Nvidia's RTX 5070 GPUs benchmarks are popping up, and it already looks like they can't quite live up to their promise of offering RTX 4090 performance.
Benchmarking site PassMark has shown performance results for the RTX 5070, with the GD3 Mark test showing that it falls behind many of its predecessors — including an RTX 4070. It achieved a score of 25,863 as of writing, placing it far down the list of high-end graphics cards.
In the same benchmark, the RTX 4090 desktop GPU scores 38,340, showing a major difference in performance. What's more, it's even behind an RTX 4090 laptop GPU (27,438) and RTX 4070 (26,978), along with generations before it, including the RTX 3090 (26,667).
In comparison, the RTX 4090 still offers around a 32% gain over the RTX 5070, with big differences in DirectX 9 through DirectX 12, too. The RTX 5070 topped at 91 frames per second (fps) in DirectX 12, while the RTX 4090 reached 149 fps.
Despite Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang claiming the RTX 5070 will deliver "4090 performance at $549," these benchmark results state otherwise. That said, there are other factors at play here.
First, since Nvidia has stopped support for 32-bit frameworks, it's expected to be throwing off results for RTX 50-series graphics cards in PassMark, as seen with a previous RTX 5090 laptop GPU benchmark. However, this still generally performed well in PassMark's testings, and the issue was set to be fixed.
Along with this, RTX 5090, 5080 and 5070 Ti GPUs were hit by a "rare issue" that's set to be fixed in upcoming GPU models, but it appears this problem hasn't affected 5070 graphics cards.
But the real kicker here is DLSS 4 and Multi Frame Generation. While these results are evidently disappointing, it's Nvidia's new features in RTX 50-series GPUs that are expected to beef up performance, but only in supported games.
These results may not reflect these AI-powered features, but stating that you'll get RTX 4090 power in an RTX 5070 when the numbers don't match up is quite the bold claim.
Unsurprisingly not RTX 4090 performance
Even with its 12GB of GDDR7 video memory and 6,144 CUDA cores, which matches (but also better) than the RTX 4070's 12GB of GDDR6X, the RTX 5070 isn't as fast as a lot of its competition — let alone an RTX 4090 GPU.
However, with Multi Frame Generation and DLSS upscaling, PC games are getting greater performance, according to reviews from Notebookcheck, Arstechnia and more. Although, we've also seen Eurogamer's Digital Foundry state that DLSS 4 doesn't match 4090 performance at all.
While DLSS 4 and Multi Frame Generation certainly help its case, especially with its $549 price point (considering price bumps on other high-end custom RTX 50-series GPUs, I'll believe it when I see it), it's clear Nvidia aimed too high with its RTX 4090 remark.
Will RTX 5070 laptop GPUs see a similar result? I wanted RTX 5070 gaming laptops to be my gold standard, but this may not be the case if the GPU doesn't come close to RTX 5090 performance. Once we put it through its paces, we'll know for sure, but in the desktop-front, it seems many may be eyeing up AMD's Radeon RX 9070 XT and 9070 series GPUs instead.
More from Tom's Guide
- Intel Core Ultra 200U, 200H, 200HX and 200S PCs coming this month — here's everything we know
- I review gaming laptops for a living — here's the 7 RTX 50-series laptops I would buy
- RTX 50-series gaming laptops — here's why I think they'll be worth the upgrade
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