Nvidia says the RTX 5070 is as fast as the RTX 4090 — let’s look at the specs

Nvidia made some stark claims with the announcement of its RTX 50-series GPUs. It promised double the performance with the best graphics card Nvidia has ever released, the RTX 5090, and it said outright that the more modest RTX 5070 could equal the performance of the last-generation king, the RTX 4090. That seems dubious, even with the hype surrounding the new hardware.

We can’t officially confirm or deny such claims until the embargo lifts on reviews for these new cards, but for now, let’s consider how the RTX 5070 lines up with the 4090, to give us an idea about what to expect.

Pricing and availability

The Nvidia RTX 4090 debuted in October 2022 with an at-the-time eye-watering price tag of $1,600. It’s remained at around that level ever since, with some shortages spiking the price over $2,000 at times, depending on the version. As of late January 2025, however, the card is sold out almost everywhere, with only overpriced versions around $2,500 still available new, and second-hand versions selling for around $1,600.

The RTX 5070 is set to go on sale some time in February — though more likely toward the end of the month than the start. Nvidia’s suggested retail price for the card is $550. That’s $50 less than the RTX 4070 Super debuted at, but depending on stock and early interest, prices for the card may be higher in the short term after release.

Specs

On paper at least, it seems almost comical that Nvidia claims the RTX 5070 can match the RTX 4090’s performance. It has a third less memory bandwidth, half the physical memory, and barely a third of the CUDA core count with comparable boost clock speeds.

That’s because Nvidia’s claims are largely based around the enhanced support for AI-driven upscaling using the latest generation of Tensor cores. Nvidia’s new RTX 50-series supports multi frame generation, which can construct up to three AI-generated frames around a single GPU-rendered frame. The RTX 4090, on the other hand, is restricted to just single AI frame  as part of its support for DLSS 3. That does give its fps a big boost in compatible games, but potentially leaves the last-generation kingpin behind in raw numbers — even if there are concerns over the viability of such high numbers of AI constructed frames.

Putting aside our sceptic’s hat for a second, though, it’s fair to say that the RTX 5070 uses substantially less power than the RTX 4090, therefore outputting far less heat in turn. That will make it far better suited to small form-factor gaming PCs — especially if its new architecture, process node, and indeed, DLSS 4 support, can help it close the performance gap with the 4090.

Performance

Until we can test the RTX 5070 ourselves, we can’t say for sure just how good this next-generation card is or how it stacks up against the RTX 4090. We can use Nvidia’s slides and claims to give us a rough ballpark, but with the DLSS-heavy marketing, we should be aware of the upscaling involved to reach some of these numbers.

Nvidia’s graphs do tell us more than they might initially appear to, though. While the big claims of double the performance of the RTX 4070 would put the RTX 5070 in the realm of the RTX 4090, we should instead focus on the left two results on the above graph.

In Horizon Forbidden West and Resident Evil, where DLSS 3 and no DLSS were used, respectively, we see much more modest performance improvements from one generation to the next. In reality, the RTX 5070 may be less than 20% faster than the RTX 4070. If that’s the case, it would take a huge uplift from DLSS 4 and multi-frame generation to even approach 4090 performance, let alone match it.

We’ll have to wait and see for real-world testing to settle this performance debate, but at first glance, it seems very unlikely the 5070 can match the 4090 in most games. Even then, it’d be with heavy multi-frame generation, which can introduce latency issues and visual artifacts which are unlikely to be to everyone’s tastes.

Wait and see

We only have a month or so to wait to see just how good the RTX 5070 really is. It’s likely to be faster than the RTX 4070 and the new DLSS features make it far more capable in select scenarios. It’s not likely to measure up to the RTX 4090, though. If you’re using that last-generation king card already, beware the FOMO of a new generation. You’re likely still sitting on one of the fastest graphics cards in the world, and it will do for quite some time.