Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti review - my new favorite 1440p gaming graphics card

Nestling comfortably between the expensive RTX 5080 and the disappointingly underpowered RTX 5070, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti has unexpectedly found itself sitting in the sweet spot in this GPU generation. It's armed with 16GB of VRAM, which gives it enough headroom to really slide up the eye candy in your graphics settings, and its GPU performance isn't far off the RTX 4080, a card that cost $1,199 when it first launched.

That all looks pretty good for a card that ostensibly has a price of $749, and unlike the high-end Nvidia GPUs, there's a decent supply of 5070 Ti GPUs at the moment. At the time of writing, you can pick one up from Amazon for exactly $749.99, for example, although most 5070 Ti cards still go for at least $800. Can this card take on the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT and earn a place on our guide to buying the best GPU? I've benchmarked it in several games, from Doom The Dark Ages to Cyberpunk 2077 at a variety of settings to find out.

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Specs

In terms of specs, the RTX 5070 Ti is basically an RTX 5080, but with a few parts disabled. It's even based on the exact same Nvidia GB203 Blackwell GPU used in the 5080, and it has the same 16GB capacity of GDDR7 memory as well. The latter runs slightly slower on the 5070 Ti, with a clock speed of 1,750MHz (28Gbps effective) compared to 1,875MHz (30Gbps effective) on the 5080, but it has the same 256-bit memory bus width, giving it a total memory bandwidth of 896MB/s.

That's a massive figure for a GPU at this price, and it means the GPU will be able to retrieve data from its memory extremely quickly. Comparatively, the last-gen RTX 4080's total memory bandwidth is 716.8GB/s, as it uses slower GDDR6X memory. That 16GB figure is also a distinguishing feature compared to the last-gen RTX 4070 Ti, which only had 12GB of memory, although the later RTX 4070 Ti Super increased the capacity to 16GB.

Meanwhile, the GPU itself takes the chip used in the RTX 5080, but with only 70 of streaming multiprocessors (SMs) enabled, compared to 84 on the 5080. SMs are the basic building blocks Nvidia uses for the key rendering features of a GPU, like the compute units on AMD's GPUs, and they contain the CUDA cores for rendering, Tensor cores for AI, and RT cores for ray tracing.

That means you get a smaller number of each of these cores on the 5070 Ti compared to the 5080, but the numbers are still high. The 5070 Ti has 8,960 CUDA cores, for example, which is a 16.7% increase over the 7,680 found in the last-gen 4070 Ti, and it's more than the 8,448 found in the later 4070 Ti Super as well. Importantly, 8,960 CUDA cores is a massive 45% increase over the number found in the RTX 5070, which also has 12GB of VRAM. Make no mistake, the 5070 Ti is much closer to the RTX 5080 than the 5070 in terms of specs.

Nvidia has also used clock speed to help distinguish between the 5070 Ti and 5080, with the former boosting to up to 2,452MHz at stock speed, while the 5080 can boost to a faster speed of 2,617MHz. Finally, the RTX 5070 Ti has a 16-pin power connector as standard, with cards also coming with a 2 x 8-pin power adapter for older PSUs. Nvidia recommends using a minimum of a 700W PSU for this graphics card.

The main competitor for the RTX 5070 Ti right now is the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT, which also has 16GB of VRAM, unlike the 5070, but its GDDR6 memory is slower than the GDDR7 chips used on the 5070 Ti, resulting in a slower 644.6GB/s total memory bandwidth figure. As you'll see in our benchmarks, the 9070 XT is the quicker GPU in some tests, but there are also others, particularly when using advanced ray tracing features such as path tracing, where the Nvidia Blackwell architecture used by the 5070 Ti makes it a faster GPU.

The other bonus that Nvidia has over AMD right now is Nvidia DLSS 4 with multi-frame gen, which uses the AI Tensor cores to generate up to three extra frames for each one that's genuinely rendered by the GPU. It can introduce a bit of input lag, and it won't fix a low frame rate, but it can really smooth out motion on a monitor with a high refresh rate, as long as your starting frame rate is high enough. Comparatively, AMD only has single-frame gen via FSR, and it doesn't use AI hardware.

How we test

To assess the gaming performance of the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, I'm running a number of benchmarks using real games, including Doom The Dark Ages, Cyberpunk 2077, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and F1 24, rather than synthetic benchmarks. Each test is run three times, recorded with Nvidia FrameView, and I report the mean average of the results, discarding any obvious anomalies. I report two figures for frame rates - firstly, the average, which gives you an idea of the general frame rate you will achieve. Secondly, I report the 1% low, which is an average of the lowest one percent of results recorded during the benchmark.

The latter is a more reliable indicator of performance than the outright minimum, as it removes outliers, such as moments where a Windows system event causes the game to stutter, which is unrelated to the performance of the GPU. The 1% low is what you can expect the actual typical minimum frame rate to be in these games.

I also report the system latency in GPU reviews, which is expressed in milliseconds (ms), and refers to the delay between an action being executed in a game and that action being displayed by your graphics card - the lower the latency, the more responsive your game will feel in action. These figures aren't always featured in the graphs, as I don't have the data for all the other GPUs, but they're discussed in the review where relevant.

GPU test system specs:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
• CPU cooler: Corsair H100X RGB Elite
• Memory: 32GB 6,000MHz G.Skill TridentZ RGB, CL28
• Motherboard: MSI MAG X870E Carbon WiFi
• SSD: 2TB WD Black SN850X
• PSU: Corsair RM1000X Shift

Benchmarks

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

I'll start off with the perfect showcase for the RTX 5070 Ti's graphical abilities, which is Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, a game that looks fantastic, but that is also very demanding on not just GPU power, but also VRAM. The RTX 5070 can't even max out this game at 1,920 x 1,080, for example, but the 5070 Ti handles it really well.

Running the game at the Ultra setting, and with no help needed from DLSS, the graphics look amazing, and the 5070 Ti racks up fantastic frame rates. It averages 148fps at 1080p with these settings, with a latency of just 14ms, while at 1440p, the average of 123fps and 17ms latency is also rock solid, and well ahead of the 105fps from the Radeon RX 9070 XT.

You can even play the game at 4K with these settings, with an 81fps average, 59fps 1% low, and a latency measurement of 30ms - it feels smooth in action and looks superb. This isn't a game that really benefits from sky-high frame rates anyway, with the fastest action being the occasional fascist fist fight.

It's when you push up the graphics settings as far as they can go that you really see the benefits of this GPU, though. Enable the Full RT mode on this game, and you get full path tracing, which looks super-realistic. Running at the Supreme preset, and with Full RT maxed out, the RTX 5070 and last-gen 4070 Ti crash out at below 10fps, even at 1080p, as they don't have enough VRAM to cope.

However, the 5070 Ti holds its ground at these settings, averaging 67fps with a 49fps 1% low if you enable DLSS upscaling on the Quality setting. That's also enough headroom to enable multi-frame gen, which ups the frame rate to 181fps, with latency of 45ms, which is acceptable in this game.

It has enough VRAM to run the game at these settings at 2,560 x 1,440 as well, although the 1% low then drops to 40fps. Enabling multi-frame gen performs some magic on the numbers at these settings, with an amazing-looking average of 150fps, but you also start to notice the lag here, with a latency of 53ms. A bit of tweaking would get the game running well and looking great at this resolution, however.

Comparatively, while the Radeon RX 9070 XT has enough VRAM to at least run the game with path tracing, the performance is so choppy that it's basically unplayable. This is definitely a win for the 5070 Ti.

Doom The Dark Ages

Also from Bethesda is the latest iD shooter, Doom The Dark Ages, where you definitely benefit from a fast frame rate and low latency, but where you also have the option to enable advanced ray tracing features if your GPU can handle it. In my Doom The Dark Ages path tracing feature, I found that this is another game where Nvidia has the upper hand over AMD right now, so I was interested to compare the RTX 5070 Ti directly to its immediate competitor, the 9070 XT.

While path tracing does make the lighting in the game look super-realistic, it does also pummel your GPU into submission. As you can see in the graph below, even at 1,920 x 1,080, the 5070 Ti only averages 48fps with a 1% low of 38fps without any help from DLSS. However, if you enable DLSS 4 on the Quality setting, these figures go up to 78fps and 64fps, respectively, with a latency of 28ms. That's enough headroom to enable multi frame gen, which takes the frame rate right up to 229fps, with a latency of 37ms.

Comparatively, the 9070 XT only averages 29fps at these settings without FSR, and enabling FSR makes it look noisy and blurry, as there's no support for FSR 4 in this game yet - DLSS 4 with the transformer model looks loads better on the 5070 Ti. Even then, the 59fps average and 39fps 1% low are below par, and enabling FSR frame gen results in a choppy experience where the frame rate jumps all over the place. That's another clear win for Nvidia, although even the 5070 Ti struggles to play the game at 1440p with these settings.

However, path tracing is just one part of the equation, and this game still looks mighty fine at the standard Ultra Nightmare settings without path tracing, where the AMD GPU is faster when it comes to raw rendering power. As you can see in the graph below, both GPUs cope really well with this game at 2,560 x 1,440. Even without FSR or DLSS enabled, both GPUs stay above 60fps, and the 9070 XT is slightly ahead of the 5070 Ti.

Enabling DLSS or FSR upscaling on the Quality setting then improves these figures, but while the 9070 XT is ostensibly faster, the game looks significantly worse on the AMD GPU, as FSR makes the graphics look blurry and distorted, while Nvidia DLSS 4 looks sharp and solid. That situation will change if this game ever supports AMD's FSR 4 tech, but at the moment, the 5070 Ti is the better GPU for this game.

With a 115fps average once DLSS 4 upscaling is enabled, there's also enough headroom to enable multi-frame gen, pushing the average all the way up to a massive 285fps, at which it looks and feels fantastic, and the 37ms latency is fine here too.

Call of Duty Black Ops 6

Now we swap over, as we move to a big game that has no ray tracing features, and also supports AMD FSR 4. Black Ops 6 is a test of pure GPU rendering power, and this time it's the 9070 XT's turn to shine. Not only does it beat the RTX 5070 Ti in these tests, but it's also ahead of the RTX 5080 at all resolutions.

We're not talking about a small difference here either. As you can see in the 1080p results graph above, the 5070 Ti averages 165fps in this game, while the 9070 XT is 21fps quicker at 186fps, and that's without any help from DLSS or FSR. Meanwhile, at 1440p, which is the resolution you want to target with a GPU at this price, the 9070 XT's 162fps average is well ahead of the 119fps from the 5070 Ti.

Likewise, at 4K, while the game is playable on both GPUs, the 9070 XT is 12fps quicker, with a 99fps average compared to 87fps on the RTX 5070 Ti. This goes to show the leaps that AMD has made in rendering performance compared to Nvidia, without ray tracing or AI features clouding the raw performance.

That said, while AMD has the upper hand here, the 5070 Ti still holds up well in this game - you can max it out at 1440p with a 1% low of 100fps and latency of just 17ms, and that's without any help from DLSS. The 9070 XT may be quicker, but the 5070 Ti is still perfectly good.

Cyberpunk 2077

Now we come to the modern-day Crysis of game benchmarks, the veteran GPU punisher, Cyberpunk 2077. To get an idea of the 5070 Ti's ray tracing power, I started off running the game at the Ultra ray tracing preset, without DLSS, at 1,920 x 1,080. Here, the RTX 5070 Ti copes well, averaging 93fps, a good 10fps ahead of the 4070 Ti, and 12fps in front of the AMD 9070 XT. Enable DLSS on the Quality setting, which looks great with the new Transformer model, and it averages 133fps - a great result.

Move up to 2,560 x 1,440, and the 5070 Ti impresses again, averaging 60fps without DLSS, and 94fps with DLSS 4 on the Quality setting. At the latter settings, the latency is just 24ms, and it's smoothly playable. Again, this is a good 7fps in front of the 9070 XT.

As with Doom The Dark Ages, and Indiana Jones, this game also supports path tracing if you enable the demanding Overdrive mode, which the RTX 5070 Ti handles remarkably well. The graphs below show the figures with multi-frame gen enabled, but I'll discuss the benchmark results without frame gen so you can see what's happening behind the scenes, too.

Running the game at the Overdrive setting at 1080p, with DLSS 4 on the Quality setting, the 5070 Ti averages 91fps, with a 1% low of 74fps. Comparatively, the 9070 XT can run the game at these settings with FSR 4 on the Quality setting (which looks much better than it did with FSR 3), but the 73fps average is a fair way behind. However, the 5070 Ti can pull its trump card and enable multi-frame gen with these settings, averaging a huge 215fps, while still maintaining a latency measurement of 33ms.

You can even push this game up to 2,560 x 1,440 on the RTX 5070 Ti, although latency does suffer as a result. With DLSS on the Quality setting, it averages 63fps, compared to just 48fps for the 9070 XT with FSR 4 set to Quality, and you can then enable multi-frame gen to hit a massive 192fps. While the benchmark looks remarkably smooth at these settings, though, you can feel it lagging slightly in fast action segments, with a latency figure of 46ms. This is a really demanding test, though, and it's impressive to see a GPU of this caliber coping with it at 1440p - it's a big step up from the 9070 XT here.

F1 24

Next up is F1 24, which again sees AMD take the lead in our test at Ultra High settings. At 1080p, the 5070 Ti averages 144fps, while the 9070 XT is 9fps in front at 153fps. These are both good results, though, and it's great to be able to achieve these sorts of frame rates without any help from DLSS - the latency measurement of 17ms here is superb on the 5070 Ti.

Move up to 1440p, and the 5070 Ti is again still solid, with an average of 114fps, 1% low of 85fps, and a latency measurement of 21ms. The game looks and feels great on this GPU, and while the 9070 XT is quicker, the 5070 Ti still copes perfectly well with it.

You can even step up to 4K in this game on the 5070 Ti, where it averages 68fps, with a 1% low of 52fps. It's not as super-smooth in action, but it looks pin-sharp. There's no support for DLSS 4 (or FSR 4 for that matter) in this game, but you can enable DLSS 3 on the Quality setting with frame gen at 4K and hit 126fps, while the latency is still decent at 37ms.

Of course, F1 25 is going to be a bigger challenge for GPUs, especially with its support for path tracing, and we'll be implementing this game into our test suite at a later date. However, this slightly older game does show that, without path tracing, there's little separating the 5070 Ti and 9070 XT in terms of performance in a standard game with ray tracing enabled.

Doom Eternal

Finally, our Doom Eternal benchmark allows a GPU to spread its wings and soar with high frame rates, even if you max it out with ray tracing enabled. At 1440p, the RTX 5070 Ti averages a massive 332fps with a 1% low of 217fps, which is a little ahead of the 9070 XT, but not by a huge margin.

You can easily run this game at 4K on the 5070 Ti as well, where it averages 184fps, even without DLSS enabled, and it looks really sharp too. That's a good 22fps in front of its predecessor, the RTX 4070 Ti, and only 16fps behind the RTX 4080 as well.

Power draw

One area where the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti firmly beats the Radeon RX 9070 XT is power efficiency. Running at peak gaming load, our Ryzen 7 7800X3D test rig drew 430W from the mains with the 5070 Ti installed, compared to 487W with the 9070 XT - that's a solid difference of 57W.

That's a fair bit more than GPUs on the next rung down, such as the Radeon RX 9070 and GeForce RTX 5070, but this GPU does also have a lot more processing grunt at its disposal. The recommendation of a 700W PSU is about right for this card.

Price

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti price is $749 / £729 at MSRP, and you can often find cards at that price now, unlike the 5080 and 5090.  On the face of it, this means the 5070 Ti is massively more expensive than the Radeon RX 9070 XT, which has a $599 price at MSRP.

However, the actual real-world price of the 9070 XT is considerably higher, with prices starting at around $720 for an exclusive Prime deal on Amazon and quickly going up from there, depending on the card you buy. At these prices, the RTX 5070 Ti is the better buy. The two GPUs trade blows with each other in standard game tests, but the 5070 Ti has some extra future-proofing with its superior path tracing performance, which makes the lighting in games look super-realistic.

I'm not going to pretend that $749 is a bargain price for a GPU, as it's a hell of a lot of money for a product that will be obsolete in a few years. However, if you have the money to spend, the 5070 Ti is currently the best graphics card in its league.

Alternatives

AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT

If this GPU were actually available for its $599 MSRP, it would be a straight slam dunk. It might not be able to compete with the 5070 Ti's path tracing performance, but it gives it a serious run for its money in our other game tests, and its 16GB of VRAM gives it a big benefit over the cheaper RTX 5070 as well.

AMD has now caught up with Nvidia when it comes to standard ray tracing performance in games, and its new FSR 4 upscaling tech looks great too. If you can find this GPU below $650, then this is the one to buy. Otherwise, the RTX 5070 Ti is the superior graphics card if you can afford it.

Read our full AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT review.

Verdict

With 16GB of VRAM on its PCB, a decent helping of 1440p game rendering power, and the ability to run the latest games with full path-traced eye candy, the RTX 5070 Ti is a great GPU if you can afford it. Importantly, stock of this GPU isn't anywhere near as dire in the US as it is for the RTX 5080 and 5090, and while it's still expensive, at least this card doesn't cost thousands of bucks.

It also helps that AMD's leading competition for this GPU, the Radeon RX 9070 XT, is impossible to find at a price that's anywhere near its MSRP, making the RTX 5070 Ti the finest graphics card in its league right now. The situation is less clear-cut in the UK, where GPU prices have largely settled down, but even there, the 9070 XT's real-world price of £620 is only £80 behind the 5070 Ti, and I'd make the jump to the Nvidia GPU if you can afford it, as it gives you a better experience in new games such as Doom The Dark Ages, and many more games support DLSS 4 than FSR 4 at the moment.

If AMD can pull its GPU pricing back to reality, then the situation will look quite different, but at the moment, the RTX 5070 Ti offers the best balance of bang per buck right now. It's far from cheap, and it's disappointing that the spec isn't radically different from the RTX 4070 Ti Super before it, but this is the GPU to buy if you want to play games at 1440p with loads of graphical eye candy enabled.

That brings me to the end of my RTX 5070 Ti review, but if you're thinking of upgrading your system, make sure you check out my guide on how to install a GPU, which takes you through every part of the upgrade process, while our guide to buying the best gaming CPU will help you choose the best processor for your needs.