Nvidia’s RTX 5070 vs 4090: Can it really deliver the same performance?

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made a daring declare onstage at CES earlier this week when he was introducing the next-generation RTX 50-series GPUs. “The RTX 5070, 4090 efficiency at $549,” stated Huang. It’s a declare that’s been echoed on YouTube, TikTok, and social media networks and has generated a debate over the RTX 50 collection and DLSS 4’s Multi Body Technology.

So, can a $549 RTX 5070 actually ship the identical degree of efficiency as a $1,5999 RTX 4090? The reply is sure and no, and all of it comes all the way down to a “pretend frames” argument about DLSS Body Technology that may not even be a giant downside for lots of PC avid gamers.

Nvidia’s large RTX 5070 declare is all primarily based on its newest era of DLSS. “Unattainable with out synthetic intelligence,” admits Huang after promising that the RTX 5070 can ship RTX 4090 ranges of efficiency. DLSS 4 has a brand new Multi Body Technology approach that may generate as much as three further frames per each historically rendered body.

Some PC avid gamers have lengthy argued that this method, which Nvidia launched initially with DLSS 3, is solely “pretend frames” and never reflective of the true efficiency of GPUs which were utilizing rasterization for many years.

“Utilizing neural rendering and DLSS 4 we will attain efficiency ranges [on an RTX 5070] that had been solely attainable with an RTX 4090,” explains Lars Weinand, a senior technical product supervisor at Nvidia, in a briefing with The Verge. “This doesn’t imply that the RTX 5070 can beat an RTX 4090 in each single method and in each single configuration.”

When Nvidia says efficiency ranges, it means body charges: what number of nonetheless pictures it will probably ship to your display that add as much as a transferring picture — quite than whether or not that transferring picture appears the identical high quality. Nvidia has already proven what DLSS 4 is able to in video games like Cyberpunk 2077, boosting body charges from DLSS 3.5 at 142fps to 243fps — a giant leap from the 27fps with out DLSS enabled.

“In video games like Cyberpunk 2077 or Alan Wake 2, you possibly can match efficiency numbers [on an RTX 5070] utilizing DLSS 4 in comparison with an RTX 4090 utilizing solely DLSS 3.5 Body Technology,” says Weinand. “That is what the declare relies on, you see efficiency ranges that had been solely earlier than attainable with an RTX 4090, however in fact, that doesn’t imply that in each single configuration and graphics setting that you just may decide that you should have the same efficiency.”

As anticipated, you’re merely not going to see RTX 4090 ranges of pure rasterization efficiency on an RTX 5070. It’s actually all all the way down to seeing a distinction in video games that help DLSS 4. Consequently, Nvidia’s declare has reignited the “pretend frames” debate. This all began when Nvidia first introduced DLSS 3 Body Technology, which works through the use of an algorithm to insert an extra body after two successive pictures with a view to clean out motion in video games and enhance body charges.

In DLSS 3, Nvidia generates a brand new picture utilizing Body Technology each time a brand new picture is rendered, permitting the GPU to make use of its full energy to render common frames and DLSS to make the most of devoted Tensor cores to spice up body charges and picture high quality.

With DLSS 4 Multi Body Technology, Nvidia is now in a position to generate as much as three further frames per each historically rendered body. Meaning body charges may be as much as 8x greater than conventional rendering. Nvidia has additionally switched to a brand new transformer mannequin for DLSS 4, which it says will make its body era mannequin 40 % sooner and use 30 % much less VRAM. 

There’s nonetheless quite a bit to find out about DLSS 4, however throughout a Q&A session at CES, Huang stated that DLSS 4 “predicts the longer term” quite than “interpolating the previous.” Meaning the additional two frames which can be generated by DLSS 4 gained’t add an enormous quantity of latency to the expertise.

Digital Foundry discovered that DLSS 4 Multi Body Technology has smoother body occasions regardless of including two further frames in comparison with the prevailing Body Technology. It additionally discovered that there’s round an extra 6ms for the Multi Body Technology on the RTX 5080, on prime of the prevailing Body Technology discovered on the RTX 40 collection.

“The latency may be very small that we’re including with Multi Body Technology,” says Weinand. “With the GPU pacing that we’re doing, we guarantee that frames are being displayed at a really even tempo.”

Enter latency, or the way in which a sport feels, is essential in lots of video games, and the outcomes of DLSS 4 will rely in your enter body fee. DLSS 4 doesn’t seem to unravel the difficulty of a 27fps sport nonetheless feeling like sluggish as soon as DLSS Tremendous Decision is concerned, even when Multi Body Technology can greater than 8x the body fee to 243fps. That’s been one of many primary drawbacks of DLSS Body Technology to date — that though a sport can look visually smoother due to the extra frames, it nonetheless feels slower than if it had been really rendering at excessive body charges. Lots of people won’t even discover the enter latency, however should you’re conversant in the sensation of dropping from 240fps to 60fps and even 30fps, then you definitely in all probability will.

I believe the “pretend frames” debate actually solely issues when these applied sciences are impacting latency and picture high quality or the sport nonetheless feels sluggish regardless of the additional generated frames. Extra video games are beginning to get full ray-tracing help to make them look dramatically completely different, nevertheless it’s tough to play them with out DLSS Body Technology on even the perfect GPUs. There’s a tradeoff right here the place individuals won’t thoughts “pretend frames” in the event that they’re getting much better visuals.

A lot of recent gaming is already “pretend,” and it has been for years. Rendering itself is all concerning the tips, shortcuts, and optimizations that builders use to supply one thing that appears like actuality. DLSS 4 provides builders one more device to attain picture high quality, lighting results, or gameplay that we wouldn’t have thought was attainable till lately.

For years, we’ve been enjoying video games on consoles that aren’t at native decision, with builders utilizing a wide range of completely different rendering strategies to dynamically regulate decision, picture high quality, and extra. Nvidia is making it clear with DLSS 4 that the way forward for PC gaming will contain AI-powered rendering strategies, and it’s one thing each Sony and AMD are leaning into with a PlayStation partnership and AMD’s newest FSR 4 upscaling. Some PC avid gamers won’t like “pretend frames,” nevertheless it’s clear they’re very a lot right here to remain.