Nvidia RTX 5070 Review: RTX 4090 Performance?

1. Introduction2. Meet the RTX 5070 Founders Edition3. Testing Methodology4. Alan Wake II5. Black Myth: Wukong6. Cyberpunk 20777. Final Fantasy XVI8. Forza Horizon 59. Ghost of Tsushima10. Horizon Forbidden West11. The Last of Us Part 112. A Plague Tale: Requiem13. Senua's Saga: Hellblade 214. Starfield15. Total War: Warhammer III16. Performance Summary (12-Game Average)17. Cost Per Frame Analysis18. Ray Tracing: Alan Wake II19. Ray Tracing: Black Myth: Wukong20. Ray Tracing: Cyberpunk 207721. Ray Tracing: F1 2422. Ray Tracing: Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart23. Ray Tracing: Returnal24. Ray Tracing: Shadow of the Tomb Raider25. Ray Tracing: Star Wars Outlaws26. Ray Tracing Performance Summary27. DLSS Testing28. AI & Productivity Benchmarks29. Clock Speed30. GPU Temperatures31. Acoustics32. Power Draw: 1080p33. Power Draw: 1440p34. Power Draw: 2160p (4K)35. Performance per Watt: 1080p36. Performance per Watt: 1440p37. Performance per Watt: 2160p (4K)38. Total System Power Draw39. Overclocking40. Closing Thoughts41. View All Pages

Following on from the RTX 5070 Ti that hit the market last month, today we can present our review of Nvidia's new RTX 5070. The smallest Blackwell GPU yet, it's also the cheapest xx70-class SKU since the launch of the RTX 3070 back in October 2020, given it lands with a £539/$549 MSRP. On-paper specs don't suggest much of a leap forward compared to the RTX 4070 Super, though, so just how fast is this new graphics card? We look at rasterisation, ray tracing, DLSS 4 and more to find out, while also putting Nvidia's claim of ‘RTX 4090' performance to the test…

With the retail launch for the RTX 5070 set for tomorrow, March 5th, it will be the last of the four RTX 50 series GPUs that Nvidia announced back at CES 2025. RTX 5090 was first out in mid-January, while RTX 5080 followed a week later, and the aforementioned RTX 5070 Ti landed in February.

This review is all about the RTX 5070 though, and we have plenty of data and charts to look through before delivering our final verdict on this graphics card…

	RTX 5080	RTX 5070 Ti	RTX 5070	RTX 4070 Super	RTX 4070
Process	TSMC N4	TSMC N4	TSMC N4	TSMC N4	TSMC N4
SMs	84	70	48	56	46
CUDA Cores	10752	8960	6144	7168	5888
Tensor Cores	336	280	192	224	184
RT Cores	84	70	48	56	46
Texture Units	336	280	192	224	184
ROPs	112	96	80	80	64
GPU Boost Clock	2617 MHz	2452 MHz	2512 MHz	2475 MHz	2475 MHz
Memory Data Rate	30 Gbps	28 Gbps	28 Gbps	21 Gbps	21 Gbps
L2 Cache	65536 KB	49152 KB	49152 KB	49152 KB	36864 KB
Total Video Memory	16GB GDDR7	16GB GDDR7	12GB GDDR7	12GB GDDR6X	12GB GDDR6X
Memory Interface	256-bit	256-bit	192-bit	192-bit	192-bit
Memory Bandwidth	960 GB/Sec	896 GB/Sec	672 GB/Sec	504 GB/Sec	504 GB/Sec
TGP	360W	300W	250W	220W	200W

First, a quick spec recap. RTX 5070 marks the introduction of a new Blackwell die – GB205, where RTX 5070 is not quite full implementation but comes close. Comprised of five Graphics Processing Clusters (GPCs), each holds up to eight Texture Processing Clusters (TPCs), with a total of 24. Each TPC is home to two Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), giving us 48, and each SM still holds 128 CUDA Cores, meaning the RTX 5070 has a total of 6144 shaders. We also find 48 RT cores, 192 Tensor cores, 192 Texture Units, and 80 ROPs.

This time around, however, there's no node-shrink, and GB205 remains fabricated on TSMC's N4 node, as per the RTX 40 series. As such, rated clock speed has not stepped forwards this generation, with the RTX 5070 rated at 2512MHz, within 40MHz of the RTX 4070 and RTX 4070 Super.

The memory configuration is similar to its predecessors, too. We still find 12GB of memory operating a 192-bit interface, the primary difference being the jump to 28Gbps GDDR7 modules, increasing memory bandwidth to 672 GB/s. L2 cache still comes in at 49MB.

Lastly, the RTX 5070 features a 250W TGP. This is something we focus on closely in this review, using our enhanced GPU power testing methodology, so read on for our most detailed power and efficiency testing yet.

Become a Patron!