Nvidia compared RTX 5070 to the 4090, but here’s how it really performs in native benchmarks
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Reviews for Nvidia’s RTX 5070 have finally been published online, with hardware reviewers keen to pick apart the new mid-range graphics card, especially considering Nvidia made the bold claim that the card will offer similar performance to the RTX 5090 for only $549. This was, of course, with a helping hand (or two) from AI, and now native benchmarks show how they really compare.
The 5070 will be releasing tomorrow on March 5th, closely followed by AMD’s rival RX 9070 XT – the latter of which seems to be earning all the praise right now, with AMD calling it the “World’s best $549 graphics card“. Now that there are some benchmarks online for the 5070, along with some of our own in-house tests, let’s see how Nvidia’s claim holds up.
- GPU: GB205-300
- CUDA Cores: 6,144
- VRAM: 12GB GDDR7
- Memory Bus Width: 192-bit
- Base Clock Speed: 2.33GHz
- Boost Clock Speed: 2.51GHz
RTX 4090 is miles ahead of the 5070 in native benchmarks
The first thing we want to reference is this video from popular TechTuber Daniel Owen. He kicks off testing by throwing them into the deep end: 4K Supreme settings in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, albeit with DLSS quality settings. The RTX 4090 enjoyed an average of 139 FPS in the dense jungle scene, whereas the 5070 failed the task, running out of VRAM (with just 12GB to work with). While Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has tried to explain why the 5070 only has 12GB, this practical test isn’t a great look.
Where the 5070 can flex a little bit is with the 50 series-exclusive Multi Frame Generation technology. In Cyberpunk 2077 benchmarks, the card gets much closer to the 4090 when utilizing the full MFG 4X mode, where they both offer around 120 FPS in 4K RT DLSS Performance mode, while the 4090 is limited to its usual single frame-gen implementation. However, what isn’t evident from framerate comparisons alone is that the reliance on FG will bump up the latency by a significant amount.
The next reviewer to reference is TechPowerUp, a site that is great for in-depth benchmarks across a large number of GPUs. According to their results, the 4090 is around 45%, 57%, and 54% faster than the 5070 in 1080p, 1440p, and 4K, respectively, when tested across 25 different games at native resolution. These are how these values look:
| Resolution | RTX 5070 (average) | RTX 4090 (average) |
|---|---|---|
| 1080p | 154.6 FPS | 225 FPS |
| 1440p | 114.3 FPS | 179.1 FPS |
| 4K | 65.8 FPS | 109.2 FPS |
And finally, a few of our in-house RTX 5070 benchmarks. While we haven’t compared it directly to the 40 series flagship, you can get a good idea of how this card performs versus some of the cards closer to its tier, namely the RTX 5080 and RTX 4080.
ASUS TUF RTX 5070 OC Indiana Jones The Great Circle, Image by PC Guide
ASUS TUF RTX 5070 OC Doom Eternal, Image by PC Guide
ASUS TUF RTX 5070 OC Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, Image by PC Guide
ASUS TUF RTX 5070 OC CS2, Image by PC Guide
ASUS TUF RTX 5070 OC F1 24, Image by PC Guide
ASUS TUF RTX 5070 OC AC Mirage, Image by PC Guide
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