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

The RTX 5070 is an interestingly-placed card, in that it technically represents an improvement over the RTX 4070 Super - marginally faster overall, with DLSS 4, and at a lower price than its predecessor. That puts it at the very top of our dollar per frame stakes, judged versus MSRP and therefore that initial value proposition.

However, in the real world where the RTX 4070 Super will be (sparingly) available for less money, the argument here is relatively meagre. There are performance regressions versus the 4070 Super in a handful of games, frame generation requires more judicious settings choices to ensure playable latency, and of course we can't forget that AMD's RX 9070 and 9070 XT are set to arrive very soon indeed - with potentially much greater price to performance ratios.

If you're on something like an RTX 3080, RTX 3080 Ti, RTX 3090, RX 7900 XT or RTX 4070 Ti, you're already pretty familiar with the level of performance on offer and there's no huge reason to upgrade - unless you particularly value frame generation or multi frame generation to max out a high refresh rate monitor, for example. Instead, it'll be those on RTX 20-series cards that have more of an impetus, and for these people the new Radeon cards should also be worth considering.

There's also the VRAM argument. 12GB is still good enough for almost all modern titles, but it's easy to feel short-changed when 16GB cards have been available for some time at relatively modest asking prices - albeit largely from AMD rather than Nvidia. The RX 7800 XT, for example, is a 16GB card that takes the number four slot in our 1440p value deliberations (visible in the table below).

The one way that the RTX 5070 does impress over its previous-gen predecessors is in the Founders Edition reference design, which like the other members of the RTX 50-series family comes in a very reasonable form factor, operates cooly and quietly and looks good too. No doubt relatively few will be available versus third-party designs, but there should still be some good SFF-friendly options within that selection.

The final fly in the ointment is that RTX 5070 stock availability may be as much of an issue as with other Blackwell graphics cards. We've rounded up where to buy the RTX 5070 in our usual manner, so you at least have some quick links to retailers in the US and UK which are expected to have stock - and direct links to purportedly MSRP cards.

Unusually for Nvidia, it looks like that it will be AMD setting the tone now. The Red Team's 9070 and 9070 XT could be quite disruptive if they hit the right notes - performance, FSR, availability - so stay tuned for those reviews in the very near future.

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
• Conclusions, value and recommendations [This Page]