Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 review: DLSS 4 doesn't deliver 4090 performance

Nvidia's marketing efforts for the RTX 5070 were encapsulated by a headline-grabbing claim: RTX 4090 levels of "performance" from a $549 card, enabled by DLSS 4 multi frame generation. We've tested that assertion for all of the higher-tier cards in the RTX 50-series stack, and now it's finally time to put the 5070's mooted performance to the test.

Before we get into the results, let's quickly recap on what DLSS 4 multi frame generation does and how it works. It's an offshoot of the existing technology found in 40-series cards. Essentially the current frame is rendered as per normal, and the following one too, which is then buffered. The original frame-gen implementation would then use an optical flow accelerator tied into the game engine to calculate an intermediate frame, boosting frame-rate. The thing is that that buffering the extra frame and calculating the middle image takes time, which means increased latency. Multi frame generation works in much the same way but with key differences: optical flow is now handled by the tensor cores and two, three and four interpolated frames are possible, while pacing hardware within the Blackwell architecture works to ensure smooth delivery of those extra frames.

So the bad news is that frame generation adds latency, but the good news - relatively - is that the amount of latency added by two or three generated images vs the standard two is more limited. There still aren't a huge number of DLSS 4 games in the wild, especially when we began testing during the 5090 review period, but Cyberpunk 2077 and Alan Wake 2 are supported and tie in nicely with our automated benchmarking technology.

In Cyberpunk, unsurprisingly running at native 4K with RT Overdrive on the 5070 nets an unplayable 10fps with 456ms of latency - a new record! Engaging DLSS performance sees more reasonable frame-rates, 40fps average, with a corresponding decrease to latency of 51ms. Multi frame generation of course adds to that frame-rate further at a cost of latency, all the way up to 122fps at the 4x setting with 72ms of average lag. As we saw with the RTX 5070 Ti, there are more appreciable bumps to latency when engaging higher levels of multi frame generation, with a 14ms penalty for engaging the tech in the first place and a further 5ms for 3x and 2ms beyond that for 4x.

The resultant 72ms of input latency is definitely noticeable on a mouse and keyboard, though on a gamepad it's less appreciable. Still, we're approaching double the latency of the RTX 4090 running 2x frame generation, and frame-rates remain higher on the 4090 - 128 vs 122fps average throughout the course of the benchmark. With that in mind, Nvidia's claim doesn't really hold water.

You can still get a good playable result on the 5070 with RT Overdrive enabled, but we suggest opting for an even lower internal resolution and a 1440p output to get the base frame-rate high enough so that latency remains in check when frame generation is enabled.

Alan Wake has a much higher base latency than Cyberpunk, which means that frame generation faces a much harder challenge to deliver a responsive result. The average frame-rate for the 5070 in our testing is poorer at 24fps, but the latency is significantly worse, at 114ms, vs the 51ms we measured in the CD Projekt Red title.

That means by the time we add frame gen, the latency figures are getting unreasonably high - 134ms at 2x, 141ms at 3x and 146ms at 4x. That's exceeding some latencies we measured on cloud gaming services; hardly ideal even for a relatively slower-paced and controller-friendly game like Alan Wake 2.

The 5070 can still deliver a good frame generation experience in Alan Wake with the necessary settings and resolution tweaks - including a 1440p output resolution, high rasterisation settings and low RT with direct lighting. That gives us enough base frame-rate to engage DLSS in balanced mode with MFG 3x without disastrously laggy results.

Overall, DLSS 4 is still an asset for the 5070, but it's clear that on this class of card, multi frame generation requires a lot more care to get useful results compared to the 5080 and 5090, which are carried by their surfeit of raw performance.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Analysis

• Introduction
• RT benchmarks: Alan Wake 2, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Cyberpunk 2077
• RT benchmarks: Dying Light 2, F1 24, Hitman: World of Assassination
• RT benchmarks: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, A Plague Tale: Requiem
• Game benchmarks: Alan Wake 2, Black Myth: Wukong, Cyberpunk 2077
• Game benchmarks: F1 24, Forza Horizon 5, Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2
• Game benchmarks: Hitman: World of Assassination, A Plague Tale: Requiem
• DLSS 4 and Path Tracing: Cyberpunk 2077, Alan Wake 2 [This Page]
• Conclusions, value and recommendations