Is the new RTX 5070 really as fast as Nvidia's previous flagship RTX 4090 GPU? Turns out the answer is yes. Kinda.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 was only fully revealed this week at CES 2025, but already the GPU is causing quite a stir. Though arguably the least powerful of the just unveiled 50-series, the RTX 5070 has been the subject of a number of headline-worthy claims. Alas, most folks will have to wait until the 50-series launches this February to see if it's worth the hype—but tech journalists aren't most folks.

Case in point, PCGamesN has already seen the RTX 5070 in action and has since shared its findings. So, what's the truth behind Nvidia's CEO Jen-Hsun Huang on-stage claim that the RTX 5070 will offer "RTX 4090 performance at $549"? Turns out, there's a lot to that—but not without caveats.

First, the good news: while playing Marvel Rivals, PCGamesN journalist Ben Hardwidge found that the RTX 5070 doesn't just offer comparable performance, but actually eclipses the RTX 4090, what was once Nvidia's flagship card. However, the not-really-bad-news, but more I'm-not-sure-how-to-feel-about-this-news is that we have the GPU's new Tensor cores and their support of Nvidia's just announced DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation to thank.

It's hardly a surprising move. Nvidia has been calling time on raster graphics rendering for years, with Huang himself memorably saying back in September 2024, "We can't do computer graphics anymore without artificial intelligence. We compute one pixel, we infer the other 32. I mean, it's incredible."

To be clear though, the name of DLSS 4's game is most impressively frame generation. With regards to the RTX 5070, DLSS 4 uses AI and in-game data to generate up to three full frames between more traditionally rendered frames. To put it a little crudely, DLSS 4 is what's giving you that extra bang for your buck.

At CES 2025, Nvidia set up two machines for trade show guests to compare—one kitted out with the RTX 5070 and multi-frame generation, and one using the older RTX 4090 with standard frame generation. Besides that major difference, both machines were running Marvel Rivals at 4K with the highest amount of DLSS supported by their respective graphics card. The result? Hardwridge writes that the RTX 5070 consistently outperformed the older card, outputting in the region of 240 fps compared to the RTX 4090's average of 180 fps.

All of that said key tech specs, such as which CPU was used for these comparison builds, remain unclear, so it's hard to say conclusively just how replicable those numbers are. It also perhaps goes without saying but the older card doesn't support DLSS 4's multi frame gen, so one could quibble about how valuable a comparison this truly is.

Furthermore, even Nvidia stressed that this comparison point is a bit of an outlier, as Marvel Rivals appears to be particularly well-optimised for the RTX 5070; when tested on titles that aren't Marvel Rivals, there's apparently a much smaller performance gap between the two cards.

Still, that suggests performance that once cost over a grand and a half for the RTX 4090 is now within reach for much less. Provided DLSS 4 is involved, of course.