p because the base frame rates are a lot higher. I wouldn’t buy the RTX 5070 because of Multi Frame Generation alone, but the DLSS 4 improvements and the new transformer model have certainly improved image quality for me in a variety of games, and you can even force DLSS 4 in unsupported games through Nvidia’s new app. But you don’t need an RTX 5070 for DLSS 4, so if you don’t care about Multi Frame Generation and you can somehow find an RTX 4070 Super at a reasonable price, it’s still a good choice.

Beyond gaming, the RTX 5070 can also deliver better performance in video editing or for AI workloads. In Procyon’s AI XL (FP16) test, the RTX 5070 is nearly 28 percent faster than the RTX 4070, or nearly 4 percent faster than the RTX 4070 Super. For video editing, I tested the RTX 5070 with PugetBench’s DaVinci Resolve test and found it’s 11 percent faster than the RTX 4070 and nearly 10 percent faster than the RTX 4070 Super.

Nvidia recommends a 650-watt power supply for the RTX 5070, which is exactly the same as both the RTX 4070 and RTX 4070 Super. The total graphics power has increased to 250 watts in total, up by 50 watts over the RTX 4070 and just 30 watts over the RTX 4070 Super.

At 4K resolution, the RTX 5070 averaged 210 watts across the nine games tested — 25 watts more than the RTX 4070 averaged (185 watts) and just four watts more than the RTX 4070 Super (206 watts). The RTX 5070 hit its max power draw of 250 watts during the Metro Exodus Extreme benchmark, and it hit a maximum temperature of 77 degrees Celsius in that same test on my open bench, compared to 67C on both the RTX 4070 and 4070 Super.

I’m once again impressed that Nvidia hasn’t massively increased the power requirements here, but it looks like the RTX 5070 will run hotter than previous cards. While the RTX 5090 is certainly power-hungry, both the RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti are a lot more efficient, while delivering gains over the previous-generation cards.

I feel like a broken record saying that the RTX 5070 continues the trend of modest generational improvements with the RTX 50 series, but unfortunately, that’s the case here again. This is really an ideal 1440p card thanks to the high frame rates at that resolution, or an entry-level 4K card if you’re willing to drop settings down and enable DLSS.

But it’s hard to recommend the RTX 5070 until the question hanging over it has been answered: AMD’s RX 9070-series cards. AMD surprised everyone with a $549 price tag for its RX 9070 and $599 for its RX 9070 XT last week. Both cards are challenging Nvidia’s pricing for its RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti, and if they’re good enough, they might put pressure on Nvidia to adjust its pricing.

Until we know how all four cards compare, I would hold off on buying an RTX 5070 on day one. AMD might just surprise us with its performance as well as its pricing.

Photography by Tom Warren / The Verge