Nvidia introduced the RTX 5070 GPU, targeting gamers and creators. The company highlighted various performance improvements, including enhanced 3D rendering and traditional raster performance. Additionally, the RTX 5070 supports DLSS 4 features in numerous games and offers improved GenAI performance.
In testing, the RTX 5070 Founders Edition generally outperformed the older RTX 4070 Super in UL 3DMark benchmarks. However, the performance difference was not substantial, with the RTX 5070 averaging a 9.3% improvement over the RTX 4070 Super across three tests at various resolutions.
Nvidia presented their new RTX 5070 as a great value GPU for gamers and creators, offering:
Our results weren’t quite as rosy.
In our testing at our Mt. Tiburon Test Lab (MTTL), we ran UL’s 3DMark Procyon AI vision test. The 4070 Super got better results, and when we questioned Nvidia, they told us UL hadn’t upgraded Procyon for the 5070, so we didn’t include the results in this review. When UL gives us a Procyon upgrade, we’ll run the tests again.
As is our tradition as well as others’, we ran the suite of UL 3DMark benchmarks, and the results can be seen in the following charts. Generally speaking, as should be expected, the RTX 5070 Founders Edition outperforms the older RTX 4070 Super. But, the 4070 Super made a very good showing, and on average for the following three tests (at three resolutions), the RTX 5070 only beat the RTX 4070 Super by 9.3%.
Steel Nomad tests AIBs running at 4K resolution and utilizing DirectX 12 and Vulkan APIs. It incorporates advanced graphics effects, including:
• Volumetric skies
• Procedural grass
• Volume illumination
3DMark Steel Nomad is the newest benchmark from UL, expanding on the foundation established by its predecessor, 3DMark Time Spy.
3DMark Port Royal is a benchmark that tests real-time ray tracing, specifically designed for gamers. It uses DirectX ray tracing to improve visuals such as shadows and reflections. The benchmark also includes tests for various technologies, including:
• Intel XeSS
• Nvidia DLSS
• DirectX Raytracing
UL also provides a 3DMark DirectX Raytracing feature test, which evaluates the performance of dedicated hardware by rendering the entire scene in a single pass using ray tracing.
We also utilized 3DMark Speed Way, a UL benchmark designed to assess the performance of gaming PCs running Windows 10 or 11. This benchmark emphasizes ray-tracing capabilities and highlights features of DirectX 12 Ultimate, such as:
• Mesh shaders
• Real-time ray-traced reflections
The RTX 4070 does not officially support DLSS 4, so we compared its DLSS 3 results to the RTX 5070 using UL’s 3DMark DLSS 3 feature test.
As the chart indicates, the 4070 Super held up quite well against the RTX 5070 and, in many cases, beat it.
Then, out of curiosity, we ran the two AIBs using the DLSS 4 test.
UL’s 3DMark feature test is a targeted evaluation focusing on specific techniques, functions, or capabilities.
Again, the RTX 4070 Super did quite well against the newer RTX 5070, even though the 4070 Super wasn’t fully compatible with DLSS 4. That should be encouraging news for 4070 Super owners when it comes to buying new DLSS 4.0 games.
Basemark’s ray-tracing benchmark, GPUScore: Breaking Limit, is designed to evaluate the performance of the full range of ray-tracing-capable devices.
Blender, a widely used 3D modeling and rendering software, includes three ray-tracing benchmarks.
The Blender ray-tracing tests evaluate three key aspects:
• Rendering speed
• Computational power
• Memory bandwidth
These benchmarks assess the performance of a computer’s GPU in rendering 3D scenes using ray-tracing technology.
The test results are expressed in elapsed time; lower is better.
Game benchmark tests
After the synthetic benchmarks, we tested a few games. We only test games with a built-in benchmark because it’s impossible to get the same sequence time after time in a game, especially when the game is heavily AI frame-generated and uses procedural and fractal generation.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider, developed by Eidos-Montréal, received an update on September 27, 2022. This update enabled support for the game’s built-in DX12 benchmark. The benchmark offers multiple settings.
Chernobylite is a first-person shooter survival horror game developed by The Farm 51. Its benchmark is particularly demanding, requiring 20 minutes to complete. The Enhanced Edition incorporates advanced ray-traced reflections and lighting, utilizing Unreal Engine 4 and DirectX 12.
The game’s ray-tracing effects are highly taxing, especially at Ultra settings. Figure 10 displays the benchmark results for the Intel Arc B570 and B580 in Chernobylite across different resolutions.
Cyberpunk 2077, developed by CD Projekt Red, launched in December 2020 as a DX12-exclusive title, utilizing the proprietary Red game engine. On April 11, 2023, the game added support for Intel XeSS with its 1.62 Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode update.
During our testing of the RTX 5070, we had to pause just to admire some of the heavy ray-traced scenes; it is a gorgeous game, and we had a lot of fun with its five different endings.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 was released in October 2024 by Activision and developed by Treyarch and Raven Software. It was built on the IW 9.0 game engine, a collaborative effort between Infinity Ward, Treyarch, and Sledgehammer Games.
A comparison of the three leading games tested shows a relatively close match in frames per second (fps )performance at 1440 resolutions. Once again, that speaks to good driver design.
At 2160 resolution, the RTX 5070 blasted ahead, making the most out of DLSS 4. We had to run the test a couple of times to believe it.
With all the test data collected, we then did a JPR PMark evaluation of the two AIBs using benchmark and game performance data.
The RTX 5070 sells for 8% less than the RTX 4070 Super and draws 36% more power. As a result, it performs less well in the PMark than the older RTX 4070 Super.
Some people, most notably those with high-power budgets, contend that gamers don’t care about power consumption; therefore, the PMark has little value. As Grandma always said, Everybody has their agenda.
Forgetting price, performance, or power, the 5070 doesn’t bring much to the party other than DLSS 4.0 compatibility, and given the DLSS 3 and DLSS 4 tests we ran, that doesn’t seem like such an advantage. But, with the tariffs coming and new games already in the pipeline, a 5070 will future-proof your system for under $800—now.
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