Huang caught in a lie: GeForce RTX 5070 is not equal in performance to RTX 4090 without AI tricks

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made a bold statement during the presentation of Blackwell graphics cards that the $549 GeForce RTX 5070 will provide the same performance as the $1,599 GeForce RTX 4090. These words caused heated discussions on the Internet, and soon Nvidia had to make excuses for the words of its CEO.

Image source: NVIDIA

«The RTX 5070 will offer the performance of the RTX 4090 for $549,” Huang said from the CES stage during the presentation. And this can be considered true, but with a huge stretch. After these words, the CEO of Nvidia clarified that “this would not be possible without artificial intelligence.” It is thanks to the Multi Frame Generation function based on artificial intelligence that the new mid-level video card is able to provide approximately the same frame rate in games as the flagship of the previous generation.

Along with the new video cards, Nvidia introduced DLSS 4 AI scaling technology. It implements a new Multi Frame Generation technology, which allows artificial intelligence (and the GPU tensor cores on which the AI ​​runs) to generate up to three additional frames for each frame rendered in a traditional way . This is an evolution of the Frame Generation technology introduced in DLSS 3, which generated one additional frame for every GPU rendered. The new technology will only work on GeForce RTX 5000 video cards.

Some PC gamers have long argued that this technique is simply “fake frames” and does not reflect the true performance of GPUs, which have traditionally used rasterization for decades.

«Using neural rendering and DLSS 4, we can achieve levels of performance [on the RTX 5070] that were only possible on the RTX 4090,” explained Lars Weinand, senior technical product manager at Nvidia, to The Verge. “This does not mean that the RTX 5070 can outperform the RTX 4090 in every way and in every configuration.”

Thus, when Huang talked about performance levels, he was referring solely to frame rates, leaving out the important aspect of image quality.

Nvidia has already demonstrated the capabilities of DLSS 4 in Cyberpunk 2077, increasing frame rates from 142 FPS with DLSS 3.5 technology to an impressive 243 FPS with the new version. The company also noted that without DLSS at all, at maximum graphics quality and ray tracing settings in 4K, the user would receive only 27 FPS on the latest GeForce RTX 5090.

«In games like Cyberpunk 2077 or Alan Wake 2, you can compare performance numbers [on an RTX 5070] using DLSS 4 with an RTX 4090 using only DLSS 3.5 Frame Generation,” Weinand explained. “This is what the claim is based on: you are seeing a level of performance that was previously only possible on the RTX 4090, but of course this does not mean that in any configuration and graphics settings you may choose, you will have the same performance.” .

That is, with the GeForce RTX 5070, the user will not get the same level of performance with pure rasterization as provided by the GeForce RTX 4090. It all comes down to whether the user is satisfied with the quality of the “fake frames” created by DLSS 4.

Support for generating three frames for every traditionally rendered frame, combined with AI scaling, will increase FPS up to eight times compared to traditional rendering. Nvidia also noted that it switched to a new transformer model in DLSS 4, which accelerated frame generation by 40% while reducing video memory consumption by 30%.

There’s still a lot to learn about DLSS 4, but during a Q&A session at CES, Huang said that DLSS 4 “predicts the future” rather than “interpolates the past.” This means that the extra two frames that DLSS 4 generates compared to DLSS 3.5 shouldn’t add much lag to the gameplay experience. But it’s unlikely that the games themselves will feel faster.

One of the main drawbacks of the original DLSS Frame Generation technology was its high input lag – while the game looked visually smoother thanks to the extra frames, it felt slower than if it had actually rendered at a high frame rate. True, not all users will notice the difference, but if you see a difference between 240 and 60 FPS, then you will feel that something is wrong.

Digital Foundry found that DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation has smoother frame times despite adding two additional frames compared to the existing Frame Generation in DLSS 3.5. The company also found that Multi Frame Generation on the RTX 5080 takes approximately 6ms longer compared to the existing DLSS Frame Generation technology on GeForce RTX 40-series graphics cards.

«The latency we add when using Multi Frame Generation is very low,” Weinand emphasized. “Because the GPU is fast, we ensure frames are rendered smoothly.”

Independent tests of GeForce RTX 50 series video cards will show how things will work out with DLSS 4 and the new frame generation.