NVIDIA Lied to Us! RTX 5070 Early Review: 1/3 Price for RTX 4090 Performance? It Cannot Even Beat RTX 4070 Ti
Overnight, the RTX 5070 has suffered a massive reputation crash, being slammed by tech reviewers and gamers across the globe as the worst 70-series GPU NVIDIA has ever launched.
Everything traces back to NVIDIA’s CES keynote in January, where Jensen Huang officially unveiled the RTX 5070 with bold AI-powered marketing claims:
Powered by our brand-new AI architecture, this mid-range graphics card delivers performance comparable to the former flagship consumer GPU — the RTX 4090. It is priced at only $549, merely one-third of the RTX 4090’s cost.
It is true that the RTX 5070 costs just one-third of the RTX 4090, but does it really match the flagship performance? The first batch of independent real-world tests have delivered a shocking result that completely contradicts official promotion.
📌 Quick Verdict (No Fluff)
- The RTX 5070 falls far behind the RTX 4090 with a massive performance gap;
- Its raw gaming performance is even slower than the RTX 4080 and RTX 4070 Ti;
- While it runs slightly faster than the RTX 4070 Super, it consumes more power with worse energy efficiency;
- Coupled with poor thermal dissipation and insufficient VRAM, the RTX 5070 is the most awkward mid-range GPU in the entire RTX 50 lineup.
1. Hardware Specifications: Mediocre Specs & Poor Power Control
We break down the real performance of the RTX 5070 from four core dimensions: hardware specs, gaming benchmarks, power draw & thermals, and competitor comparison.
- CUDA Cores: 6,144 cores, sitting between the RTX 4070 and RTX 4070 Super with no cross-generational performance leap;
- VRAM: 12GB GDDR7, enough for basic 1440p gaming but insufficient for 4K ray-traced AAA titles;
- Peak Power Draw: Up to 250W under full load, 30W higher than the RTX 4070 Super;
- Cooling & Design: It adopts a slim dual-slot design, different from the thicker RTX 5080 and RTX 5090. Both cooling fans are placed on the same side, and the power connector is upgraded to an angled port instead of a top-facing port.
Critical Flaw: The redesigned cooling solution brings no thermal improvement, but worse heat dissipation instead. Benchmarks prove that the RTX 5070 runs hotter than even the higher-end RTX 5090, making it the hottest GPU across the whole RTX 50 family.
2. Real Gaming Benchmarks: Disappointing AI Tech, Huge Gap vs RTX 4090
The biggest selling point of RTX 50 series is DLSS 4 AI super resolution and multi-frame generation technology, which NVIDIA relied on to claim mid-range cards could beat flagship GPUs. However, AI acceleration cannot bridge the massive raw hardware gap in actual gameplay.
2K (1440p) Gaming Tests
Reviewers tested 16 mainstream AAA games to compare the RTX 5070 and RTX 4090:
- Overall average framerate:The RTX 4090 is 63% faster, nearly doubling the performance of the RTX 5070;
- Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (Ray Tracing Enabled): The RTX 5070 suffers severe stutters due to limited 12GB VRAM, hitting only 13 FPS and being unplayable, while the RTX 4090 runs perfectly smoothly;
- Marvel Rivals: The RTX 5070 is only 15% faster than the two-year-old RTX 4070, and merely 3% faster than the RTX 4070 Super, offering barely noticeable upgrades;
- The Last of Us Part I: It delivers almost identical framerates as the RTX 4070 Super at around 90 FPS, with no flagship-level performance advantage at all.
4K Gaming Tests (High-end Gaming Standard)
The RTX 5070’s weaknesses are fully exposed at 4K maximum settings, with no flagship gaming capability whatsoever:
- Cyberpunk 2077 (4K Max Settings): Only 31 FPS on average with extremely poor gaming experience;
- Black Myth: Wukong (4K Ultra Settings): Average framerate drops to just 25 FPS, making smooth 4K gaming impossible.
Benchmark Conclusion: The RTX 5070 can handle casual online games and lightweight AAA titles at 1440p, but struggles heavily with ray-traced high-end games at both 1440p and 4K. NVIDIA’s overhyped AI technology fails to compensate for its insufficient raw hardware performance.
3. Fierce Competition: AMD RX 9070 Coming to Compete Head-to-Head
Apart from its own unsatisfactory performance, the RTX 5070 will face fierce competition from AMD’s upcoming new GPU.
AMD’s next-gen mid-range flagship RX 9070 is set to launch soon, priced at $550 — only $1 more expensive than the RTX 5070.
According to early leaks, the RX 9070 features larger VRAM, stronger native gaming performance and better power efficiency than the RTX 5070. Tech reviewers predict this AMD card will directly squeeze the RTX 5070’s market share, putting NVIDIA’s new mid-range GPU in a passive position right after launch. The upcoming head-to-head battle between the two new cards has become the hottest topic among PC gamers recently.
4. Continuous Quality Control Issues Across RTX 50 Lineup
Poor performance of the RTX 5070 is not the only problem. The entire high-end RTX 50 series has been hit by successive hardware defects, ruining NVIDIA’s market reputation:
1. Random Black Screen & Bricking on RTX 5080 / RTX 5090
Massive global users report frequent critical faults including sudden black screens, GPU disconnection and unrecognized hardware during gaming and full-load operation. Some cards are permanently bricked with no official permanent fix released so far.
2. Missing ROP Units on RTX 5090
NVIDIA officially specifies 176 ROPs (Render Output Processors) for the RTX 5090, but a large number of users receive defective units with only 168 ROPs, resulting in a 4.5% hardware performance cut.
Impacts of Missing ROPs: Lower gaming framerates, higher input latency and degraded anti-aliasing performance, which greatly damage daily gaming experience.
NVIDIA’s official statement: This issue is caused by manufacturing anomalies, affecting less than 0.5% of total shipments. Free replacements are available, and the same defect also exists on the RTX 5090D and newly launched RTX 5070 Ti.
However, gamers remain unsatisfied. For flagship high-end GPUs, batch hardware defects are completely unacceptable. A 0.5% failure rate means tens of thousands of faulty cards given millions of total shipments, reflecting NVIDIA’s collapsed quality control.
5. Final Thoughts
From black screen bricking and hardware downgrades on high-end RTX 5080/5090, to false marketing, poor power efficiency and bad thermal design on the mid-range RTX 5070, the RTX 50 generation is undoubtedly NVIDIA’s worst generation in recent years with insufficient upgrades, poor QC and exaggerated official promotion.
NVIDIA’s promise of “RTX 4090-level performance at one-third price” has turned out to be empty hype. The RTX 5070 is stuck in an awkward position: slower than last-gen flagship cards, troubled by power and thermal issues, and facing fierce competition from upcoming AMD GPUs.
One More Thing
Despite overwhelming negative feedback targeting the RTX 5070, a small number of objective and rational reviews have emerged with different views…
