NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Super

The refresh: 7168 cores, same 12 GB and 672 GB/s envelope. Token generation is unchanged — prompt processing is the gain.

12 GB GDDR7 672 GB/s 192-bit bus 250 W TDP

Technical specifications

GPU die
GB205
CUDA cores
7168
Boost clock
~2.51 GHz
VRAM
12 GB GDDR7
Memory bus
192-bit
Memory bandwidth
672 GB/s
PCIe
5.0 x16
NVLink
none
TDP
250 W
Release
Apr 2025

Spec note: the RTX 5070 Super is not listed on NVIDIA’s official comparison page (knowledge/rtx-50-series.md, fetched 2026-09-24). The values above are the standard published board specs, kept as supplementary.

What these specs mean for llama.cpp

Same bandwidth, more compute — what changes

The Super refresh adds 17% more CUDA cores (7168 vs 6144) on the same 192-bit GDDR7 bus. That splits the two phases of inference apart:

12 GB — same tier, same ceiling

The VRAM story is identical to the 5070: 13B Q4_K_M at 32K+ is the comfort zone; 27B is ~7 GB over. If you already own a 5070, the Super is not an upgrade for LLM work — the token speed you live with every day doesn't move.

Buy rule At the same price, the Super is the pick — free prompt-processing. At any price premium over the 5070, skip it: the premium buys you ~15% faster first tokens, which is the least-used phase for most chat workloads.

Before the numbers: if your model ships a built-in multi-token-prediction head (e.g. Qwen 3.5/3.6/3.8, Gemma 4), generation can be made faster with --spec-type draft-mtp --spec-draft-n-max 2 --parallel 1 — on this card that's worth +40–70% (estimated) on token generation; no per-card community A/B exists for this card yet; the estimate follows the community record, where mid-bandwidth cards gain most at n-max 2. It costs ~0.6–2 GB extra VRAM and does not change output quality, and it only applies to MTP-capable models — Llama-class models are unaffected. Details and the tuning rules: MTP guide →

Expected performance (Q4_K_M, single GPU)

ModelSize on GPUToken genToken gen (MTP est.)Prompt proc.Fits?
8B Q8_0~9.7 GB~75–100 t/s~105–170 t/s~800–1050 t/s✅ 32K ctx
13B Q4_K_M~8.5 GB~40–55 t/s~57–93 t/s~850–1150 t/s✅ 32K+ ctx
13B Q5_K_M~11.9 GB~28–38 t/s~40–64 t/s~700–900 t/s⚠️ 8K ctx
27B Q4_K_M~19 GB———❌ ~7 GB over

MTP est. = rough prior with --spec-type draft-mtp for models that ship MTP heads (Qwen 3.5/3.6/3.8, Gemma 4); Llama-class models get no MTP speedup. Actual gains depend on model, quant, context length, llama.cpp build and your card — sweep --spec-draft-n-max, don't trust the column blindly. MTP guide →

Estimates for full GPU offload (-ngl 99), ~8K context, batch 2048. Token generation scales roughly with memory bandwidth; individual runs vary by model architecture (GQA vs MHA, MoE) and llama.cpp build. Token gen matches the RTX 5070; prompt proc. is ~15% higher.

27B models (Qwen class) — Q4 / Q5 / Q6 / Q8

QuantGGUF size1× 5070 S (12 GB)2× 5070 S (24 GB)
Q4_K_M~19 GB❌ ~7 GB over⚠️ ~22–28 t/s, 8K ctx
Q5_K_M~22 GB❌❌ ~2 GB over
Q6_K~25 GB❌❌
Q8_0~33 GB❌❌

Identical to the RTX 5070: 27B Q4 fits at 2× (24 GB, 8K context, modest speed); 3× (36 GB) runs Q5 at 8–16K. Token generation in multi-card builds matches the 5070 — the extra cores help prompt processing, not token streaming.

Practical tips

Multi-card: 2×, 3×, 4×

No NVLink: tensor split over PCIe 5.0 with a ~20–30% tax. Same 12 GB tiles as the 5070 — the table below matches its token speeds.

BuildGPU powerVRAM13B Q827B Q4_K_M27B Q5_K_M
2× 5070 S500 W24 GB~45–58 t/s⚠️ ~22–28 t/s, 8K ctx❌ ~2 GB over
3× 5070 S750 W36 GB(overkill)~26–34 t/s, 16K+ ctx~20–25 t/s, 8–16K ctx

3× (36 GB) is the interesting point — 27B at Q5 with a real context. Same board requirements as the 5070: three working x8/x16 slots, workstation-class in most cases.

Budget check A 3× 5070 Super rig costs close to a 2× 5080 (720 W, 32 GB) — which runs the same models faster with fewer cards. The 3-way build only wins if you need the extra 4 GB for Q5 at 16K+ context.

Offloading (CPU RAM)

When a model doesn't fit, -ngl N keeps the last layers on the CPU instead. The rule to internalize: offloaded layers run at CPU speed, not a percentage of GPU speed. Practical patterns: drop just the last 2–4 layers to the CPU to reclaim ~0.5–1 GB of VRAM (nearly free); keep MoE experts on CPU with --n-cpu-moe; park the output embedding with -ot output=CPU to save another ~0.5–1 GB on big models. Budget 32 GB of system RAM for 27B-class offload, 64 GB for 70B. Never offload the KV cache — the conversation gets unusably slow.

3-card example llama-server -m 27b-q5_k_m.gguf -ngl 99 -sm layer -c 16384 --tensor-split 1,1,1

Recommended llama.cpp command

llama-server -m llama-3.1-13b-q4_k_m.gguf -ngl 99 -c 32768 -b 2048 -ub 2048 --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8080

Verdict

The RTX 5070 with a ~15% prompt-processing bump and no change to the thing that matters in chat: token speed. As a purchase, it's simple — take the Super when it's the same price, skip it when it isn't. As a platform, everything the 5070 page says applies: a 13B-class card with a 12 GB ceiling.

← RTX 5070 next: RTX 5070 Ti →