We’ve just witnessed the launch of the RTX 50 series, with four new GPUs announced at CES 2025. With that comes a new list of specifications to explore and some wild performance claims. Right off the bat, Nvidia claims that the RTX 5070 will offer similar performance to the RTX 4090.

We’d say you’re not alone if you’re dubious about this, perhaps rightly so. Just comparing the hardware specs, the 4090 easily comes out on top thanks to plenty more CUDA cores, double the VRAM and more. However, DLSS 4 looks to be doing some heavy lifting in Team Green’s claims, and its new multi-frame gen tech exclusive to the 50 series cards is one differentiator.

RTX 5070 offers 4090-level performance, with some help

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang took to the stage at CES 2025 to announce the new 50 series cards. In his reveal of the 5070, he said that the RTX 4090 is “one of the best investments you could possibly make” – just before revealing that the RTX 5070 will offer similar performance to the 4090 at a fraction of the price ($549).

While this is indeed impressive, the first thing to keep in mind is that these claims are not based on pure rasterization; the RTX 4090 will still win in that regard. However, looking at Nvidia’s charts so far, the RTX 5070 offers up to double the performance of its predecessor, the RTX 4070.

You always have to consider that DLSS support works on a game-by-game basis. Luckily, DLSS 4 is launching with a massive roster of 75 games and apps, so “Day 0 support” on some of the latest and greatest games may sway your interest to the 50 series, effectively allowing you to forget about the 40 series completely – even the flagship 4090. If you can snap up an RTX 5070 at launch for its $549 price tag, you’re in for a great price-to-performance ratio, especially when DLSS 4 is taken into account.

We don’t yet know how much the 5070 series compares with DLSS off and running at native resolution. One comparison we do have however is the drastic difference DLSS 4 makes for the RTX 5090 in Cyberpunk 2077 with max settings at 4K, with RT Overdrive (in other words, one of the most difficult games to run). As demonstrated in the video below, the 5090 could enjoy up to 8x FPS with help from DLSS 4 performance mode, ray reconstruction, and the exclusive multi-frame generation (4x mode).

About the Author

Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.