1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,320 The launch of the RTX 50 series has been plagued by 2 00:00:03,320 --> 00:00:07,240 underwhelming performance, low stock, and black screening drivers. 3 00:00:07,240 --> 00:00:12,240 And to top it off, NVIDIA is embroiled in yet another power connector scandal 4 00:00:12,240 --> 00:00:15,400 on their flagship RTX 5090 Founders Edition. 5 00:00:15,400 --> 00:00:18,480 At this point, I wouldn't even blame them for saying, you know what? 6 00:00:18,480 --> 00:00:22,400 Screw it. Let's not even make a 5070 Ti Founders Edition. 7 00:00:22,400 --> 00:00:26,680 Eh, whaaat? They didn't make one. 8 00:00:26,680 --> 00:00:31,640 Nope. NVIDIA has left their most affordable 50 series yet 9 00:00:31,640 --> 00:00:36,720 in the hands of their board partners who did their best with it. 10 00:00:36,720 --> 00:00:40,080 But if you guys were hoping that the 50 series story would get better 11 00:00:40,080 --> 00:00:43,240 as we made our way down to the cards that more folks can afford, 12 00:00:43,240 --> 00:00:46,440 well, I've got news for you. 13 00:00:46,440 --> 00:00:51,400 The good news is that the 5070 Ti is a significantly more compelling product 14 00:00:51,400 --> 00:00:56,040 than the 5080. But that assumes that anyone can get it at MSRP. 15 00:00:56,040 --> 00:01:01,000 And that's the bad news. No one's going to be getting it at MSRP. 16 00:01:01,000 --> 00:01:04,440 But you know what you will get at MSRP is this segue to our sponsor. 17 00:01:13,800 --> 00:01:19,400 The 5070 Ti sits in kind of a weird place. It arguably has the chops for 4K gaming. 18 00:01:19,400 --> 00:01:24,640 But in our opinion, the sweet spot for it is high refresh rate 1440P gaming 19 00:01:24,640 --> 00:01:28,720 or very high refresh rate like Esports 1080P gaming. 20 00:01:28,720 --> 00:01:35,200 Let's start with the latter. In Alan Wake, the 5070 Ti manages a 9% uplift over the 4070 Ti Super 21 00:01:35,200 --> 00:01:39,440 but then loses to AMD's aging 7900XT. 22 00:01:39,440 --> 00:01:43,560 In F124, the 5070 Ti inches a bit closer to pole position 23 00:01:43,560 --> 00:01:47,280 and gets closer still in sci-fi roguelike Returnal. 24 00:01:47,280 --> 00:01:53,080 In our Vulcan test, Red Dead Redemption 2, we see the 5070 Ti finally surpassed the 7900XT 25 00:01:53,080 --> 00:02:00,400 but it's not until we look at Cyberpunk where we see a result that meets the technical definition of a lead, albeit barely. 26 00:02:00,400 --> 00:02:06,240 With that said, thanks to its much better 1% lows, the 5070 Ti tops our charts in the last of us Part 1 27 00:02:06,240 --> 00:02:09,720 and properly beats Team Red in Black Myth Wukong. 28 00:02:09,720 --> 00:02:16,760 Across our suite of games then, we see the 5070 Ti pull off a serviceable 15% lead over its last gen counterpart 29 00:02:16,760 --> 00:02:22,440 but we also see it demonstrate clearly why NVIDIA wishes that everyone would just forget 30 00:02:22,440 --> 00:02:27,120 that that card was replaced by a more super variant just over a year ago. 31 00:02:27,120 --> 00:02:30,240 It surpasses that card by only 9%. 32 00:02:31,240 --> 00:02:36,000 Of course, at 1080p, it's easy for a card this powerful to end up CPU bottlenecked. 33 00:02:36,000 --> 00:02:41,640 So let's push some more pixels to get a better idea of where the 5070 Ti sits in the product stack. 34 00:02:41,640 --> 00:02:45,400 Right out of the gate, it manages a measurably better improvement 35 00:02:45,400 --> 00:02:49,240 over the last gen Super at 1440p and what? 36 00:02:49,240 --> 00:02:52,360 A 10% is a measurably more than 9? 37 00:02:54,280 --> 00:02:58,920 But even then, it still fails to break away from Team Red's 7900 sandwich, 38 00:02:58,920 --> 00:03:04,560 which further illustrates just how disappointing this generation is for gamers. 39 00:03:04,560 --> 00:03:08,480 Typically, we would expect a new 70-class GPU to beat 40 00:03:08,480 --> 00:03:11,600 or at least match the last generation's 80 series. 41 00:03:11,600 --> 00:03:16,800 But now, not even the 70 Ti can stand up to the last gen 80 card. 42 00:03:16,800 --> 00:03:24,400 That kinda sucks. Unless you have a 4080, in which case, hey, NVIDIA just saved you a lot of money. 43 00:03:24,400 --> 00:03:30,640 Maybe it makes up for it in ray tracing, though. And, well, hey, it compares much more favorably to AMD here, 44 00:03:30,640 --> 00:03:36,360 whose 7000 series RT capabilities are more like two generations behind NVIDIA, 45 00:03:36,360 --> 00:03:41,880 but we are still looking at a meh uplift over the 4070 Ti Super. 46 00:03:41,880 --> 00:03:46,040 I mean, if you wanna crank the iCandy without upscaling at 1080, 47 00:03:46,040 --> 00:03:52,120 the 5070 Ti delivers a great gaming experience outside of the notoriously demanding Blacksmith.com, 48 00:03:52,120 --> 00:03:59,000 but 1080p Ultra used to cost, like, 300 bucks, not 750 bucks. 49 00:03:59,000 --> 00:04:06,160 The good news is that 1440p ray tracing puts the 5070 Ti in its biggest lead over last gen so far. 50 00:04:06,160 --> 00:04:09,160 A 13%! 51 00:04:09,920 --> 00:04:18,600 If you pretend that the Super doesn't exist, the 5070 Ti does provide decent generational uplift. 52 00:04:18,600 --> 00:04:25,080 But the non-Super that NVIDIA wants us to compare it to was mocked for its dismal value proposition, 53 00:04:25,080 --> 00:04:28,920 and given that I have supers in my warehouse right now, 54 00:04:28,920 --> 00:04:33,800 it's clear that NVIDIA's operation chronos failed superly. 55 00:04:33,800 --> 00:04:39,640 So why isn't NVIDIA's new 50 series Blackwell much better? 56 00:04:39,640 --> 00:04:46,680 Well, for a couple of reasons, but the main one is that it's manufactured on the same 4N process node as its predecessor, 57 00:04:46,680 --> 00:04:52,200 and makes relatively light changes to the underlying architecture compared to last gen. 58 00:04:52,200 --> 00:04:57,800 We get lightly improved ray tracing or RT cores, moderately improved tensor cores for AI, 59 00:04:57,800 --> 00:05:04,760 and, this one is key, seemingly unimproved CUDA cores, which do the bulk of the work in traditional rendering. 60 00:05:04,760 --> 00:05:10,840 The main step forward seems to be better integration between the AI and the rendering course for the sake of future 61 00:05:10,840 --> 00:05:15,240 neural rendering technology that demos admittedly very well right now, 62 00:05:15,240 --> 00:05:19,080 but it's going to take time to see widespread adoption in games you can play. 63 00:05:19,080 --> 00:05:25,160 With all of that said, Blackwell cards do get some pretty big improvements that don't show up on the FPS charts. 64 00:05:25,160 --> 00:05:29,720 The media engine for encoding and streaming is capable of significantly higher quality. 65 00:05:29,720 --> 00:05:39,080 DP 2.1 UHBR20 connectors at the back allow these monsters to drive 4K displays at up to 240Hz without compression. 66 00:05:39,080 --> 00:05:45,560 And the jump to GDDR7 memory means that our VRAM is now one greater than six. 67 00:05:45,560 --> 00:05:48,760 What? Oh no! It must have heard me say neural rendering! 68 00:05:48,760 --> 00:05:51,400 Hide! DLSS4 with multi-frame gen is coming! 69 00:05:52,360 --> 00:06:01,720 And it's coming in hot! I'm talking over 150 frames per second in Cyberpunk at 4K with ray tracing set to Ultra. 70 00:06:01,720 --> 00:06:07,240 Dang! And we get improved image quality over previous generations of DLSS. 71 00:06:07,240 --> 00:06:12,520 Our frames look closer to native rendering thanks to the new transformer-based AI upscaling model, 72 00:06:12,520 --> 00:06:19,480 and the new tensor cores can generate as many as three AI-generated frames for every truly rendered frame, 73 00:06:19,480 --> 00:06:23,960 leaving less AI endowed last-gen cards in the dust. 74 00:06:24,920 --> 00:06:29,240 Too bad it comes with numerous downsides, like lowering your base frame rate, 75 00:06:29,240 --> 00:06:33,640 only really feeling good when that base frame rate is already high enough to be playable, 76 00:06:33,640 --> 00:06:38,600 and introducing weird anomalies. Like any tool, it does have its uses, 77 00:06:38,600 --> 00:06:43,960 but don't imagine that it's a magic fix, no matter how much NVIDIA wants you to believe that it is. 78 00:06:44,680 --> 00:06:48,520 Of course, that doesn't mean the 5070 Ti is a slow card. 79 00:06:48,520 --> 00:06:52,360 For funsies, we got the good folks in the lab wearing their super awesome 80 00:06:52,360 --> 00:06:59,240 LTT Labs merch from LTTstore.com to drag-race the 5070 Ti in 4K against its bigger brother, 81 00:06:59,240 --> 00:07:05,080 the RTX 5080, resulting in probably the best argument for this card that we've seen yet. 82 00:07:05,080 --> 00:07:11,160 Obviously it's slower, it's a lower-end card, but the value is much better against a card that is 83 00:07:11,240 --> 00:07:17,400 sold out everywhere, and it's got the same 16GB of VRAM, making both cards likely to be 84 00:07:17,400 --> 00:07:23,240 similarly future...probable? I don't want to say proof. 85 00:07:23,800 --> 00:07:28,120 Our ASUS Prime card features a triple-fan cooler that uses a flow-through design. 86 00:07:28,120 --> 00:07:33,480 It's a little thicker than two slots, but it isn't any wider or taller than the 5080 FE, 87 00:07:33,480 --> 00:07:40,120 and it managed to keep this 300-watt card at around 70 degrees in both F124 and in combuster. 88 00:07:40,120 --> 00:07:45,160 In our power tests, while we did see a transient spike as high as 360 watts, 89 00:07:45,160 --> 00:07:50,600 overall the card seems well-behaved as it pulls roughly 9% more power than the 4070 Ti 90 00:07:50,600 --> 00:07:56,440 to deliver your sweet, sweet FPS. For power delivery, ASUS uses the scandalous 91 00:07:56,440 --> 00:08:01,000 connector that's been making headlines for melting on Founder's Edition 5090s, 92 00:08:01,000 --> 00:08:09,000 but the lower power draw here, by half, means that melting cables shouldn't...be an issue. 93 00:08:09,640 --> 00:08:12,920 On an unrelated note, when's the last time you checked your smoke alarm? 94 00:08:12,920 --> 00:08:18,280 The 5070 Ti is clearly a gaming-focused product, but we like to take a look at productivity anyway, 95 00:08:18,280 --> 00:08:24,520 and we were unsurprised to find that the biggest generational uplift is in, you guessed it, AI. 96 00:08:24,520 --> 00:08:28,040 With most of our benchmarks seeing substantial improvements over last gen, 97 00:08:28,040 --> 00:08:33,240 and especially over the competition from AMD, while the models that you can run will be limited by 98 00:08:33,240 --> 00:08:37,960 your mere 16GB of VRAM, you're no more limited than you would be on a 5080. 99 00:08:38,920 --> 00:08:43,080 Cool card, that one. As for 3D modeling, don't expect much of an improvement, 100 00:08:43,080 --> 00:08:48,120 and for video editing, the new card proves capable, if not sensational, with very similar 101 00:08:48,120 --> 00:08:54,520 performance to the 5080. Just note, though, that the 70 Ti has one fewer decoder engine compared 102 00:08:54,520 --> 00:09:00,040 to its bigger brother, so for a very large multicam setup, for instance, you could overburden it 103 00:09:00,040 --> 00:09:04,440 and end up putting additional strain on your CPU. Alright, with that out of the way, 104 00:09:04,440 --> 00:09:11,640 what's the conclusion for this thing? Well, it's complicated. If you spent $599 for a 2070 Super 105 00:09:11,640 --> 00:09:17,400 way back in the day, you might be happy to spend $150 more than you did last time on a 5070 Ti 106 00:09:17,400 --> 00:09:23,720 that nets you over two and a half times the performance, and that's a totally valid perspective, 107 00:09:23,720 --> 00:09:29,000 so why are reviewers so pissed off about this thing, and the 50 series in general? 108 00:09:29,560 --> 00:09:35,880 Well, it's because at one point, you could wait that same six years, and the card that you upgraded 109 00:09:35,880 --> 00:09:41,960 to would be over three times as good for essentially the same nominal price, and then if you factored 110 00:09:41,960 --> 00:09:47,720 in inflation, it would technically be cheaper. Not to mention that these new cards here can't even 111 00:09:47,720 --> 00:09:53,640 be bought at those advertised prices for reasons that seem to mostly come down to NVIDIA prioritizing 112 00:09:53,640 --> 00:10:00,040 their AI customers and their shareholders over gamers. So yeah, I'm mad because for the first 113 00:10:00,040 --> 00:10:06,440 time in my lifetime, the trend of more powerful hardware being available to more people, driving 114 00:10:06,440 --> 00:10:13,000 a boom in access to information and economic opportunity, that trend seems to be going in 115 00:10:13,000 --> 00:10:20,200 reverse. Maybe AMD's Radeon team can save us? Yeah, I don't know if I'm hopeful, but I'm hoping, 116 00:10:20,840 --> 00:10:26,200 hoping to tell you about our sponsor. If you guys enjoyed this video, why not check out our 5090 117 00:10:26,200 --> 00:10:30,120 review? Obviously, that's not a card most people can afford, but it goes into a little bit more 118 00:10:30,120 --> 00:10:35,160 detail about the Blackwell architecture and all the benefits it has over the last gen.