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.
