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.
