When Nvidia announced the RTX 50-series, it said that the RTX 5070 would offer performance equivalent to the last-gen flagship at a fraction of the price. Since then, gamers have been looking forward to seeing how this plays out, and we just got our first hint. According to an early benchmark, the RTX 5070 may be far from dethroning the RTX 4090, which remains one of the best graphics cards.
These benchmarks, first spotted by VideoCardz, popped up on Geekbench earlier today. We’ve got two tests to dig into, including Vulkan and OpenCL. I know what you’re probably thinking — these benchmarks aren’t the best way to tell whether a graphics card is a gaming beast or not, but for now, they’re all we’ve got, and they do give us a bit of a reference point for the RTX 5070.
The GPU scored 188,712 in Vulkan and 187,414 in OpenCL. It was paired with an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D and 32GB RAM; however, the latter was running at a very low MT/s, so there might have been some error in Geekbench or the system in question.
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Comparing these scores to the recently released RTX 5070 Ti reveals a sizeable gap between the two, with the 5070 being up to 20% slower. This isn’t an unexpected result, given that the GPU is set to start at $550. However, we do have to account for various issues with availability and high pricing. I honestly won’t be surprised if this card is priced at $750 and up in the first few weeks; after all, I spotted the RTX 5070 Ti for up to $1,900 last week. This week, it’s largely sold out.
Aside from being slower than the RTX 5070 Ti, the RTX 5070 does seem to offer a decent generational uplift. These two benchmarks place it somewhere between the RTX 4070 and the RTX 4070 Ti, which is fair, but it’s also a far cry from the RTX 4090-equivalent performance Nvidia teased during its CES 2025 keynote.
Of course, that performance might still be possible with DLSS 4. Although the initial announcement sounded catchy, most gamers quickly figured out that the RTX 5070 is unlikely to offer the same performance as the RTX 4090 if we’re talking about “real” frame rates. Instead, using Nvidia’s Multi-Frame Generation tech may push the GPU to new heights, and some of those heights might outperform the $1,600 RTX 4090. These early benchmarks only serve to prove that Nvidia’s claim is likely heavily supported by DLSS 4.
It won’t be long before we can check out the RTX 5070 in the flesh. The card is set to launch on March 5, and reviewers will undoubtedly try to verify whether the RTX 5070 can truly outperform the RTX 4090.
Monica is a computing writer at Digital Trends, focusing on PC hardware. Since joining the team in 2021, Monica has written…
AMD’s RX 9070 XT might be cheap, but that may not be enough
Over a month after the initial announcement at CES 2025 (if you can even call it an announcement), we still don’t know much about the future of AMD’s RDNA 4 lineup. We know the cards are set to launch sometime in March, but their specs remain a mystery. However, there’s an even bigger secret that’s still yet to be revealed: The pricing.
After a bumpy lead-up to the launch of the RX 9000 series, pricing is the one thing that AMD needs to get right. The latest leaks imply that AMD will price the cards “very aggressively,” which could be good news — but it might still not be enough for it to rival some of the best graphics cards.
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Nvidia might never top the RTX 4090
The RTX 4090 might be the best graphics card Nvidia has ever released, and we may never see a flagship quite on the same level ever again.
There’s no doubt the RTX 4090 is extremely powerful, but it’s not raw power alone that made it the flagship to end all flagships. I mean, the new RTX 5090 is already faster, and I’m confident Nvidia will continue to release massive GPUs that cost thousands of dollars in the future. But the RTX 4090 remains a crowning achievement for Team Green, and an inflection point for graphics cards more broadly.
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Nvidia might break with tradition for the RTX 5060
Although Nvidia has already established the flagship RTX 5090 as one of the best graphics cards you can buy, most PC gamers are eagerly waiting for Team Green’s more budget-conscious offerings. According to a new rumor, Nvidia’s RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti will ditch the 16-pin power connector that Nvidia has used for the past few generations in favor of a standard 8-pin power connector.
The rumor comes from Brother Pan Talks Computers, a Chinese media outlet that VideoCardz reports has ties to Zotac. Nvidia has yet to announce the RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti, but they’ll be some of the most important entries in Nvidia’s latest RTX 50-series lineup. Traditionally, Nvidia’s 60-class graphics cards are among the most popular GPUs on the market, and last-gen’s RTX 4060 still tops the charts in the Steam hardware survey.
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