NVIDIA confirms RTX 5070 GPU is built with GB205 chip, whereas RTX 5070 Ti is GB203

NVIDIA has spilled the beans on its Blackwell GPUs and the chips inside the RTX 5070 models by publishing the official documentation for all of its next-gen GeForce graphics cards.

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Let's hope there's no delay with RTX 5070 graphics cards, as some rumors believe there might be (Image Credit: ASUS)

As VideoCardz noticed, the PDF that NVIDIA provided tells us some more details about the spec of the RTX 5070 and 5070 Ti, and clarifies what chips are used in those GPUs.

Of course, we already have core counts, but now we know that, just as rumored, the RTX 5070 Ti uses GB203, the same GPU as the RTX 5080 (but cut down, obviously). Whereas the RTX 5070 vanilla employs the GB205 chip, again as speculation has claimed for some time now.

This makes no difference to how these GPUs run, naturally - the core count is still the core count, and we already knew that. But it's interesting to learn the full details behind the cores, and on top of that, NVIDIA shared some information about clock speeds. The default for the boost clock will be 2512MHz for the RTX 5070, and slightly lower than that at 2452MHz for the RTX 5070 Ti.

The range of Blackwell chips

So, now we know the Blackwell range uses GB202 (RTX 5090), GB203 (RTX 5080, 5070 Ti) and GB205 (RTX 5070). If NVIDIA sticks with the same scheme of things as seen with Lovelace at the lower-end of the RTX scale, we'll get GB206 and GB207 as the engines of the RTX 5060 Ti and RTX 5060 respectively (based on current rumors).

There's obviously a lot of interest riding on how the RTX 5070 models turn out, as the RTX 5080 reviews are now live (our own included), making it clear that this GPU does not deliver a particularly compelling generational uplift. However, that's not the full story, as the pricing of the RTX 5080, and DLSS 4 plus upgraded frame generation tricks do make this a suitably tempting upgrade for gamers looking for a great 4K graphics card.

The snag might be if third-party graphics card pricing ends up higher than the MSRP for many boards, as rumors appear to indicate - and any RTX 5080 models at the MSRP level, including the Founders Edition, are constantly sold out for the foreseeable future. Not something we'd bet against, in all honesty, particularly as price scalpers are going to be in the mix here (unfortunately).

Then we come back to those RTX 5070 models as a possible compromise for next-gen buyers, but there are worries about the stock levels of those GPUs, too, and whether they might be pushed back in terms of launch timeframe (to March, or that's one suggestion on the grapevine for the vanilla RTX 5070).

Let's hope this isn't true, and for NVIDIA, it would make sense to try and get out ahead of AMD's RX 9070 launch (in March).