When Nvidia originally announced their new 50 Series of video cards, the RTX 5090 was their flagship but they did also announce three other GPUs as well. We have seen all of those except one and today the embargo lists on that last card, the RTX 5070. The RTX 5070 helps bring the 50 Series specific features like DLSS 4 a little farther down into the product stack. The 5070 is targeted at RTX 3070 owners which is still in the top 5 on Steam's hardware survey and is increasing now with 4.27% of Steam users using it. Because the RTX 5070 Ti didn’t have a Founders Edition, this is also the first 50 Series Founders Edition model with a much more compact size, and with that, I’m curious if it might be a great LAN right option. So let’s dive in and see what it is all about then put it to the test.
Product Name: Nvidia RTX 5070 Founders Edition
Review Sample Provided by: Nvidia
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 also ran GPUz to double-check that our clock speeds match up with the specifications. Our RTX 5070 Founders Edition clocked at 2512 MHz and that lines up with Nvidia’s specifications. Our ROPs line up so we are good there as well. Testing was done with the 572.50 driver which Nvidia provided to the press ahead of the launch and is a Beta driver.
Packaging
The RTX 5070 Founders Edition comes in the same packaging setup that we saw on the other 50-Series Founders Edition cards. It looks like an outer shipping box but the main box is the card’s packaging cutting out some of the extra waste that happens when you have normal card packaging being shipped inside of another box. You just pull the tab and it opens up including the sides which fold out giving you access to everything inside. There is a more decorative box inside that houses and protects the RTX 5070 Founders Edition itself. Then up under that, you will find a second box with the documentation and accessories inside.
The accessory box is simple but has a small quick start guide tucked into the top and the power adapter in the bottom of the box. This generation of Founders Editon cards have a new adapter design that is individually sleeved and longer. The extra length means you don’t have your plugs right up on top of the card which looks better and being more flexible means less strain on the connection itself which was part of the issue from last generation’s power connection issues. The RTX 5070 Founders Edition’s adapter has just two 8-pin PCIe power plugs and then the 16-pin connection on the other end of the cable.
The inner box is what you would use if you wanted to display your packaging around your office and sticking with the theme they don’t have any ink used here, it has the RTX 5070 model name die cut into the front and that is it. Once you pull the top and bottom flaps out it splits in half and inside it is cut to perfectly fit the card keeping it from moving around.
Card Layout and Photos
I spoke about it with the other 50-Series Founders Edition cards but each time they release a new one I am always impressed that Nvidia has managed to change the design up but still keep the same overall styling and feel. This time around the RTX 5070 Founders Edition has dropped down in size significantly. It is a two-slot card just like the others, but the card dimensions have dropped down to what I would call a standard card size. It has a 112 mm card height which puts it right over the top of the rear PCI bracket and at 242 mm in length I wouldn’t call it compact but it isn’t long. It has the same dual fan design and the cast metal fan shroud has that same infinity loop shape that is visible on both sides of the card and peaks out on the top and bottom as well. It has black for all of the filler plates and the loop has a very dark grey finish that goes great with the black fans.
Like with the other Founders Edition cards, the RTX 5070 Founders Edition has a dual fan design with two axial fans pushing air down into the cooler. If you look closely though the left and right sides are very different even with the cooler layout. On the left the heatsink behind the fan is horizontal, the air on this side is pushed out the PCI bracket and towards the other side of the card. The right side on the other hand has a horizontal heatsink. This side is a blow-through design with the heatsink itself exposed on the backside. Both fans are the same size which is 90mm edge to edge with a little under 2mm of a gap between the edge to the shroud. They have 7 blades and a dark grey center cap. They also have an outer ring all the way around that connects all of the blades to give them more stability.
The top edge of the card has a few things going on. On the blow-through end, it has GeForce RTX etched on it but with no backlighting. Next to that, at the end of the PCB, you have the 16-pin 12x6 power connection. Nvidia learned from the last generation and has this plug now recessed down into the card slightly and set at an angle. This helps prevent issues with the connection being pushed up against a side panel straining the connection. They have also switched to 12x6 which looks the same as the 12VHPWR and uses the 12VHPWR cable from your PSU. The 12x6 has longer pins to help get a better connection for the power pins and shorter sense pins to help pick up an issue when it isn’t plugged in all the way.
Looking at the top and bottom edges as well as the end of the RTX 5070 Founders Edition, the metal shroud wraps on all three of these edges. Other than the two smaller vents in the center on the top and bottom none of these edges will have air venting out. That leaves the blow-through area and the PCI bracket end of the card which is interesting to see. The end of the card does have threaded mounting holes for cases that have those support brackets.
The back side of the RTX 5070 Founders Edition looks similar to the design we have seen on the other 50 Series Founders Edition cards but both sides aren’t a full blow-through design like on the other cards. Only the left side does that. They still have the black heatsink on both sides and the infinity loop shape. Up in the top solid section they have the RTX 5070 model name and if you look closely you can see the Nvidia branding on the bottom right corner of the X center shape.
For display connections, the RTX 5070 Founders Edition has the same four connections that most cards these days have. You get three Display Port connections and one HDMI port. The HDMI is down at the bottom near the PCIe slot. The PCI bracket has a nice black finish like all of this generations Founders Edition cards have had which is great to see, and with all of the display connections along the PCB there is room for four large vent holes as well and we can see that Nvidia has taken advantage of this with the heatsink directly behind it and pushing air out this direction, this is where a lot of the air from the left fan is going. It’s not a full blow-through design but the card design has the left sides cooling running out here and out on the blow-through end.
The RTX 5070 Founders Edition is what we would consider a full-sized card 3 generations ago but with cards getting larger I did get a shot with the RTX 5070 Founders Edition sitting next to the RTX 5080 for comparison. They both have the same 2-slot thickness but the RTX 5080 is huge in comparison.
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. With this being our first look at the RTX 5070, I am curious to see how it compares to the RTX 5070 Ti, the RTX 4070, and the RTX 3070 which is the most likely upgrade path. For AMD I want to see how it compares to the RX 7800 XT which is currently selling closest to the RTX 5070’s MSRP.
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 RTX 5070 Founders Edition came in the middle of two different overclocked RTX 4070 Ti’s. It did outscore the 7800 XT by a good margin at least. In the Fire Strike Extreme test, it moved up slightly and was ahead of the 7900 GRE and behind the 4070 Ti SUPER but still with that big gap between it and the 7900 XT. In Fire Strike Extreme the gap between the 7800 XT and the RTX 5070 Founders Edition shrank and it dropped down closer to the RTX 3090 Ti.
The next two were both based on the Time Spy benchmark. One is the standard test and then there is the extreme detail level. In the base Time Spy test, the RTX 5070 Founders Edition scored 22221 which put it above the RTX 3090 Ti and below the 7900 GRE. The 4070 Ti is still out in front here by a good margin and the gap between it and the two previous xx70 generations was 25% (4070) and 62% (3070). Time Spy Extreme was similar with the RTX 5070 Founders Edition improving on the RTX 4070 by 25% again and 58% on the 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 RTX 5070 Founders Edition did a lot better in these tests. For the Speed Way test, it scored a 5805 and came in front of the 4070 Ti and is not far off from the 7900 XTX. In Port Royal, it was just in front of the 7900 XT and it improved on the RTX 3070 by 67%.
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 RTX 5070 Founders Edition sits ahead of the RX 7900 GRE and behind the overclocked RTX 4070 Ti for this test. Once again the improvements we see over the previous xx70 cards are great but the 4070 Ti outperforming it feels bad every time I see it.
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 RTX 5070 Founders Edition perform? Well, 1080p was smooth sailing with all but one result up over 120 FPS, and 8 were even over 240 FPS. At 1440p we start to see things drop down a little but it still handles everything well. Everything at 1440p was over 60 FPS with 14 of the 18 results over 120 and 4 of those were also over 240. Then at 4k, the lower VRAM and smaller memory bandwidth catch up. Everything was still playable with all but one result over 60 FPS but there is just one over 240 and 5 in that 120-239 FPS range leaving a majority of the results in the 60-119 range. I still wouldn’t be afraid of playing at 4k, but if you have a high refresh display you will struggle to take full advantage.
To get a better look at some of the cards that are the closest competition, closest in price, or in the case of the RTX 3070, I wanted to see how much of a jump someone looking to upgrade after two generations would see. The RTX 5070 Founders Edition is a 1440p focused card so I used that result to arrange everything. The biggest result for me is how it compares with the RX 7800 XT which is the closest card when it comes to pricing, the RTX 5070 Founders Edition had nearly 30 FPS on it at 1440p, and 20 at 4k. Something to note if you are looking at the 3070 to 5070 upgrade, it really depends on what resolution you are gaming at. The 3070 did still perform well on average, especially at 1080p but the 5070 is a 75% improvement at 1080p and at 1440p and 83% at 4k so it is still a big jump. In our synthetic tests the RTX 4070 Ti was consistently in front of the RTX 5070 but in game, with everything averaged out that isn’t the case. I thought maybe this was only because of our Cyberpunk results which use the best possible SS setting which for the 5070 including DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation but when I removed those results the 5070 was still ahead at all three resolutions, only it was by a small margin (226 vs 218 for 1080, 172 vs 171 at 1440p, and 101 vs 98 at 4k).
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 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 which affected the numbers a lot but frame generation x4 overcomes that. The biggest thing to see here is how much farther up the RTX 5070 Founders Edition jumps up the charts when you get into the testing with SS. Even at 4k, it goes from 60 FPS up to 238 FPS, and that SS on number gets even larger at the lower resolutions.
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. My first test was 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 RTX 5070 Founders Edition did well here coming in below the RX 7900 XTX and ahead of the RX 7900 XT, punching above its weight class. Even when compared to Nvidia’s lineup it was in front of the RTX 4080 and 4080 SUPER. Thanks to it doing well with the 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 RTX 5070 Founders Edition came in behind the 4070 Ti here but ahead of the older 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 RTX 5070 Founders Edition was nearly tied with the overclocked RTX 4070 Ti SUPER in both results.
RTX and DLSS
Being an RTX card I also like checking out the performance of some of Nvidia’s features. Namely the ray tracing performance and the performance improvements you can see by using DLSS combined with the tensor cores. My first test goes back to our synthetic benchmarks with 3DMark with the 3Dmark DLSS test. This test was done on each Nvidia card testing the performance of each compatible DLSS at 4k and the performance setting. For DLSS 4 the tests are run with frame generation set to x4. The RTX 5070 Founders Edition is the first of the 50 Series cards that drops down below a good chunk of the other cards when comparing the lower DLSS performance. With DLSS 2 it is below the RTX 4070 Ti. Once you get into DLSS 4 though you really see what can be possible with DLSS. The RTX 5070 Founders Edition started with 30 FPS and improved it up to 110 FPS with DLSS 3 and then again up to 195 FPS with DLSS 4 which is crazy. That is a 550% performance increase and you can see why Nvidia is focusing so much on improving the RT and Tensor cores each generation. It is where they can see huge performance improvements whereas with traditional raster performance, the gains are smaller.
For the first DLSS test, I jumped into Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Using the Nvidia App you can force DLSS 4 support on top of the games support for DLSS 3 making this a great game to compare the performance difference between DLSS 3 and 4 as well as no DLSS at all. I tested at all three resolutions and did it will ray tracing completely turned on and at the highest detail. The RTX 5070 Founders Edition struggled at 4k with DLSS off averaging 29 FPS but with DLSS 3 on that more than tripled to 95 FPS and with DLSS 4 it went to an impressive 178 FPS. At 1440o and 1080p, it was already playable with DLSS off but both DLSS 3 and 4 made high refresh rates possible going from 75 at 1440p up to 170 with DLSS 3 and 279 with DLSS 4. At 1080p it went from 104 up to 22 with DLSS 3 and 381 with DLSS 4.
Next up was Hogwarts Legacy, this time I didn’t have to use the Nvidia App to force anything on, the game supported it out of the box. Detail was set to ultra and every ray tracing setting was on and cranked up. For the DLSS 4 settings frame generation was set to x4. With the ray tracing cranked up the RTX 5070 Founders Edition struggled at 4k with DLSS off but went from 34 FPS up to 202 when turning DLSS 4 on, a 494% increase. At 1440p it went from 66 FPS up to 299, a 353% increase, and from 98 FPS at 1080p up to 364, a 271% increase.
For my next test, Star Wars Outlaws I tested with ultra detail, with cinematic lens turned on and set to ultra, and RTX direct lighting on and set to ultra and I found the limits of the RTX 5070 Founders Edition. At 4K it would crash with or without DLSS. At 1440p though it averaged 23 FPS with DLSS off and I saw 83 FPS with DLSS 4 on. Not as significant of an increase as some of the other games but still a 260% increase. Then at 1080p, it went from 37 FPS up to 131, an increase of 254%. Those two resolutions show that you can still enjoy the detail of running ray tracing at crazy settings and get smooth gameplay with DLSS 4 when without it you would get unplayable resolutions.
For my last DLSS test, I went back to Cyberpunk 2077. We do have Cyberpunk in our normal test suite but for this test, like with the others ray tracing was turned on completely and at its highest settings including path tracing. I also used this as a chance to compare the performance you might see using the old convolutional neural networks (CNN) against the new Transformer models. Like with Star Wars, with ray tracing this cranked up the RTX 5070 Founders Edition wouldn’t run at 4k without crashing so my tests were focused on 1440p and 1080p. Even at those resolutions with DLSS turned off it ran at just 24 and 37 FPS. Turning DLSS on helped turn that into a playable frame rate at both resolutions. The new Transformer model is a big improvement visually but you do trade off a few FPS, especially at 1440p where it went from 91 down to 85 FPS.
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 RTX 5070 Founders Edition averaged 271 watts and peaked at 287 watts. This interestingly put it right above the RTX 3070 which shows just how much the efficiency has improved over the last two generations.
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 RTX 5070 Founders Edition is up in the top ¼ of our efficiency chart but still below all of the other 50 Series cards. It sits ahead of the RTX 4090. It is significantly ahead of the RX 7800 XT which is the card closest in price right now with the RTX 5070 Founders Edition at 37.79 to the 7800 XT’s 30.07.
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. The RTX 5070 Founders Edition is right in the middle of our chart for the 50% fan speed test with 40.5 dB and at 100% fan speed it dropped down in the chart with 57.5dB at that speed. This is interesting because the RTX 5070 Founders Edition has its fans cranked at 4351 RPM, topping the RPM chart.
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 RTX 5070 Founders Edition is up in the top 1/3 of the chart with 40.9 dB running in between the RX 7900 XTX and the RTX 4090. This is higher than it was on both our 50% and 100% fan speed tests, that is because Nvidia has it running at 51% fan speed when under load.
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 RTX 5070 Founders Edition was up almost at the top of our chart, leveling off at 74c when under load. That is right in line with what a lot of Nvidia’s Founders Edition cards did, but remember to reach that it was running at 51% fan speed meaning you would really have to crank the fans up to run any cooler. The memory wasn’t as bad with the stock fan profile, running at 66c. Turning the fans up the memory dropped down 10c to 56c. The GPU dropped down to 64c which was a delta of 10c but the RTX 5070 Founders Edition was up near the top of the chart at 100% fan speed.
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. On the fan side of the RTX 5070 Founders Edition, you can see that the metal fan shroud has absorbed some of the heat when running for a half hour. The hottest area is the center of the left fan and the blow through the right side is noticeably cooler. The top view shows the same thing that we saw with the fan side. The metal shroud isn’t hot, but it is 7c warmer the full length of the PCB and then the blow-through end has a solid line where the temperature changes. The power connection area is the hottest spot up on top, partially because this is also the closest to any exposed PCB. Then on the back side, this entire side is running 20c or more compared to the fan side with the hottest spot being on the far right behind the GPU. Even the blow-through area is warmer here and if you look closely you can see each of the heatpipes that run down through that end as well.
Overall and Final Verdict
With all of our testing out of the way, we can finally step back and get a look at everything together. Like with the other Founders Edition cards, the card construction is next level on the RTX 5070 Founders Edition. Nvidia uses an all-metal shroud design using a thick cast metal which gives it a premium feel and gives no worries about any sagging issues going into the future. Where aftermarket cards excel at cooling and noise, the Founders Edition trades some of that off for a compact design. Not only is it a proper 2 slot card, but it also doesn’t stick up past the PCI bracket. You won’t have to worry about it fitting in nearly anything. For styling, they continued the styling that all Founders Edition cards have had, and while it doesn’t have the dual blow-through design we saw on the larger RTX 5080 and RTX 5090, the RTX 5070 Founders Edition does still have the same look.
For performance, you can expect to be able to throw anything at it at 1080p or 1440p. Even at 4k, everything in our test suite was still playable, but with just 12GB of VRAM, it did drop in performance. In some of my DLSS testing where I cranked ray tracing completely up on the latest games, it couldn’t handle 4k at all. Beyond that situation though, DLSS 4 was especially impressive giving at times up to a 550% increase in performance to turn good performance into a frame rate you would want to use a high refresh rate display on. I spoke about it in the other 50 Series reviews, but DLSS 4 hasn’t just increased frame rates, it is smoother and looks a lot better. It’s not perfect, but it has reached the point where all but the pickiest person isn’t going to have an issue with it. When it comes to in-game performance the RTX 5070 Founders Edition traded blows with the overclocked RTX 4070 Ti and 4070 Ti SUPER but when it came to our averaged numbers it was out in front of the RTX 4070 Ti by a small margin when not figuring in our tests with multi frame generation. It outperformed the Radeon RX 7800 XT by a large margin and offered an improvement of 75% when compared to the RTX 3070 which is the most likely upgrade path to the 5070. The Founders Edition cooler did end up running warmer than the other cards tested, the more compact design didn’t overheat at all but isn’t leaving a lot of headroom either. That said it was quieter at 100% than I would have expected considering it had its fans running faster than any of the other cards tested.
As always, it will all come down to pricing. There aren’t bad cards, only bad pricing. The RTX 5070 Founders Edition has an MSRP of $549 which is the base MSRP of the RTX 5070 in general. But keep in mind, as we have seen with just about every launch for the last 4+ generations demand is always higher than supply, and with that pricing starts to go out of the window. Not only that but when cards come back in stock, it's normally the more expensive overclocked models. With that in mind, I did put together a chart that breaks down performance with MSRP and current pricing. With demand going crazy and tariff-fueled pricing you can see most of the cards have a big difference between their MSRP and actual pricing. All prices were pulled from the lowest price on PCPartPicker. Overall AMD is dominating the top of the chart but if you can get the RTX 5070 at or near the MSRP it will be a good pickup. The best comparison is with the RX 7800 XT which is selling for as low as $529 and as we saw the RTX 5070 outperformed it handedly. The RTX 5070 would be a better buy as long as you can get it for less than $610.
Live Pricing: HERE
