Nvidia's RTX 70 series has long been the company's mainstream performance showcase, the line that promises high-end gaming without fully stepping into enthusiast-tier pricing. So today we are taking a broader look at how this family has evolved, tracing its path from the RTX 2070 launch in late 2018 all the way to this year's newcomer, the RTX 5070.
Lining these GPUs up across six years of architectural shifts gives us a clearer picture of what Nvidia has delivered each generation, and where the latest model actually lands within its own lineage.
Of course, we have already reviewed the RTX 5070 (and then some), and we have to say that, upon release, we found it underwhelming. The card's most immediate issue is also its most familiar: it ships with the same 12 GB of VRAM as the RTX 4070.
With modern games leaning harder than ever on memory, and with ray tracing and upscaling continuing to increase VRAM consumption, sticking with 12 GB at a $550 price point feels increasingly out of step. We argued then, and still believe now, that 16 GB should be the baseline for a GPU positioned in this tier.
That raises the question at the heart of this deep dive: is the RTX 5070 actually a step forward, or just a lateral move? Does it meaningfully improve on the RTX 4070? How does it stack up against the RTX 3070's impressive showing back in 2020? And is it genuinely stronger than the original RTX 2070 that launched the series?
To find out, we tested all four cards head to head at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K, using two quality presets per game to capture both raw performance and real-world playability. The goal is simple: cut through generational marketing and see where the RTX 5070 truly stands. Let us get into the results.
Benchmarks
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
Basic Preset
Starting with the Call of Duty Black Ops 6 basic preset results, we see that at 1080p the older RTX 2070 is good for 109 fps on average, while the 3070 averaged 161 fps, a massive 48% uplift. This helps explain why the 30 series was so exciting. That said, the 4070 was 41% faster than the 3070, while the latest 5070 is just 3% faster in this example, so we are not sure what is going on there.
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