I knew the RTX 5070 was tricking me. Parked subsequent to the extravagant silliness of the two-grand RTX 5090, this £539 / $549 graphics card seemed like a really agreeable deal, providing all the identical DLSS 4 and Multi Body Technology as its greater, pricier brothers. Additionally, an improve to the RTX 4070 Tremendous, a GPU that might deal with 4K with out wanting too misplaced in a premium 1080p rig. Tragically, although, the RTX 5070 breaks a sacred covenant, a mutual understanding between PC house owners and elements makers that’s held sturdy for many years: in the event you purchase a brand new model of a factor, it must be quicker than the outdated model of that factor. Look previous the MFG phantasm, and much too typically, it isn’t.
Rifling by means of the specs doesn’t flip up any clear causes for this lack of efficiency achieve; the RTX 5070’s CUDA core depend is available in at 6144, placing it merely in-between the RTX 4070 (5888) and the RTX 4070 Tremendous (7168), however each base and enhance clock speeds have been raised to compensate. VRAM, in the meantime, stays at 12GB, however with a change from GDDR6X to GDDR7 that confers considerably extra bandwidth. Then there’s the ability score, which each the delayed Founders Version and this right here triple-fan PNY GeForce RTX 5070 OC set at 250W – 50W greater than an entry-level RTX 4070 Tremendous. It appears to be like, and sounds, like an honest generational replace.
And but…
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 evaluation: 4K benchmarks
Whereas the RTX 5070 does make the lower as a 4K contender, surpassing 60fps in most Extremely-quality video games with out upscaling, the one time it produced a visibly quicker framerate was in Cyberpunk 2077. Elsewhere, it solely outperforms the RTX 4070 Tremendous by a scant handful of single-digit frames per second, and repeatedly loses out to the non-Tremendous RTX 4070 Ti within the course of.
Clearly, only a few potential consumers are going to be upgrading immediately from final yr’s RTX 4070 Tremendous to the RTX 5070, and the newest mannequin does no less than make for a meaty enchancment on the RTX 3070. Hassle is, that enchancment has already been made within the final era, and for costs that – even in the event you’re fortunate sufficient to seek out an RTX 5070 in inventory beneath £600 – are seemingly drop a lot quicker, particularly the place the secondhand market is anxious.
It’s additionally price addressing a selected declare, made by Nvidia throughout their unique RTX 50 sequence announcement, that the RTX 5070 delivers “RTX 4090 efficiency” with MFG. That is, relying on how beneficiant you need to be, both missing in context or full tosh. Whereas it’s true that, as an example, 4x MFG can drag the RTX 5070 to 71fps in a completely path-traced Alan Wake 2, that’s solely equal or quicker than the RTX 4090 in the event you deny the older GPU its personal instruments. Positive sufficient, it solely wants DLSS 3’s old-timey, 2x body era to common 82fps on in any other case an identical settings. Briefly, the one approach the RTX 5070 is really transferring on the similar tempo because the RTX 4090 is that if they’re in the identical supply van.
You can nonetheless take into account MFG to be the RTX 5070’s occasion trick, although at 4K particularly, it’s not as a lot of a difference-maker as it’s on on burlier playing cards just like the RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5080. In each Cyberpunk and Alan Wake 2, the RTX 4070 joins its 40-series rivals in being unable to churn out playable path tracing efficiency on DLSS High quality; in reality, within the latter, it’s narrowly the slowest of the lot. Because of this, when 4x MFG kicks in, it’s producing a better quantity in a framerate counter however isn’t truly serving to the video games to run and smoother or extra responsively than on the DLSS 3-limited 40 sequence fashions. So far as your PC is aware of, it’s nonetheless solely operating at 26/21fps, and all of the AI-generated frames on the planet received’t eliminate the sluggish really feel that aiming and digicam management will undergo in these circumstances.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 evaluation: 1440p benchmarks
1440p is a extra comfy setting for the RTX 5070’s body gen tech, although its issues with overfamiliar efficiency stay. If something, it’s extra bothersome right here, as the upper framerates make it even more durable to inform a naked-eye distinction between this and its predecessors.
In Murderer’s Creed Mirage, the RTX 4070 Tremendous even finishes forward, if solely be a single body, whereas even the video games that the RTX 5070 does comparatively nicely in (Cyberpunk 2077, F1 24) solely see an uptick of 10% or so. There’s a simultaneous gap-narrowing with the RTX 5070 Ti, suggesting you don’t have to stretch to the Ti model for high quality Quad HD, and once more, anybody upgrading from the RTX 3070 will take pleasure in a sizeable velocity enhance. Nonetheless, these advantages may apply to the RTX 4070 Tremendous simply as a lot because the RTX 5070.
The identical can’t be mentioned, in equity, for body gen efficiency. Though these checks counsel the RTX 5070 is in reality barely worse at coping with path tracing/full ray tracing than these pesky RTX 40 GPUs, in contrast to at 4K, it is ready to produce sufficient pre-generation frames to help a workable utility of 4x MFG.
I’m not saying that is an sufficient substitute for historically rendered frames, however no less than at this decision, you may type of see the place Nvidia is coming from. Spared from the necessity to compensate for sub-30fps framerates, body gen is free to easily shine up the visible smoothness of already adequately-running video games, accurately.
Nonetheless, it’s additionally laborious to not peer over at these towering RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5080 bars, questioning why the usual RTX 5070 couldn’t simply do some extra within the typical rendering division.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 evaluation: 1080p benchmarks
The drop to an excellent much less demanding display rez does little to lift the RTX 5070’s worth proposition. But once more it’s haunted by the Ghosts of XX70 GPUs Previous, particularly in Murderer’s Creed Mirage, the place it repeats its embarrassing loss. It does achieve a couple of further frames over the RTX 4070 Tremendous in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, however then that’s already operating so quick that you just’d want a 300Hz monitor and downright inhuman commentary expertise to understand them in motion.
That every one means we should return to the world of maxed-out lighting results and AI body era in quest of a comfort prize. Like at 1440p, the RTX 5070 begins off inexplicably worse than the RTX 4070 Tremendous when path tracing in concerned, although in each video games it nonetheless kinds itself a stable sufficient base to use 4x MFG with out enter lag coating your PC innards in treacle.
You’ll need to forgive me for not sharing these outcomes with the type of bubbly enthusiasm that multicoloured bar charts deserve. I do know it’s not just like the RTX 5070 has regressed to the purpose that it’s a nasty GPU within the normal sense – get it at RRP, like this PNY mannequin prices, and it’s nonetheless a wonderful multi-discipline graphics card that may comfortably play something exterior of essentially the most brutalising 4K settings. And what I used to be saying earlier, in regards to the RTX 4070 Tremendous going cheaper quicker? Reader, I’m afraid that was conjecture. Proper now, these are nonetheless on sale within the £600-£700 vary, and whereas loads of board accomplice RTX 5070s will certainly fill the identical house, if these two GPUs value the identical then there’s no compelling purpose to stay with the older one. There’s perhaps an argument in favour of the RTX 4070 Tremendous’s energy effectivity – I measured it peaking at 219W throughout my checks, versus 251W on the RTX 5070 – however for all its shortcomings, I’d reasonably have MFG than a 30W saving.
Even so, it’s additionally fully honest and affordable to anticipate some type of significant, not wholly AI-reliant enchancment from every new era. The RTX 5070 merely doesn’t ship, and I’m truthfully a little bit anxious that if we merely shrug and settle for that, body era actually would be the solely approach that future GPUs hassle to improve “efficiency”. Even when, as this very card’s 4K path tracing outcomes present, such an strategy is insufficient when the video games aspect of the trade continues to ask an increasing number of of your {hardware}.
This evaluation relies on a retail unit supplied by the producer.
