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GALAX GeForce RTX 4070 OC 2X Graphics Card Review: Out Goes GDDR6X, In Goes GDDR6

Hassan Mujtaba

It's been over a year since NVIDIA introduced its Ada Lovelace GPUs, and since then, the lineup has seen various additions with the most recent one being the "SUPER" series which introduced brand new variants in the lineup while replacing the older Non-SUPER models. One of the cards that was still kept in the lineup is the GeForce RTX 4070 and despite its "SUPER" variant offering a nice boost in performance, the 4070 still exists in the current stack owing to its popular demand, mostly due to its price point in the $500 US range.

NVIDIA has periodically said that the GeForce RTX 4070 has seen good demand however, the card faced severe production and supply issues due to a lack of GDDR6X memory chips recently. GDDR6X is being used across the high-end lineup starting with the RTX 4070 and considering that the card is the most in-demand currently out of the entire high-end "Ada" batch, the company decided to opt for GDDR6 chips instead of GDDR6X.

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As such, several NVIDIA partners have introduced their new GDDR6 variants of the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER which are now being made available in the market places so we decided to test one out to see if there are any major differences between the two models.

NVIDIA GeForce GPU Segment/Tier Prices

Graphics Segment2023-20242022-20232021-20222020-20212019-20202018-20192017-20182016-20172014-2016
Titan TierGeForce RTX 4090GeForce RTX 4090GeForce RTX 3090 Ti
GeForce RTX 3090
GeForce RTX 3090Titan RTX (Turing)Titan V (Volta)Titan Xp (Pascal)Titan X (Pascal)Titan X (Maxwell)
Price$1599 US$1599 US$1999 US
$1499 US
$1499 US$2499 US$2999 US$1199 US$1199 US$999 US
Ultra Enthusiast TierGeForce RTX 4080 SUPERGeForce RTX 4080GeForce RTX 3080 TiGeForce RTX 3080 TiGeForce RTX 2080 TiGeForce RTX 2080 TiGeForce GTX 1080 TiGeForce GTX 980 TiGeForce GTX 980 Ti
Price$999 US$1199 US$1199 US$1199 US$999 US$999 US$699 US$649 US$649 US
Enthusiast TierGeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPERGeForce RTX 4070 TiGeForce RTX 3080 12 GBGeForce RTX 3080 10 GBGeForce RTX 2080 SUPERGeForce RTX 2080GeForce GTX 1080GeForce GTX 1080GeForce GTX 980
Price$799 US$799 US$799 US$699 US$699 US$699 US$549 US$549 US$549 US
High-End TierGeForce RTX 4070 SUPER
GeForce RTX 4070
GeForce RTX 4070
GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB
GeForce RTX 3070 Ti
GeForce RTX 3070
GeForce RTX 3070 Ti
GeForce RTX 3070
GeForce RTX 2070 SUPERGeForce RTX 2070GeForce GTX 1070GeForce GTX 1070GeForce GTX 970
Price$599
$549
$599 US
$499 US
$599
$499
$599
$499
$499 US$499 US$379 US$379 US$329 US
Mainstream TierGeForce RTX 4060 Ti
GeForce RTX 4060
GeForce RTX 4060 Ti
GeForce RTX 4060
GeForce RTX 3060 Ti
GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB
GeForce RTX 3060 Ti
GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB
GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER
GeForce RTX 2060
GeForce GTX 1660 Ti
GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER
GeForce GTX 1660
GeForce GTX 1060GeForce GTX 1060GeForce GTX 1060GeForce GTX 960
Price$449
$299
$399 US
$299 US
$399 US
$329 US
$399 US
$329 US
$399 US
$349 US
$279 US
$229 US
$219 US
$249 US$249 US$249 US$199 US
Entry TierRTX 3050 8 GB
RTX 3050 6 GB
RTX 3050RTX 3050GTX 1650 SUPER
GTX 1650
GTX 1650 SUPER
GTX 1650
GTX 1050 Ti
GTX 1050
GTX 1050 Ti
GTX 1050
GTX 950GTX 750 Ti
GTX 750
Price$229
$179
$249 US$249 US$159 US
$149 US
$159 US
$149 US
$139 US
$109 US
$139 US
$109 US
$149 US$149 US
$119 US

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Gaming Graphics Cards

Turing wasn't just any graphics core, it was the graphics core that was to become the foundation of future GPUs. The future is realized now with next-generation consoles going deep in talks about ray tracing and AI-assisted super-sampling techniques. NVIDIA had a head start with Turing & Ampere and its Ada generation will only do things infinitely times better.

The Ada GPU does many traditional things which we would expect from a GPU, but at the same time, also breaks the barrier when it comes to nontraditional GPU operations. Just to sum up some features:

  • New Streaming Multiprocessor (SM)
  • New Turing Tensor Cores
  • New Real-Time Ray Tracing Acceleration
  • New Shading Enhancements
  • New Deep Learning Features For Graphics & Inference
  • New GDDR6X High-Performance Memory Subsystem
  • New HDMI 2.1 Display Engine & Next-Gen NVENC/NVDEC

The technologies mentioned above are some of the main building blocks of the Ada GPU, but there's more within the graphics core itself which we will talk about in detail so let's get started.