NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti review: Great gaming performance with a sensible price tag
NVIDIA has only recently released the high-end GeForce RTX 5080 and halo-class GeForce RTX 5090 GPUs, both of which offer impressive technologies and features (such as DLSS 4, Multi Frame Generation and neural rendering (read about them here). However, these high-performance graphics cards come with steep price tags, with the RTX 5090 having an SRP that starts with an eye-watering US$1,999. These prices, along with the difficulty of finding cards at the suggested retail prices, have caused some gamers to hesitate.
Enter the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, which comes with a more palatable – but still expensive – US$749. There’s a lot going for this new mainstream GPU, as not only is the price cheaper than its direct GeForce RTX 4070 Ti predecessor (which launched at US$799), but its overall performance in our benchmarks has shown gen-on-gen improvement from 20 to 30% and in some cases, even exceeding the GeForce RTX 4080 Super. In fact, the RTX 5070 Ti could be considered a “slower” RTX 5080 in some ways, as not only does it share the same memory count of 16GB (versus 12GB on the RTX 4070 Ti) but it is also based on the same Blackwell GB203 GPU.
| GeForce Graphics Card | RTX 5090 | RTX 5080 | RTX 5070 Ti | RTX 4070 Ti Super | RTX 4070 Ti |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPU | Blackwell (GB202) | Blackwell (GB203) | Blackwell (GB203) | ADA Lovelace (AD103) | Ada Lovelace (AD104) |
| Process | 4nm (TSMC) | 5nm (TSMC) | |||
| Transistors | 92 billion | 46 billion | 46 billion | 46 billion | 36 billion |
| Streaming Multi-processors (SM) | 170 | 84 | 70 | 66 | 60 |
| CUDA cores | 21760 | 10752 | 8960 | 8448 | 7680 |
| Tensor Cores | 680 (Gen 5) | 336 (Gen 5) | 280 (Gen 5) | 264 (Gen 4) | 240 (Gen 4) |
| RT Cores | 170 (Gen 4) | 84 (Gen 4) | 70 (Gen 4) | 66 (Gen 3) | 60 (Gen 3) |
| GPU base / boost clocks (MHz) | 2017 / 2407 | 2295 / 2617 | 2300 / 2452 | 2340 / 2610 | 2310 / 2610 |
| Memory | 32GB GDDR7 | 16GB GDDR7 | 16GB GDDR7 | 16GB GDDR6X | 12GB GDDR6X |
| Memory bus width | 512-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 192-bit |
| Memory bandwidth | 1,790 GB/s | 960 GB/s | 896 GB/s | 672 GB/s | 504 GB/s |
| Interface | PCIe 5.0 | PCIe 4.0 | |||
| TDP | 575W | 360W | 300W | 285W | 285W |
| Price | US$1,999 | US$999 | US$749 | US$799 | US$799 |
As with the RTX 4070 Ti, NVIDIA isn’t making a Founders Edition for the RTX 5070 Ti. What we have instead is the MSI GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Ventus 3X OC edition that NVIDIA sent over for us to review, which is almost identical to the MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X that I reviewed last year. The Ventus line is MSI’s no-frills line of GeForce cards that use a standard triple-fan layout with a copper baseplate and heat pipes to cool the GPU and memory modules. It’s not the most beautiful looking card, if I’m being honest, but it’s a solid performing card.
So, is NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 5070 Ti’s performance worth the money? Let’s find out.
Our Test Rig
We are using the updated same test rig that was used to benchmark the GeForce RTX 5090 FE and RTX 5080 FE and comes with the following specifications:
For this review, I’ll be comparing the (MSI) RTX 5070 Ti not only with the RTX 4070 Ti and 4070 Ti Super but also the RTX 4080 cards. Naturally, I have also included the previously tested RTX 5090 and 5080 Founders Edition cards to give us an idea of where the RTX 5070 Ti’s performance stands in the RTX 50 Series.
Gaming performance (rasterization)
My game list includes a mixture of old and recent games to test the RTX 5070 Ti’s performance, and while the list isn’t exhaustive by any measure there are enough different game engines and APIs variety to give us an idea of broader performance trends.
In rasterization performance, the MSI card delivers some pretty impressive results at both 4K and 1440p with all the visual settings maxed out, going toe to toe with the RTX 4080 Super in many scenarios – and easily outpacing the RTX 4070 Ti non-Super and Super cards. It’s becoming unheard of modern games that don’t support NVIDIA’s DLSS or AMD’s FSR (or even Intel’s XeSS) super sampling tech, but the RTX 5070 Ti shows it’s even capable of powering power-hungry games like Total War: Warhammer III at 4K without depending on DLSS. I didn’t go too far with overlocking the MSI card, but with better cooling I suspect the RTX 5070 Ti has very good overclocking potential.
DLSS 4 and ray tracing
Like the RTX 5090, and by extension all GPUs in the RTX 50 Series, the true power of the RTX 5070 Ti lies in its Multi-Frame Generation (MFG) feature.
Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the earliest game to fully siupport DLSS 4 and Muli Frame Generation and is a great test title, as it demonstrates the motion clarity improvements with higher frame rates that NVIDIA’s new technique brings to the RTX 50 Series.
As we can see in the charts above, at higher resolutions like 4K with full settings switched on, the 5070 Ti becomes more playable at 73fps once Frame Generation is activated. But with 3x Multi Frame Generation, the game’s framerate jumped to a smoother 104fps. Of course, the caveat here is that the 104fps may not feel “real” for those with more discerning hand-eye coordinations, because the game still maintains the same input latency it has after DLSS is applied – so it’s less reactive than a real 104fps when you hit the mouse button to shoot.
AI & Content creation
While the RTX 5070 Ti does a commendable job of of performing AI-related workloads and content creation, it’s really a card that’s geared for gamers unlike the more beastly RTX 5090. The flagship card’s superior memory and core count make them more suitable for heavy duty stuff such as AI text generation and even video encoding.
Power and Temperature
The RTX 5070 Ti sports a more modest 15W increase over its RTX 4070 Ti non-Super and Super cards, but it’s worth noting how its thermal efficiency and gaming performance are still better than both RTX 4080 cards (TDP 320W) despite running at a lower TDP.
Conclusion
In my opinion, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti (thanks to MSI, too) is a solid offering, picking up where the 4070 Ti Super left off with a good performance boost while trimming US$50 off the launch price. Unlike the relatively underwhelming GeForce RTX 5080, which felt more like an incremental update over the RTX 4080 non-Super and Super cards and stuck with the same 16GB of memory, the 5070 Ti’s more affordable US$749 price tag and new 16GB offering seem like NVIDIA’s most sensible mainstream GPU in the RTX 50 Series.
But who’s the RTX 5070 Ti targeted at? I think it makes for an ideal upgrade for those still running the older GeForce RTX 3070 or even the RTX 3080. More than just solid performance gains, you’ll also be able to take advantage of the new features like DLSS 4, Multi Frame Generation and neural rendering. Multi Frame Generation is divisive, but it is really not a bad option to have in my opinion.
The only significant concern here is availability, which is an NVIDIA’s challenge. We have already heard of how the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 were launched with such extreme shortages that it put a dampener on things. But if the continued extreme demands for the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 meant that the 5070 Ti’s availability is more consistent at retail, and without going too far north of its US$749 SRP, then the RTX 5070 Ti could be the most bang for buck GPU in the RTX 50 Series family.
