As Usual, The latest round of Nvidia GPUs started with the most expensive and most powerful cards. I was lucky enough to spend some time with the elusive RTX 5080 Founders Edition (8/10, WIRED Recommends) and the practically nonexistent RTX 5090 Founders Edition (7/10, WIRED Recommends), both of which impressed with 60+ frames per second at 4K in a number of major titles. These cards represented premium examples of both GPUs, but they’ve been extremely scarce ever since their release.

As we start to creep further down the budget scale, there are no fancy Founders Edition GPUs to chase after. Instead, a variety of board partners offer more typical card designs, with coolers that you’re likely to recognize from previous years and a spectrum of overclocking levels. That should mean wider availability too, but in practice things haven’t quite played out that way.

The RTX 5070 Ti I have in hand today comes from Asus, and as the Prime variant, it should come in at or close to the GPU’s $749 MSRP—if you can find it. Stock and pricing issues have surrounded the 50 Series launches so far, and this card is no exception. While it performs well for the price point, limited availability and steep aftermarket damage the value proposition.

Form Factor

While card sizes have swelled in the past few generations, I’m glad to see AIC partners taking a queue from Nvidia’s FE cards and making an effort to shrink back down a bit. The Asus Prime is definitely a 2.5-slot card, but in reality it’s just barely wider than its back metal panel, and it fits just fine in my Hyte Y60 (7/10, WIRED Recommends).

It looks nice enough, with a mix of glossy and matte blacks, cut by clean white lines. It should fit aesthetically in almost any case, but it definitely lacks the refined finish of the first-party Nvidia offerings.

The new 12V-2x6 connection is here too, and Asus includes an adapter with three six-pin plugs on the other end. I prefer the slightly longer nylon braided cable included with the Founders Edition (pictured in the installed photos), but the Asus version is nicer than an average PC cable, with heavy wrapping at the GPU end and plastic braiding throughout.

The RTX 5070 Ti only draws a maximum of 300 watts, compared to the RTX 5080’s 360 watts, which means you can get away with a 750-watt power supply. I’m not sure how much this will matter in practice, but it might be a deciding factor for some people who don’t want to change their setup.

Gaming Performance

While I spent more time at 4K with the RTX 5080 and 5090, the former of the two was just barely meeting 60 fps without help from multiframe generation. For the RTX 5070 Ti, I’m focusing on 1440p performance, which I think will be more common for folks looking at a GPU in the under-$800 range.

In the RTX 5080 review, I mentioned that over half of gamers are still playing at 1080p, and I think the 50 Series could finally make people feel more comfortable making the jump to not just 1440p, but potentially higher refresh rates too. Both cards are capable of producing often over 90 fps in games that folks sit down to play multiple times a week for hours at a time.

In commonly played games, the RTX 5080 is anywhere from 10 to 20 percent faster than the RTX 5070 Ti at 2,560 x 1,440. Considering the RTX 5080 is 25 percent more expensive, and draws up to 20 percent more power, the RTX 5070 Ti looks like an overall better offering, as long as you have no grand aspirations for 4K gaming.

DLSS for All

All of the 50 Series cards support DLSS 4 (deep learning super sampling image enhancement), and once again the headline feature is multiframe generation. For a more in-depth look, check out the RTX 5090 Founders Edition review, but the short form is that the GPU uses AI to create artificial frames that it slips in between manually generated frames. Previous generations could add one additional frame in, where the new 50 Series cards can add three in supported games.

The effect is particularly noticeable in Cyberpunk 2077, one of the most demanding games with full DLSS 4 support. The AI frames aren’t free, but they might as well be, essentially multiplying the frame rate each time you add one in, a consistent pattern across all of the cards.

I still feel largely the same about the feature here as I did with the higher-end cards. It’s a great way to dramatically boost frame rates in games that support it, in particular for cinematic titles like Cyberpunk 2077, but I only want to lean on it as much as I have to.

The Asus Prime is in an unenviable position of being an appealing execution of a product that not many folks will be able to buy. If you can find one at MSRP, or you’re reading this months down the road and they’ve managed to sort out supply issues, the RTX 5070 Ti makes sense for 1080p and 1440p gamers, but only at that price point. The RTX 5080 is at least 25 percent more expensive, for only 10 to 20 percent more performance, assuming both cards are at their MSRP. The moment you start creeping past $800, the RTX 5080 becomes the better choice.

The problem with the RTX 5070 Ti is availability. As I finish writing this review, the graphics card has technically been for sale for hours, but I can’t find a single example online for anywhere close to retail. In fact, I can’t find any RTX 5080 or RTX 5090 cards at retail either, and we’re now several weeks past their release dates.

Limited inventory has plagued new GPU launches in previous generations, but this release has felt particularly tough on gamers. Combine that with relatively high price jumps for overclocked cards, and the RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5080 start to blur together in both price and performance, so the best GPU starts to become the one you have in front of you. One thing's for sure: If you’re looking at an RTX 5070 Ti on a shelf for $750, you better grab it before someone else does.