In addition to the Nvidia RTX 5070 Founders Edition, I also received a second MSRP-priced RTX 5070. The second card was from Asus, their Prime RTX 5070. Like with the RTX 5070 Ti, at launch Asus has three different card designs in their lineup for the RTX 5070. They have the Prime RTX 5070, the TUF Gaming RTX 5070, and the Strix RTX 5070 with all three having stock clocked and overclocked models. Our Prime RTX 5070 is the stock-clocked model. We already saw how the RTX 5070 can perform but I’m excited to get a direct comparison on how a larger aftermarket cooler changes performance and compares to the Founders Edition. Well, no point in wasting any time, let’s get into it!
Product Name: Asus Prime RTX 5070
Review Sample Provided by: Asus
Written by: Wes Compton
Amazon Affiliate Link: HERE
What is new?
Nvidia announced a lot with this one so let’s try to touch on as much as we can. They of course had a few hardware announcements for the 50-Series. They have announced four cards, the RTX 5090, the RTX 5080, the RTX 5070 Ti, and the RTX 5070. That is the new 50-series RTX family. The slides below include their focus on them. The 5090 for example is targeted at 4k 240 Hz and the other three are targeted at 2k or 1440p performance. They all have GDDR7 VRAM with the flagship RTX 5090 having 32 GB and a 512-bit interface. The RTX 5080 cuts that in half to 16 GB, the RTX 5070 Ti also has 16GB, and then the RTX 5070 has 12 GB.
The new GPUs are based on the Blackwell architecture and they do have new updated RT and Tensor cores with that being the 4th gen for the RT Cores and 5th gen for Tensor cores. The new tensor cores can now also handle floating point (FP) 4 along with FP8 and FP16. They also have introduced an AMP processer which is the AI Management Processor to help schedule AI tasks alongside of graphics rendering. They have increased the number of NV encoders and decoders, it now depends on the card model and isn’t a flat number of them across the entire generation of cards. They have also moved to PCIe Gen 5 and DisplayPort 2.1b including UHBR20. For pricing the RTX 5090 comes in at $1999, the RTX 5090 is half that (just like its memory) at $999. The RTX 5070 Ti is $749 and the RTX 5070 is $549.
Some of the main goals with Blackwell were to optimize the neural workloads and reduce the memory footprint. No big surprises there. Memory is one of the more expensive parts of the cards and anyone who has been paying attention knows that neural workloads and AI have been where Nvidia has been seeing the biggest improvements. Combining those things they have brought AI into shaders with neural shaders. The example of this they show is a hair being rendered with ray tracing and how using spheres rather than triangles helps use less data which means less VRAM and higher frame rates.
Nvidia announced Transformer which replaces CNN as the model they use with Super Resolution. They have improved the design significantly to get better detail when scaling this up. On top of that, they announced DLSS 4 which has improved on the frame generation that they introduced with DLSS 3. It is now Multi Frame Generation. Where before they were able to generate every other frame, they can now do x3 or x4. This gets interesting once they add in DLSS Super Resolution as well because that is already rendering ¾ of the image. With both, they are rendering 15 of 16 pixels using AI. Of course how well this works then depends a lot on how good the renders are. But it gives huge improvements in performance and with frame generation, we know that those improvements still happen even if you are PCU limited for example. The example they show has DLSS off at 27 FPS, turning on Super Resolution it goes to 71 FPS. DLSS 3.5 gets you to 140 FPS and DLSS 4 is 248 FPS. DLSS is already supported by a LOT of games and Nvidia is saying that DLSS 4 will have 75 games and apps supporting DLSS 4 at Day 0. Some of those will be by using the Nvidia App, which can override the DLSS settings on some games. It is also important to note that some of these features will go back and work with legacy cards as well. Specifically, DLAA is going to work back to the 20 series of cards, same with the improved DLSS Super Resolution. The new multi-frame generation however only works with 50 series cards.
They also introduced a new Nvidia Reflex. Reflex helps improve responsiveness to get lower latency through the entire pipeline. Were Reflex offered 50% faster responsiveness the new Reflex 2 gets you 75% by using frame warp. They say that is coming first to 50 series and will be available in games like Valorant soon.
For comparison, I have the RTX 5070 specifications along with the RTX 5070 Ti that just previously launched and the two previous xx70 GPUs, the RTX 4070 and RTX 3070 listed together for comparison. The RTX 5070 does have its own GPU, it doesn’t share the same GPU as the RTX 5070 Ti which can be seen with its own codename as well as a difference in die size and transistor count as well. Interestingly the RTX 5070 does have fewer transistors than the RTX 4070 and the die size has gotten smaller each generation even though the RTX 4070 was made on the same 4nm process. The RTX 5070 when compared to the RTX 5070 Ti drops down one GPC to 5. It has the same number of CUDA cores per SM (128) like all four models listed here do but the SM count is 48 for the RTX 5070 down from 70 on the RTX 5070 Ti. The CUDA count going from the 3070 or 4070 which have the same 5888 CUDA core count isn’t as large of a jump going to the 6144 of the RTX 5070 as we would normally expect (4.3% in total). Nvidia has increased the Tensor and RT cores and seems to be relying more on the jump in clock speed as well which is 2512 MHz, a big jump when compared to the RTX 3070 (1725 MHz). Ray tracing FLOPs show a significant change from the new 4th-generation core design. The RTX 5070 has the same 12GB of VRAM as the RTX 4070 has, the RTX 3070 had less with 8GB. The GDDR7 is clocked faster so while it does still have the same 192-bit interface there is a big jump in memory bandwidth. The texture unit count has dropped down but even with that, the fill rate did improve slightly from 455 up to 482. For video engines the RTX 5070, like the other Blackwell GPUs does have the new NVENC and NVDEC engines but just one of each this time around. For power, the TGP has been dropped down from the 300 watts of the RTX 5070 Ti to 250 watts. This is higher than the 4070 (200W) and the 3070 (220W) so it will be interesting how it performs in our power testing.
Before getting into testing I ran GPUz to double-check that our clock speeds match up with the specifications. The Asus Prime RTX 5070 is available as an overclocked model and stock clocked and we have the stock-clocked model. GPUz confirmed that with its 2512 MHz clock speed. I tested using the 572.50 Beta driver that was provided to press ahead of the launch by Nvidia. The BIOS version is also noted as well for future reference.
Packaging
The packaging for the Prime RTX 5070 looks the same as the box from the Prime RTX 5070 Ti that I took a look at for the launch. The front of the box has a large picture of the card across it which I wish every box had for anyone shopping in retail. It has a grey background with lines all around the card and the Prime branding next to it. The bottom has the standard Nvidia wrap around which includes the black and green branding and a large GeForce RTX 5070 on it. They also list out the 12GB VRAM and show that this is a PCIe 5.0 card. The wrap-around wraps around to the back and breaks down some of the Nvidia-specific features. Above that Asus has four sections with a few pictures of the Prime RTX 5070 and its software. Each has a short description giving more detail on the features. Asus does have a line drawing that shows the card's rear I/O connections but sadly there isn’t a basic specification listing that at least shows the card's dimensions. Packaging is mostly for people shopping in person and that would be important information to know to make sure it will fit in your case.
Once you pull the outer packaging off, inside you will find a black box with the Asus logo on top in a metallic finish. This opens up and you have a foam cover on top with a cutout that holds a small Asus-branded envelope with the documentation inside. Under that, you will find the Prime RTX 5070 sitting in a static protective bag and in a thick foam tray cut to perfectly fit it. There is also a second section cut out of the bottom foam to hold a few accessories as well.
For documentation, Asus includes a cardboard card with a thank you on it, a quick start guide, a warranty information book, and a paper that has line drawings showing how to make sure the 16-pin connection is connected correctly. For accessories, you get a pack with two thick Asus-branded Velcro straps to help clean up your wiring. You also get a PCIe to 12x6 adapter cable. This has two bundles of cables with each sleeved up. The adapter has the two 8-pin PCIe power connections and a 12x6 connection on the other end. This adapter style is the same as we saw last generation, shorter than the new design included with the Founders Edition cards.
Card Layout and Photos
If you took a look at my review of the Asus Prime RTX 5070 Ti that I published just yesterday you already have a good idea of what the Prime RTX 5070 looks like. The two cards look the same and I wouldn’t say that is a bad thing. It’s not flashy or over the top and there isn’t any lighting or other “gamer” features which end the end makes for a nice relatively simple card design. It has a black plastic fan shroud for the triple fan design and it wraps around the top with a radiused corner. The shroud has a textured finish and then they use a glossy finish on some of the corners for contrast. There are a couple of spots molded into the shroud for accent including the Asus logo which is tucked under the left two cards. Beyond that, they have a few white lines, similar to what they used on the box and what you will see later that is on the back of the card. The card itself is a little larger than your “standard’ card but these days that standard is getting larger. It is 126 mm tall which puts it around 22mm over the top of the PCI bracket and 50 mm thick making it a 2 ½ slot card. It is then 304 mm long. For comparison, the Founders Edition is 30 mm thick, 252 mm long, and 112 mm tall.
The Prime RTX 5070 is a triple fan cooler with each fan being 87mm tip to tip. Given the extra height I would have thought these would be a little larger than the fans used on the Founders Edition but to fit three fans they are a little smaller. Each fan has 11 blades and the center hub is a little more compact giving a little more blade surface area. Each fan has an outer ring to help direct the airflow down into the card and also give more stability as well. The fans are set to turn off in light gaming and when the GPU isn’t being used. The fans also have the same dual-ball bearings that the last few Asus cards have had. The center fan here does spin in the opposite direction which helps cut down on turbulence and noise. Going clockwise (where the other two go counterclockwise) means on the right and left sides where it is next to another fan it will now go the same direction (down on the right side and up on the left side). The far-right fan is also a blow-through fan with the PCB ending and the back of the Prime allowing for the air to blow out the back. Looking down into the heatsink itself it is an aluminum fin design and horizontal which means for two of the three fans the air being pushed down into the heatsink will vent out of the top and bottom of the card.
The top edge of the Prime RTX 5070 has a few different things going on. They have the front edge which curves around to the top of the shroud, it has the Prime logo in it with a gloss black finish. Then just above that they have the Asus logo as well which is printed on a small section of the aluminum backplate that bends around to the top. There is also the power connection, the Prime RTX 5070 has a 12x6 power connection that uses a 12VHPWR cable, just like the Founders Edition. This plug however isn’t recessed down as far as on the Founders Edition and isn’t angled. It is 11 mm down from the top edge of the card which does help and while the card is taller it isn’t anywhere near the tallest card so in most cases there should be room for the connection. But I would still prefer to see this angled in a way where you don’t have to worry about the connection being strained. Asus also has a status LED on the PCB here that lights up if the plug isn’t getting power which is a nice diagnostic tool and hopefully will also give warning if the connection isn’t plugged in all the way.
With the top and bottom edges as well as the end of the Prime RTX 5070 we can get a better look at the cool design. Asus has done a good job tucking the heatsink in anywhere they can, even under the power plug you can see that it drops down in that area as well. It even jumps up into the vent areas on the top and bottom to get the most surface area possible. The end of the card has stripes and doesn’t have any venting with just the three threaded support bracket holes. On the bottom, we can see the fan plug hidden away. We can also see the heatspreader that sits on top of the GPU and memory. Asus calls the finish they used their Max Contact Design which expands the surface area by 5%. They also use a phase change thermal pad for the GPU rather than thermal paste with the idea being better contact and it won’t eventually dry out and need replacing like thermal paste.
The back of the Prime RTX 5070 has a full-length aluminum backplate including going down past the end of the PCB and giving support in the blow-through end of the card. You can see how it attaches to the heatsink to keep it stable down there. The backplate is black but has two different finishes, on the blow-through section it has a textured to it then on the right side it is brushed. They use white lines to break it up and to add in a few other accents. It has the Prime branding hidden down in the end and the GeForce RTX branding is printed there as well. The backplate has thermal pads that help pull heat out from the back of the PCB. Up on the top edge, there are two notched areas, one for the power connection and the other is smaller but gives access to the BIOS switch to switch between performance and quiet profiles. The serial number tag is on the back as well and they have the backplate cut around the support bracket behind the GPU. That support bracket has a nice flat black finish which is a nice touch as well.
For display connections, the Prime RTX 5070 has the same connection configuration that the Founders Edition has. You get three DisplayPorts and then one HDMI with the HDMi being down towards the bottom. They all run along the PCB leaving a lot of extra room on the PCI bracket and Asus did include vents in the bracket but you can see that the cooler itself has the fan shroud over that area so there isn’t any air being pushed out the vents. I would prefer the bracket to be blacked out to match the card and look better in a lot of cases. It does have a metal finish and Asus has each of the connections labeled. They also have it etched on there that this is Stainless Steel 304 which just means they are using a better quality material for the bracket to get better support for the card that you will see on some other cards.
Getting the Prime RTX 5070 next to the Founders Edition shows the size difference between the two. The Prime RTX 5070 is bigger in each dimension but its length is what stands out here.
For those curious, I did also put the Prime RTX 5070 next to the Prime RTX 5070 Ti. The fan shroud design is the same and both cards have the same length. But there was one difference that surprised me. Even when I took the pictures I just thought they were the same, but if you look closely you will notice that the power connection has moved down. The PCB for the Prime RTX 5070 Ti is longer. With that, the cooler design has changed as well.
Test Rig and Procedures
Test System
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D – Live Pricing
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Hero – Live Pricing
Cooling: Enermax LIQMAXFLO 360mm Liquid CPU Cooler - Live Pricing
Noctua NT-H2 Thermal Paste - Live Pricing
Memory: G.SKILL Trident Z5 Neo RGB Series (2x16GB) 6000MT/s CL28-36-36-96 – Live Pricing
Storage: Viper VP4300 Lite 4TB – Live Pricing
Power Supply: be quiet! Dark Power Pro 13 1600W- Live Pricing
Case: Primochill Wetbench - Live Pricing
OS: Windows 11 Pro 64-bit - Live Pricing
Synthetic Benchmarks
As always I like to start my testing with a few synthetic benchmarks. 3DMark especially is one of my favorites because it is very optimized in both Nvidia and AMD drivers. It's nice to not have to worry about it being favored too much either way and the repeatability of the results makes it a nice chance to compare from card to card, especially when comparing with the same GPU. Having already taken a look at the RTX 5070 Founders Edition I am curious to see how the Prime compares with its larger cooler but same clock speed. In addition, we want to keep an eye on cards like the 7800 XT which is selling for close to the same launch price here, the RTX 4070, and the RTX 3070 which is the card that people might be looking to upgrade to the 5070 from.
The first round of tests were done in the older Fire Strike benchmark which is a DX11 test. There are three detail levels, performance, extreme, and ultra. The Prime RTX 5070 scored a 56434 on the base Fire Strike benchmark putting it behind the 7900 GRE and ahead of the 6800 XT. That was 1477 points higher than the 50708 Founders Edition. In Fire Strike Extreme the two 5070s are next to each other but the Prime RTX 5070 is still 459 points ahead of the Founders Edition. Then with the Fire Strike Ultra test that gap shrinks even more with the Prime RTX 5070 ahead by 87 points.
The next two were both based on the Time Spy benchmark. One is the standard test and then there is the extreme detail level. The Prime RTX 5070 is nearly tied with the Founders Edition in both Time Spy results. That puts it 6.8% ahead of the RTX 4070 SUPER, 25% ahead of the RTX 4070, and 62% ahead of the RTX 3070.
I did also test using the new 3DMark Speed Way which is one of their latest benchmarks and Port Royal as well. Speed Way is DX12 as well but combines more future-focused tech like Ray Tracing which up until its release where only used in feature tests, not full benchmarks. The Prime RTX 5070 fell below the Founders Edition for the Speed Way result and the Port Royal test as well which is interesting. It wasn’t by a large margin and didn’t drop it down below any other cards because of it.
The last test is the newer 3Dmark Steel Nomad benchmark. Officially this is the replacement for the Time Spy benchmark. It is a DX12 benchmark and doesn’t include ray tracing but is updated to better take advantage of modern cards. The Prime RTX 5070 jumped back in front of the 5070 Founders Edition here, staying behind the 4070 Ti and ahead of the 7900 GRE and the 4070 SUPER.
I did also test using the 3Dmark DLSS comparison. Testing at 4k with each of the generations of DLSS with DLSS 4 including frame generation x4. The Prime RTX 5070 is tied with the Founders Editon here, but more importantly, this gives a good look at the potential performance increases you can see with DLSS. With DLSS 4 the base 30 FPS result is 546% faster at 194 FPS.
In-Game Benchmarks
Now we finally get into the in game performance and that is the main reason people pick up a new video card. To test things out I ran through our new benchmark suite that tests 8 games at three different resolutions (1080p, 1440p, and 4k). Most of the games tested have been run at the highest detail setting and a mid-range detail setting to get a look at how turning things up hurts performance and to give an idea of whether turning detail down from max will be beneficial for frame rates. Cyberpunk 2077 is also tested with Super Sampling (DLSS/FSR/XeSS). In total, each video card is tested 60 times and that makes for a huge mess of results when you put them all together. To help with that I like to start with these overall playability graphs that take all of the results and give an easier-to-read result. I have one for each of the three resolutions and each is broken up into four FPS ranges. Under 30 FPS is considered unplayable, over 30 is playable but not ideal, over 60 is the sweet spot, over 120 FPS is for high refresh rate monitors, and 240 helps show the performance ideal for the latest higher refresh displays.
So how did the Prime RTX 5070 do? Well at 1080p it blew through everything. I had one result under 120 FPS with the rest over 120 FPS and 8 out of the 18 results were over 240 FPS as well. At 1440p, which is the target resolution for the RTX 5070 the Prime RTX 5070 had three over 60 FPS, 15 over 120, and 4 over 240 FPS. At 4k the 12GB of VRAM catches up and performance does drop down but even then there is just one result under 60 FPS, a majority of the results were in the 60-119 range with 11 there. There were 5 over 120 but below 240 and 1 over 240 still. All of this was the same as we saw with the Founders Edition with the exception that at 1440p one result moved from the 60-119 range up over 120 FPS.
To get a better look at some of the cards that are the closest competition to the Prime RTX 5070 in price, performance, or with the 3070 because that is the person that may be looking at the 5070 as an upgrade. The Prime RTX 5070 with its stock clock speed didn’t make a huge difference between it and the Founders Edition but I am surprised that there is any difference at all. At 1440p it is almost 1 FPS, that’s impressive considering it is doing it with changed cooling. The Prime RTX 5070 outperformed the overclocked RTX 4070 Ti when averaged across our tests but two of those results do include DLSS 4. I think that is something to keep in mind, DLSS 4 can offer performance improvements beyond just the Raster performance but even without those it was still 1-2 FPS higher on average.
Of course, I have all of the actual in game results as well for anyone who wants to sort through the wall of graphs below.
Another new addition to my testing was a few additional tests using Cyberpunk 2077. This is one of only a few games that support most of the tech from all three of the GPU companies. So I did tests at medium and ultra detail while having Super Sampling on for all of the cards. Using whatever the latest and greatest is supported. In this case, I tested with DLSS 4 including multi frame generation x4. Just a note here, the AMD cards only allowed FSR when running windowed mode whereas Nvidia only performed well in fullscreen mode. The Prime RTX 5070 outperformed the Founders Edition in 3 of the four tests. More importantly, though this is a good look at the performance improvement SS can get you no matter the brand, and at the ultra detail and 4k the Prime RTX 5070 went from 65 FPS up to 235 FPS, it was playable at 65 but at 235 you can put to use a proper 4k high refresh display.
Compute and AI Benchmarks
Now some people don’t need a video card for gaming, they need the processing power for rendering or 2D/3D production, or in some cases, people who game also do work on the side. AI performance importance has increased quickly recently as well. So it is also important to check out the compute and AI performance on all of the video cards that come in. That includes doing a few different tests. To start off our AI tests I ran Geekbench AI, a cross-platform AI benchmark that uses real-world machine learning tasks giving three results, a full precision score, half precision score, and quantized score. The Prime RTX 5070 came in below the Founders Edition and dropped down enough in the combined score to drop below the RX 7900 XT, but was still impressive and is sitting ahead of both the RTX 4080 and 4080 SUPER, thanks mostly to its half-precision score.
Blender is always my favorite compute benchmark because the open-source 3D rendering software is very popular and it isn’t a synthetic benchmark. With the latest version of Blender, they redid the benchmark so we now have a new test that runs three different renderings and gives each a score. I have all three stacked together so we can see the overall performance. The Prime RTX 5070 dropped below both the 5070 Founders Edition and the 4070 SUPER here with its combined results. It is still out in front of the RTX 3090 Ti.
For CUDA-based cards, I also check out V-Ray Benchmark 5 to check out CUDA and RTX performance in the 3D rendering and simulation software. The Prime RTX 5070 once again came in below the Founders Edition in both the CUDA and RTX tests, it’s not by much of a margin but it's interesting to see how it outperformed the Founders Edition in the 3Dmark tests but is a hair behind here.
Cooling Noise and Power
For my last few tests, rather than focusing on in game performance, I like to check out other aspects of video card performance. These are also the most important ways to differentiate the performance between cards that have the same GPU. To start things off I took a look at power usage.
For this, our test setup utilizes the Nvidia-designed PCat v2 along with cables to handle both traditional 6 or 8-pin connections as well as 12VHPWR. The PCat also utilizes a PCIe adapter to measure any power going to the card through the PCIe slot so we can measure the video card wattage exclusively, not the entire system as we have done in the past. I test with a mix of applications to get both in game, synthetic benchmarks, and other workloads like GeekbenchAI and AIDA64. Then everything is averaged together for our result. I also have the individual results for this specific card and I document the peak wattage result. The Prime RTX 5070 averaged 270.75 watts which was 1 watt lower than the Founders Edition. It was two watts lower at its peak as well which it peaked at 285.25 watts. It is sitting just above the RTX 3070 which shows how much things have improved in the last two generations as well.
With having exact peak wattage numbers when running Time Spy Extreme I was also able to put together a graph showing the total score for each watt that a card draws which gives us an interesting look at overall power efficiency in the popular and demanding benchmark. The Prime RTX 5070 pulled 10 fewer watts when running Time Spy Extreme and had a slightly higher score than the 5070 Founders Edition so its efficiency score jumped up from 37.79 up to 39.19. That put it in between the 5080 and the 5090.
My next round of tests were looking at noise levels. These are especially important to me because I can’t stand to listen to my PC whirling. Especially when I’m not in game and other applications are using the GPU. For my testing, though I first tested with the fan cranked up to 100% to get an idea of how loud it can get, then again at 50% to get an idea of its range. With an extra fan compared to the Founders Edition, I was curious how the Prime RTX 5070 would compare for noise levels. At 50% fan speed it is in the bottom ¼ of our chart at 35.2 dB, the Founders Edition was just over 5 mode dB higher, a huge gap. At 100% fan speed the Prime RTX 5070 moved up near the middle of the chart and was 57.8 dB, this was .2 dB over the Founders Edition. The RPM chart shows that the Prime RTX 5070 was in the right spot at 100% fan speed as well.
I also take a look at noise performance while under load. For that when running AIDA64’s stress test I wait until the temperature of the card has leveled off and then measure how loud things are when the card is at its worst-case scenario with the stock fan profile. Here the Prime RTX 5070 is down in the bottom ¼ of the chart once again at 35.5 dB. That is opposite of the Founders Edition which is up in the top section of the chart with 40.9 dB. While under load the Prime RTX 5070 had the fans running at 51% which is aggressive making the great noise performance even more impressive.
To finish up my testing I of course had to check out the cooling performance. To do this I ran two different tests. I used AIDA64’s Stress Test run for a half-hour each to warm things up (on everything except the 5090 which was tested on a similarly matched OCCT workload). Then I documented what temperature the GPU leveled out at with the stock fan profile and then again with the fans cranked up to 100%. With the stock profile, the * Prime RTX 5070 leveled off in our testing at 62c, 9c lower than the Founders Edition. The memory was at 60c, 6c lower than the FE. At 100% fan speed, it ran even cooler at 53c a delta of 9c when compared to the stock fan profile which is average but better than I thought I would see given how aggressive the fan profile was. At 100% fan speed the memory dropped down 10c as well to 50c.
While running the stock fan profile testing I also took the time to get a few thermal images so we could see what is going on. The fan side of the Prime RTX 5070 has a range of 8c between one end to the other. The left side which has the GPU behind it runs as warm as 33c at its hottest point and then as you go to the right it is 6c less in the middle fan and 8c on the far right blow-through fan. The top has PCB exposed which above the GPU is the hottest spot on that point of view at 70c. The PCB is cooler down at the end at 48c and then the heatsink in the blow-through section is cool in comparison at 29c. For the back of the Prime RTX 5070, the blow-through section is cool enough that you can see the heatpipes running through it. The exposed section behind the GPU is by far the hottest area at 82c with most of the heat focused on one area of the GPU which is interesting. The backplate itself is warm but not nearly as hot.
Overall and Final Verdict
With all of our testing finished, how does the Asus Prime RTX 5070 fair? The Prime RTX 5070’s styling is the same as I saw with the Prime RTX 5070 Ti and it might not be for everyone but I like the simple blacked-out look. Asus managed to give it a unique look with the radiused top edge and then used the combination of textured and gloss finishes to add discrete branding on it. There isn’t any RGB lighting, it doesn’t have too much going on, and being black it will match most builds. Even while pulling some of the features back the Prime RTX 5070 has a full-sized aluminum backplate, the only thing missing is a matching black PCI bracket in my eyes. The only issue I had with the card design was with the placement of the 12x6 power connection which is facing directly up and can be an issue in cases without much headroom causing the connection to be strained. They did recess the plug down into the card slightly and the card itself isn’t too large, but I would still love to see it angled to avoid the issue altogether. For size, it isn’t huge like the TUF Gaming model but also isn’t compact like the Founders Edition. Given how well it performed in our noise testing and how much it improved for cooling compared to the Founders Edition it looks like it could be the sweet spot for the RTX 5070 unless you are aiming to do overclocking.
Performance-wise, even with the same stock clock speed the Prime RTX 5070 did manage to improve on the Founders Edition's performance in a lot of our tests. This is most likely related to the improved cooling performance. It also moved up in our power efficiency charts with its better Time Spy Extreme score while also pulling 10 watts less than the Founders Edition when doing it. The extra performance wasn’t significant and it wasn’t enough to pass any of the other cards but a little extra performance at the same price and clock speed is always a good thing. Overall it performed how you would expect. The 1080p and 1440p performance was solid, you can even game at 4k as long as you aren’t cranking ray tracing up too much. It fell in between the RTX 4070 SUPER and the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER. In our in-game testing, it did average out ahead of the 4070 Ti even when not figuring in our DLSS 4 tests. I wouldn’t recommend a 5070 for someone looking to upgrade from a 40 Series card, but you do get a nice improvement if you are currently using an RTX 3070 or 3060. Ray tracing and DLSS is where a majority of the improvements have been made. If you haven’t seen DLSS 4 you might want to check it out. Multi frame generation doubles up the performance you saw with DLSS 3 and model improvements have DLSS looking a lot better and smoother.
As always pricing always makes or breaks a card and the Prime RTX 5070 is Asus’s MSRP-focused card so it has the same $549 MSRP as the Founders Edition. Unlike the FE it will be available for sale all over, not just at Best Buy. But as I spoke about in the Founders Edition review, it’s hard to say if you will be able to find any of the MSRP cards after launch. Demand is high across the board and supply isn’t meeting that demand on any of the 50 Series cards. With these being a little more obtainable price-wise, I hope that changes. That said I did put together a graph that breaks down the current pricing combined with Time Spy Extreme performance. You can see almost every card currently has a price significantly higher than its MSRP which is skewing the chart. We don’t know where the 5070 will be in a few days so it only has its MSRP. But at current pricing, it is only behind the RX 7600 score per dollar, and with MSRP only the 7900 GRE tops it. Of course, that could completely change when AMDs new RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT hit the market in two days so if you aren’t dead set on the 5070 itself you should wait and see. Asus has those in a similar Prime model as well.
Live Pricing: HERE
