PC gamers have been buzzing about NVIDIA's recent announcement of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 series graphics cards at the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
Among the most talked-about reveals was the RTX 5070, touted to deliver performance comparable to the RTX 4090. For value-conscious gamers, this could make it a top choice for future PC upgrades. However, intense debate has erupted within the industry and among consumers regarding whether the RTX 5070 can truly match or even surpass the RTX 4090's performance.
Is this just marketing hype, or can the $549 RTX 5070 really live up to NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang's claims?
In an interview with The Verge, NVIDIA Senior Technical Product Manager Lars Weinand revealed that while the RTX 5070 can indeed achieve performance levels close to the RTX 4090 through neural rendering and DLSS 4 multi-frame generation technology, it still cannot fully outperform it in all configurations and scenarios.
"With neural rendering and DLSS 4 technology, we can enable the RTX 5070 to reach performance levels previously only achievable by the RTX 4090. However, this doesn't mean the RTX 5070 will beat the RTX 4090 in every configuration," Weinand stated.
Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) has been a cornerstone of NVIDIA's technology in recent years. DLSS 4 further leverages multi-frame generation, creating three additional frames for every one rendered, significantly boosting frame rates and performance. While these AI-generated "fake frames" can dramatically improve performance, a substantial hardware gap still exists between the RTX 5070 and the RTX 4090.
Consequently, when games do not support DLSS 4, the performance disparity between the two cards becomes much more apparent. While DLSS 3 generates one new frame each time a new image is rendered, DLSS 4's ability to predict and generate additional frames via AI is described as a "predicting the future" technological innovation.
This implies that even if the RTX 5070 can achieve near-RTX 4090 performance through AI, it doesn't mean the RTX 5070 can completely replace the RTX 4090. Realistically, NVIDIA is unlikely to allow a graphics card priced at just $549 to surpass the hardware specifications of the $1499 RTX 4090.
via： The Verge