Time flies by quickly, it's already been six months since we tested the first Ada Lovelace graphics card, the GeForce RTX 4090 and now, NVIDIA has launched the fourth entry in its ever-expanding desktop lineup, the RTX 4070.
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 aims to bring the pricing of the Ada lineup down to a starting point of $599 US, which is 25% cheaper than the RTX 4070 Ti. In addition to that, the GeForce RTX 4070 tries to retain a similar memory hierarchy, marking a big boost to the available graphics memory compared to its predecessor, the RTX 3070 (8 GB Memory).
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti has been selling pretty well so if NVIDIA can deliver more or less similar performance at a lower price then that would mean even better sales figures for the new entrant and that value is exactly the thing we want to try finding in this review besides just the overall performance increase.
While we will be talking about the GeForce RTX 4070 in this review, we will also be taking a look at how it offers faster shader performance, faster ray tracing performance, & faster AI performance. Built on a brand new process node and featuring an architecture designed from the ground up, Ada is a killer product with lots of numbers to talk about.
Today, we will be taking a look at the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card. We will be looking at both Founders Edition and custom models but do keep in mind that these specific custom designs are going to be MSRP models which will stick to the $599 US pricing. For the premium models, we'll once again revisit the RTX 4070 tomorrow to see if the extra price justifies the need to spend more than the MSRP.
NVIDIA GeForce GPU Segment/Tier Prices
| Graphics Segment | 2023-2024 | 2022-2023 | 2021-2022 | 2020-2021 | 2019-2020 | 2018-2019 | 2017-2018 | 2016-2017 | 2014-2016 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Titan Tier | GeForce RTX 4090 | GeForce RTX 4090 | GeForce RTX 3090 Ti GeForce RTX 3090 | GeForce RTX 3090 | Titan 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 Tier | GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER | GeForce RTX 4080 | GeForce RTX 3080 Ti | GeForce RTX 3080 Ti | GeForce RTX 2080 Ti | GeForce RTX 2080 Ti | GeForce GTX 1080 Ti | GeForce GTX 980 Ti | GeForce GTX 980 Ti |
| Price | $999 US | $1199 US | $1199 US | $1199 US | $999 US | $999 US | $699 US | $649 US | $649 US |
| Enthusiast Tier | GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER | GeForce RTX 4070 Ti | GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB | GeForce RTX 3080 10 GB | GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER | GeForce RTX 2080 | GeForce GTX 1080 | GeForce GTX 1080 | GeForce GTX 980 |
| Price | $799 US | $799 US | $799 US | $699 US | $699 US | $699 US | $549 US | $549 US | $549 US |
| High-End Tier | GeForce 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 SUPER | GeForce RTX 2070 | GeForce GTX 1070 | GeForce GTX 1070 | GeForce GTX 970 |
| Price | $599 $549 | $599 US $499 US | $599 $499 | $599 $499 | $499 US | $499 US | $379 US | $379 US | $329 US |
| Mainstream Tier | GeForce 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 1060 | GeForce GTX 1060 | GeForce GTX 1060 | GeForce 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 Tier | RTX 3050 8 GB RTX 3050 6 GB | RTX 3050 | RTX 3050 | GTX 1650 SUPER GTX 1650 | GTX 1650 SUPER GTX 1650 | GTX 1050 Ti GTX 1050 | GTX 1050 Ti GTX 1050 | GTX 950 | GTX 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 Series 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 untraditional 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.
