treading water Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 review: No, its not 4090 performance at $549 It's not all bad news, but in a lot of ways this is barely an upgrade. Andrew Cunningham Mar 4, 2025 9:00 am | 8 Credit: Andrew Cunningham Credit: Andrew Cunningham Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn more"4090 performance at $549."Thats what Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said of the GeForce RTX 5070 when he announced the card at CES in January. Thanks to AI, this new midrange GPU would be able to match the frame rates of what had been the fastest consumer GPU that had previously existed, for around one-third the price.Let's dispel that notion up front. No, the GeForce RTX 5070 is not as fast as an RTX 4090, not without some very creative comparing of non-comparable numbers. Per usual for the 50-series, Nvidia is leaning on its AI-generated interpolated frames for the bulk of its claimed performance improvements. In terms of actual rendering speed, the 5070 isnt even as fast as a 4080 or a 4070 Ti. Its barely faster than last years 4070 Super, and with disproportionately higher power usage. The RTX 5070 Founders Edition is a lot smaller than the 5090/5080 design. Andrew Cunningham The RTX 5070 Founders Edition is a lot smaller than the 5090/5080 design. Andrew Cunningham Like the 5090/5080, the 5070 switches to a slightly angled 12-pin power connector. Andrew Cunningham Like the 5090/5080, the 5070 switches to a slightly angled 12-pin power connector. Andrew Cunningham The RTX 5070 Founders Edition is a lot smaller than the 5090/5080 design. Andrew Cunningham Like the 5090/5080, the 5070 switches to a slightly angled 12-pin power connector. Andrew Cunningham For all that, it's still not necessarily a bad cardit's a little faster than the $599 4070 Super at the same $549 price that Nvidia used for the RTX 4070. It still represents Nvidia's minimum viable 4K GPU, once you factor in DLSS upscaling, and its well suited for people with 1440p monitors.But it's a hard card to get excited about, and unlike every other 50-series GPU released so far, it actually has to compete against somethingAMD's new Radeon RX 9070 series. I can't talk in detail about how these cards all stack up until later this week, but suffice it to say that Nvidia could use something a bit more impressive than the RTX 5070 at this price.GeForce RTX 5070 specsRTX 5070 TiRTX 4070 Ti SuperRTX 5070RTX 4070 SuperRTX 4070CUDA Cores8,9608,4486,1447,1685,888Boost Clock2,452 MHz2,610 MHz2,512 MHz2,475 MHz2,475 MHzMemory Bus Width256-bit256-bit192-bit192-bit192-bitMemory Bandwidth896 GB/s672 GB/s672 GB/s504 GB/s504 GB/sMemory size16GB GDDR716GB GDDR6X12GB GDDR712GB GDDR6X12GB GDDR6XTGP300 W285 W250 W220 W200 WThe 5070's CUDA core count falls right in between the RTX 4070 and the 4070 Super's, where the 5080 and 5070 Ti both included small increases from their previous generation counterparts. To boost speeds over the 4070 Super, this means Nvidia is leaning on architectural improvements in Blackwell, the memory bandwidth increase from GDDR7 (a fairly significant 33 percent increase), and increased GPU clock speeds (the memory switch and clock speed boosts likely explain the higher power consumption).The 5070 gives you 12GB of memory, which still clears that crucial more than 8GB bar that youll want for higher-than-1080p resolutions and ultra-quality textures, though as time goes on it may be more limiting at 4K if thats a resolution youre hoping to hit with this card.The number that sticks out in a bad way is the power consumptiona maximum of 250 W under load, 30 W more than the old 4070 Super. The 5070 series is still far more power-efficient than older cards like the RTX 3070 or 3080, but efficiency is no longer as much of an advantage for the 5070 as it was for the 4070 series. The 5070 Founders Edition (left) and the 4070-series design. Both have two fans, but only the 5070 puts them on the same side. Credit: Andrew Cunningham We reviewed the Founders Edition of the card provided by Nvidia, and it uses a different two-slot design than the much larger, much more powerful RTX 5090 and 5080 cards. It's the same physical size as the 4070 and 4060 Founders Edition cards, but with an updated power connector that's set at an angle instead of sticking out directly from the top of the card. Nvidia has updated the cooler design, too, moving both fans to the same side of the card rather than placing one on each side. The RTX 5070 runs a bit warmer than other cards we've tested recently. Credit: Andrew Cunningham Whether it's because of the updated cooler or the higher power consumption or both, the 5070 actually runs hotter than any other card in our current round of testing, including (by a few degrees) the 5090. The card runs a bit loud under loadthat's not a scientific measurement, but I noticed it more than I did when testing either the 5090 Founders Edition or the 4070-series Founders Editions. It's something to keep an eye on for any smaller or lower-end 5070 cards from partners that use smaller double-fan cooler designs, though we doubt it will be an issue for the triple-fan monstrosities.Testbed notesGaming testbedCPUAMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D (provided by AMD)MotherboardAsus ROG Crosshair X670E Hero (provided by AMD)RAM32GB (2x16GB) G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo RGB series (provided by AMD), running at DDR5-6000Power supplyThermaltake Toughpower GF A3 1050 WCPU cooler360 mm MSI MAG CoreLiquid I360CaseMontech XR ATX Mid-tower with three 120 mm cooling fans installed and side panel removedOSWindows 11 24H2 with Core Isolation on, Memory Integrity offDriversNvidia RTX 5090: Beta driver 571.86Nvidia RTX 5080: Beta driver 572.12Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti: Beta driver 572.43Nvidia RTX 5070: Beta driver 572.50Other Nvidia cards: Game Ready Driver 566.36AMD cards: Adrenalin 24.12.1Our testbed is the same as it's been since we updated it for the RTX 5090 reviewa Ryzen 7 9800X3D is the heart of the build to minimize the likelihood that CPU performance will cap any of our GPUs' frame rates.We've tested the 5070 at 4K and 1440p. Cards in this $500 to $600 price range tend to be a better fit for a 1440p high-refresh-rate gaming monitor, especially if you're hoping to play without DLSS or other upscaling technologies available.But if you play older or lighter games, if you don't mind upscalers, and if you can turn down a few settings, hitting 60 frames per second at 4K is often within the realm of possibility. It's certainly the least I would spend if I was hoping to play on a 4K monitor.Performance and power 4K game benchmarks. 4K game benchmarks.The 5070 usually represents a mid-single-digit performance increase over the 4070 Super, despite having fewer CUDA cores. It's more-or-less 20 percent faster than the RTX 4070a comparison Nvidia would probably prefer, since the 5070 is technically replacing the 4070 at $549 and not the 4070 Super at $599. But the launch MSRPs for the 50-series have been mostly imaginary so far, due to a combination of supply, demand, and people buying cards just so they can resell them for more money. We'd assume the same for the RTX 5070 until proven otherwise.There were a couple of exceptions in our suite that performed strangely no matter how many times we re-tested them or how many times we tried clearing our shader cache or reinstalling drivers, and one game that benefitted from an outsized increase. Cyberpunk 2077 in Ultra mode with ray-tracing disabled showed a larger improvement than the other games we tested24 percent faster than the 4070 Super, and 72 percent faster than the 4070. It was an outlier, but some games may benefit more than others.Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered andCyberpunk 2077in Overdrive mode with DLSS turned off all gave abnormally low or otherwise strange numberswe've presented those here for the sake of transparency, and we've communicated our findings to Nvidia, but we'd take these with a grain of salt when comparing results.Horizon seems to have some kind of issue with DLSS frame generation regardless of GPU, with low frame rates and odd visual artifacts across all the GeForce cards we've tested with recent drivers. 4K benchmarks with DLSS/FSR upscaling and single frame-generation enabled. 4K benchmarks with DLSS/FSR upscaling and single frame-generation enabled.On the AMD side, we can't compare the 5070 directly to the RX 9070 series yet, but it's worth noting that the 5070 outperforms the old RX 7900 GRE by a small but consistent amount in our benchmarks without ray-tracing effects (the gap in ray-traced games is larger because of AMD's typical performance deficit in these games).AMD says that the $549 RX 9070 and $599 9070 XT should be 21 percent and 42 percent faster (respectively) than the RX 7900 GRE on average. That could spell trouble for the 5070, but it remains to be seen whether AMD has fixed its ray-tracing performance problems and how much the cards' power efficiency has improved. 1440p benchmarks. 1440p benchmarks.We ran our 1440p benchmarks on the GeForce RTX 3070, too, to give a bit more context for upgraders. The 5070 is usually between 40 and 70 percent faster than the 3070 here, a card that will find itself more and more limited by its 8GB of RAM as time goes on. The 5070 is still a good upgrade from the 3070, it's just not all that much better of an upgrade than what you could get from a 4070 Super a year ago. As usual, the older your card is, the better the upgrade will feel, even if the generation-over-generation improvement is small. The 5070's small increase in performance is matched with a larger increase to power consumption. Credit: Andrew Cunningham In exchange for five or six percent better performance, the 5070 uses 13.5 percent more power under load than the 4070 Super did. Nvidia was so far ahead of AMD and the RTX 30-series on efficiency with the RTX 40-series GPUs that one relatively inefficient upgrade cycle doesn't really wreck things, but we do generally like to see power consumption either increase proportionally with performance, or for performance to increase more than power consumption does.Improving efficiency was always going to be tough for the 50-series, since the Blackwell GPU dies are manufactured using a 4nm TSMC process similar to what Nvidia used for the Ada Lovelace GPU dies for the 40-series. But the 5070 ends up slightly worse on this metric than the other 50-series cards.Frame generation comparisons and caveats A 5070 can go as fast as a 4090... if you use two entirely different performance metrics. Credit: Andrew Cunningham When you turn frame generation on, you can see the source of Jensen Huang's "4090 performance for $549" performance claim. The 5070 with DLSS Multi-Frame Generation (MFG) enabled in 4x mode has a similar average frame rate inCyberpunk 2077 compared to the RTX 4090 with the old Frame Generation mode enabled (now labeled "2x" in games that support MFG). That's because the 5070 is capable of generating three AI-interpolated frames for every rendered frame, rather than one.But the 5070 (and, when they arrive, the 5060 series) demonstrates the limits of FG and MFG more than the other 50-series cards do. With MFG enabled,Cyberpunk 2077 can hit over 80 frames per second on average with the Overdrive preset enabled. That sounds pretty good! Until you consider that the base frame rate (with DLSS upscaling enabled, but not any frame generation) is closer to 20 frames per second. With a base frame rate this low, user input will feel sluggish, and visual artifacts are plainly visible when objects are in motion.DLSS MFG can still have its usesthe 5070 can push some pretty high frame rates at 1440p, and MFG could help you take better advantage of a 240 Hz or 360 Hz 1440p monitor than you could without MFG enabled. But it remains a relatively niche technology that's useful under certain circumstances, not the broad cure-all for mediocre performance that Nvidia's charts imply it is.It could be better, or at least cheaper The GeForce RTX 5070. Credit: Andrew Cunningham The GeForce RTX 4070 and 4070 Super were some of the best values in Nvidia's lineup last generation, offering the same performance as high-end 30-series cards and outstanding power efficiency for a little less money than you'd spend on an RTX 3080 or 3090.Now that it's here, it's hard to classify the RTX 5070 as anything other than a disappointment. It's just barely, by the skin of its figurative teeth, faster than the 4070 Super for the same $549 MSRP as the regular 4070. This technically makes it an improvement, along with support for multi-frame generation. But this nearly imperceptible performance improvement comes with a 13.5 percent increase in power consumption under load, which seems like a bad trade-off any way you cut it.The RTX 5070 feels like the kind of product you make when you're not particularly worried about what your competition is doing. Theentire 50-series has sort of felt like that so far, between the astronomically high price of the RTX 5090 and the so-so performance improvements for the 5080 and 5070 Ti.But it's different for the RTX 5070 because AMD actually has an answer for it coming soon.AMD's RX 7600, 7700, and 7800 GPUs may not have been smash-hit sales successes for its last generation, but stiffer competition at and under $600 did help pull Nvidia's pricing down to earth a bit. Soon we'll know whether the RX 9070 series will exert a similar pullor if it can actually manage to wrest some market share back from Nvidia after years of trending in the wrong direction.The goodGreat 1440p performance and can stretch to 4K with the right settings.Same price as the old RX 4070 and a little cheaper than the 4070 Super (in theory).Compact design that should fit in just about any case.Reasonably power-efficient when compared to older RTX 30-series or Radeon cards.DLSS Multi-Frame Generation is a situationally useful technology.Wide ecosystem support for DLSS, CUDA, and other Nvidia software features.The badHigher power consumption for not that much better performance.A few odd performance results that will hopefully be ironed out by driver and/or game updates.Founders Edition runs a bit hot.12GB of RAM feels stingy.The uglyNvidia's grandiose apples-to-oranges performance comparisons.Availability remains a big question mark.Andrew CunninghamSenior Technology ReporterAndrew CunninghamSenior Technology Reporter Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue. 8 Comments