NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Founders Edition & MSRP Model Review Ft. MSI, GALAX & PNY

NVIDIA Ada GPU - Ada Streaming Multiprocessor, Ada GPC &; Ada GPUs Deep Dive

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.

Let's take a trip down the journey to Ada. In 2016, NVIDIA announced their Pascal GPUs which would soon be featured in their top-to-bottom GeForce 10 series lineup. After the launch of Maxwell, NVIDIA gained a lot of experience in the efficiency department which they put a focus on since their Kepler GPUs.

Four years ago, NVIDIA, rather than offering another standard leap in the rasterization performance of its GPUs took a different approach & introduced two key technologies in its Turing line of consumer GPUs, one being AI-assisted acceleration with the Tensor Cores and the second being hardware-level acceleration for Ray Tracing with its brand new RT cores.

Then came Ampere with its brand new Samsung 8nm fabrication process, and NVIDIA added even more to its gaming graphics lineup. In the Ampere GPU architecture, NVIDIA provided its latest Ampere SM along with next-gen FP32, INT32, Tensor Cores, and RT cores. The focus was to boost both rasterization and ray tracing capabilities to new heights.

Now enter Ada, a brand new architecture that aims to take everything from the first two RTX GPUs and perfect it. The graphics architecture is designed for speed and that it excels at. So let's see the architecture in detail. Following are the few main highlights of the Ada Lovelace GPU architecture:

• Revolutionary New Architecture: NVIDIA Ada architecture GPUs deliver outstanding performance for graphics, AI, and compute workloads with exceptional architectural and power efficiency. After the baseline design for the Ada SM was established, the chip was scaled up to shatter records. Manufacturing innovations and materials research enabled NVIDIA engineers to craft a GPU with 76.3 billion transistors and 18,432 CUDA Cores capable of running at clocks over 2.5 GHz while maintaining the same 450W TGP as the prior generation flagship GeForce RTX 3090 Ti GPU. The result is the world’s fastest GPU with the power, acoustics, and temperature characteristics expected of a high-end graphics card.
• New Ada RT Core for Faster Ray Tracing: For decades, rendering ray-traced scenes with physically correct lighting in real-time has been considered the holy grail of graphics. At the same time, the geometric complexity of environments and objects continues to increase as 3D games and graphics continually strive to provide the most accurate representations of the real world. The Ada RT Core has been enhanced to deliver 2x faster ray-triangle intersection testing and includes two important new hardware units. An Opacity Micro map Engine speeds up ray tracing of alpha-tested geometry by a factor of 2x, and a Displaced Micro-Mesh Engine generates Displaced Micro-Triangles on-the-fly to create additional geometry. The Micro-Mesh Engine provides the benefit of increased geometric complexity without the traditional performance and storage costs of complex geometries.
• Shader Execution Reordering: NVIDIA Ada GPUs support Shader Execution Reordering which dynamically organizes & reorders shading workloads to improve RT shading Introduction efficiency. This improves performance by up to 44% in Cyberpunk 2077 with Ray Tracing Overdrive Mode.
• NVIDIA DLSS 3: The Ada architecture features an all-new Optical Flow Accelerator and AI frame generation that boosts DLSS 3’s frame rates up to 2x over the previous DLSS 2.0 while maintaining or exceeding native image quality. Compared to traditional brute-force graphics rendering, DLSS 3 is ultimately up to 4x faster while providing low system latency.

The NVIDIA Ada Lovelace AD104 GPU features up to 5 GPC (Graphics Processing Clusters). This is 1 less SM compared to the Ampere GA104 GPUs. Each GPU will consist of 6 TPCs and 2 SMs which is the same configuration as the existing chip. Each SM (Streaming Multiprocessor) will house four sub-cores which is also the same as the GA102 GPU. What's changed is the FP32 & the INT32 core configuration. Each sub-core will include 64 FP32 units but combined FP32+INT32 units will go up to 128. This is because half of the FP32 units don't share the same sub-core as the IN32 units. The 64 FP32 cores are separate from the 128 INT32 cores.

So in total, each sub-core will consist of 16 FP32 plus 16 INT32 units for a total of 32 units. Each SM will have a total of 64 FP32 units plus 64 INT32 units for a total of 128 units. And since there are a total of 60 SM units (12 per GPC), we are looking at a total of 7,680 cores.

Moving over to the cache, this is another segment where NVIDIA has given a big boost over the existing Ampere GPUs. The L2 cache will be increased to 48 MB. This is a 12x increase over the Ampere GA104 GPU that hosts just 4 MB of L2 cache. The cache will be shared across the GPU. The GPU will also feature up to 80 ROPs for the full-die.

There are also going to be the latest 4th Generation Tensor and 3rd Generation RT (Raytracing) cores infused on the Ada Lovelace GPUs which will help boost DLSS & Raytracing performance to the next level. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti makes use of the full AD104 GPU die which means that there's no room for expansion for a future high-end GPU on the AD104 silicon. It is possible that tweaked silicon with faster clocks may appear in the future but the core configuration may not change.

NVIDIA AD104 'RTX 4070' Gaming GPU Block Diagram:

NVIDIA AD104 'Ada Lovelace' Gaming GPU 'SM' Block Diagram:

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070

• 29 TFLOPS of peak single-precision (FP32) performance
• 58 TFLOPS of peak half-precision (FP16) performance
• 466 Tensor TFLOPs with sparsity
• 67 RT-TFLOPs

At the heart of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card lies the Ada Lovelace AD104 GPU. The GPU measures 295.4mm2 and will utilize the TSMC 4N process node which is an optimized version of TSMC's 5nm (N5) node designed for the green team. The GPU features 35.8 Billion transistors.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 uses a cut-down AD104 GPU configuration with 46 SMs for a total of 5888 CUDA cores The GPU will come packed with 36 MB of L2 cache and a total of 64ROPs. The clock speeds for the graphics card are rated at 1920 MHz base and 2475 MHz boost clocks.

As for memory specs, the GeForce RTX 4070 features 12 GB GDDR6X capacities that will be adjusted at 21.0 Gbps speeds across a 192-bit bus interface. This will provide up to 504 GB/s of bandwidth.

• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 12 GB "Official" TBP - 200W
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 8 GB "Official" TBP - 220W

As far as the power consumption is concerned, the TBP is rated at 200W. The card will be powered by a single 16-pin connector which can theoretically deliver up to 600W of power. Custom models will be offering higher TBP targets but are also open to using standard 8-pin connectors.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Graphics Cards Performance

As for the performance of these monster GPUs, NVIDIA shared the computational and gaming performance figures and it looks like the GeForce RTX 4070 will be sitting in between the 3080 10GB and 12GB models without DLSS 3.

Just for comparison's sake:

• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090: 83 TFLOPs (FP32) (2.5 GHz Boost clock)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080: 49 TFLOPs (FP32) (2.5 GHz Boost clock)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti: 49 TFLOPs (FP32) (1.86 GHz Boost clock)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti: 40 TFLOPs (FP32) (2.6 GHz Boost clock)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090: 36 TFLOPs (FP32) (1.69 GHz Boost clock)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070: 29 TFLOPs (FP32) (2.48 GHz Boost clock)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080: 29 TFLOPs (FP32) (1.71 GHz Boost clock)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti: 21 TFLOPs (FP32) (1.77 GHz Boost clock)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070: 20 TFLOPs (FP32) (1.75 GHz Boost clock)

Based on a boost clock speed of 2.48 GHz, you get up to 29 TFLOPs of compute performance and you can definitely squeeze out a lot more with an overclock as we had demonstrated with the RTX 4090. One should remember that compute performance doesn't necessarily indicate the overall gaming performance.

As for the gaming performance, NVIDIA heavily emphasizes the use of RTX & DLSS3 plus the new RT-overdrive mode when comparing the GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card with older RTX 30 GPUs.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Graphics Cards Price & Availability

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card will be available starting tomorrow for a price of $599 US. Both Founders Edition and custom models will be available on the same day.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Series Official Specs:

Graphics Card Name	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 D	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060
GPU Name	Ada Lovelace AD102-300	Ada Lovelace AD102-250	Ada Lovelace AD103-300	Ada Lovelace AD104-400	Ada Lovelace AD104-250	Ada Lovelace AD106-350	Ada Lovelace AD107-400
Process Node	TSMC 4N	TSMC 4N	TSMC 4N	TSMC 4N	TSMC 4N	TSMC 4N	TSMC 4N
Die Size	608mm2	608mm2	378.6mm2	294.5mm2	294.5mm2	190.0mm2	146.0mm2
Transistors	76 Billion	76 Billion	45.9 Billion	35.8 Billion	35.8 Billion	22.9 Billion	TBD
CUDA Cores	16384	14592	9728	7680	5888	4352	3072
TMUs / ROPs	512 / 176	TBD	320 / 112	240 / 80	184 / 64	136 / 48	TBD
Tensor / RT Cores	512 / 128	456 / 128	304 / 76	240 / 60	184 / 46	136 / 34	TBD
L2 Cache	72 MB	72 MB	64 MB	48 MB	36 MB	32 MB	24 MB
Base Clock	2230 MHz	2280 MHz	2210 MHz	2310 MHz	1920 MHz	2310 MHz	1830 MHz
Boost Clock	2520 MHz	2520 MHz	2510 MHz	2610 MHz	2475 MHz	2535 MHz	2460 MHz
FP32 Compute	83 TFLOPs	TBD	49 TFLOPs	40 TFLOPs	29 TFLOPs	22 TFLOPs	15 TFLOPs
RT TFLOPs	191 TFLOPs	TBD	113 TFLOPs	82 TFLOPs	67 TFLOPs	51 TFLOPs	35 TFLOPs
Tensor-TOPs	1321 TOPs	TBD	780 TOPs	641 TOPs	466 TOPs	353 TOPs	242 TOPs
Memory Capacity	24 GB GDDR6X	24 GB GDDR6X	16 GB GDDR6X	12 GB GDDR6X	12 GB GDDR6X	8-16 GB GDDR6	8 GB GDDR6
Memory Bus	384-bit	384-bit	256-bit	192-bit	192-bit	128-bit	128-bit
Memory Speed	21.0 Gbps	21.0 Gbps	23.0 Gbps	21.0 Gbps	21.0 Gbps	18.0 Gbps	17.0 Gbps
Bandwidth	1008 GB/s	1008 GB/s	736 GB/s	504 GB/s	504 GB/s	288 GB/s (554 GB/s Effective)	272 GB/s (453 GB/s Effective)
TBP	450W	425W	320W	285W	200W	160-165W	115W
Price (MSRP / FE)	$1599 US / 1949 EU	12,999 RMB (China-Only)	$1199 US / 1469 EU	$799 US	$599 US	$399-$499 US	$299 US
Price (Current)	$1599 US / 1859 EU	12,999 RMB (China-Only)	$1199 US / 1399 EU	$799 US	$599 US	$399-$499 US	$299 US
Launch (Availability)	12th October 2022	28th December 2023	16th November 2022	5th January 2023	13th April 2023	24th May / 18th July 2023	29th June 2023

So let's get started by unboxing this behemoth of a graphics card and begin by taking a look at the packing first.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Founders Edition comes in a large box that weighs around 5 kg & has a rectangular shape. The whole box features a matte black color with the NVIDIA logo on the top left corner and the GeForce RTX 4070 logo below it.

The box will come as a standard with all NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Founders Edition cards.

The top and bottom of the box are two separate compartments. The top opens up and the end result looks like a rectangle.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Founders Edition graphics card rests at the center of the packaging & you can see the creative take from NVIDIA in designing this package.

Once the box is open, you finally get to lay your eyes on the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card which looks as spectacular as ever.

A cover that exposes a lid sits underneath the card and can be easily pulled to reveal another package.

This package contains a few manuals and also one of the most important accessories that NVIDIA ships with its Founders Edition card.

if you guessed the 16-pin (12VHPWR) connector, then you guessed right. This is an NVIDIA-branded adapter and comes with a single 16-pin to two 8-pin connectors. This is rated to provide up to 300 Watts of power to the chip.

Out of the box, we can finally start taking a much better look at the Ada Lovelace powerhouse.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Founders Edition is a lot more compact than we thought it would be.

The card comes in a dual-slot design and you can see the several exhaust vents that are there to push air out of the chassis.

On the bottom of the shroud, you can see three plastic panels that cover the main heatsink and the largest one features the "RTX 4070" branding on it.

The back of the card is encircled by a large die-cast aluminum piece, forming an "X" shape in the center.

The card features a dual-axial flow-through design. This design incorporates two fans placed on different sides of the shroud (one front and one back) and perpendicular to one another.

The fan at the bottom pushes air out of the aluminum fins on the backplate.

As you can see, the heatsink is super dense and features several aluminum fins and heat pipes running through the shroud.

You can find a nice "GeForce RTX" logo on the card which features LEDs. A similar LED can also be found within the shroud on the back.

The card comes with a single 16-pin power connector that uses the aforementioned 12VHPWR plug that's bundled with the card.

The new Founders Edition cooler comes with 10% larger fan sizes and 10% larger in volume. This is all to help the card run super cool and also super quiet.

Once again, you can lay your eyes on the RTX 4070 logo which comes with a new font style. This will be applicable across all RTX 40 series cards.

NVIDIA has taken away some of that aluminum frame room and cut out the corners to make space for the larger fans.

The front side of the card is an aluminum heatsink. These large heatsink blocks show that there's some serious cooling involved to keep the card running.

There's a nice little "RTX 4070" logo carved out on one of the four aluminum arms on the front of the shroud.

Lastly, we can just tell you that the card feels very premium and very awesome when running on the PC.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 FE vs GeForce RTX 4070 FE:

The MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Gaming X Trio graphics card comes inside a standard cardboard box. The front of the package has a large "GeForce RTX" brand logo along with the "MSI" logo in the top left corner and the "Gaming X Trio" series branding in the lower-left corner. A large picture of the graphics card itself is depicted on the front which gives a nice preview of the Gaming X Trio design.

The packaging has put a large emphasis on the RTX side of things as the first feature enlisted by AIBs will be NVIDIA Ada architecture, Ray Tracing & DLSS support. NVIDIA has bet the future of their gaming GPUs on Ray Tracing support as these are the first cards to offer support for the new feature.

The back of the box is very typical, highlighting the main features and specifications of the cards. The three key aspects of MSI's top-tier custom cards are its blazing performance which is achieved by a fully custom design, the new Tri-Frozr 3 cooling system, and a new Torx Fan 5.0 fan and Core Pipe design which will offer better cooling performance.

There's also a focus towards GeForce.com on each AIB card through which users can download the latest drivers and GeForce Experience application which are a must for gamers to access all feature sets of the new cards.

The sides of the box once again greet us with the large GeForce RTX branding. There's also the mention of 12 GB GDDR6X (RTX 4070) memory available on the card. Opening the box, you are greeted with a nice SUPRIM logo.

Outside of the box, the graphics card and the accessory package are held firmly by foam packaging. The graphics card comes with a few accessories and manuals which might not be of much use for hardcore enthusiasts but can be useful for the mainstream gaming audience. The only two useful accessories are the GPU mounting anti-sag bar and the 16-pin to 2x 8-pin power adapter.

The card is nicely wrapped within an anti-static cover which is useful to prevent any unwanted static discharges on various surfaces that might harm the graphics card. The most interesting accessory that I found in the package was a graphics card support bracket. This bracket connects the graphics card to the casing, offering better durability and preventing any sort of bending that may occur due to the heavy weight of the Gaming X Trio & SUPRIM X series graphics cards.

After the package is taken care of, I can finally start talking about the card itself. This thing is a beast and I can't wait to test it out to find what kind of performance improvement I get over current-gen cards.

MSI’s Tri Frozr heat sinks are some of the biggest heatsink cooling solutions that I have ever tested. I first tested the Gaming X Trio when MSI released the 1080 Ti variant back in 2017 and that was a very aggressive design in its own right.

Since then, I have tested the RTX 2080 Ti, RTX 3090, and RTX 3090 Ti in their Tri-Frozr iterations. With the RTX 40 series cards, MSI has further refined the Tri Frozr design. The card measures the same at 338 x 141 x 52 mm and weighs in at 1214 grams. The card features a standard 2-slot height which is expected of today's high-end cards.

The cooling shroud extends all the way to the back of the PCB and it requires a casing with good interior space for proper installation. The back of the card features a solid backplate that looks stunning. The backplate offers a lot more functionality than just looks which I will get back to in a bit.

In terms of design, we are looking at an updated version of the Tri Frozr heatsink known as Tri Frozr 3 which is now in its eighth variation. The first variation started off with the GTX 780 Ti Lightning, the second was the 980 Ti Lightning, then came the 1080 Ti Gaming X Trio, the 1080 Ti Lightning, then the RTX 20 & RTX SUPER Gaming X Trio graphics cards while the seventh generation was introduced on the RTX 30 series. Now we are in the eighth generation.

The new heatsink looks like a beefed-up version of the Gaming X Trio heatsink that we saw on the 3090 with the main changes being the shroud and heatsink design that features a neater shroud design on the front which features the claw-shaped RGB pattern on the front and a carbon-fiber touch across the sides of the cards.

Coming to the fans, the card actually features the latest fan designs based on the Torx 5.0 system. All three fans feature a ring-based design to allow for higher airflow to be channeled within the main heatsink. All fans deploy a double ball bearing design and can last a long time while operating silently. Each fan has three blades that form three sets and each fan has three sets of them that make up a total of 9 fan blades. Each blade is tilted at a 22 degrees angle to the main high-pressure airflow.

MSI also features its Zero Frozr technology on the Tri Frozr heatsink. This feature won’t spin the fans on the card unless they reach a certain threshold. If you notice closely, you can see that the card features beveled edges that are polished several times with a diamond-tipped cutter to achieve a mirror finish, and that can give a slight gold effect which looks great.

In the case of the Tri Frozr heatsink, that limit is set to 60C. If the card is operating under 60C, the fans won’t spin which means no extra noise would be generated.

I am back at talking about the full-coverage, full metal-based backplate that the card uses. The whole plate is made of solid metal with rounded edges that add to the durability of this card. The matte-black finish on the backplate gives a unique aesthetic. The graphics card also comes with a compact PCB design which means that the shroud, heatsink, and backplate are all extended beyond the PCB. The third fan blows air through the heatsink and blows it out from the cutouts that are situated at the very end of the backplate.

There are cutouts in screw placements to easily reach the points on the graphics card. We can also see the iconic MSI Dragon logo. MSI is also using heat pads beneath the backplate which offer more cooling to the electrical circuitry on the PCB. The most interesting thing to spot on the back aside from the backplate is the large retention metal bracket which adds more mounting pressure to effectively disperse heat from the GPU to the heatsink.

With the outside of the card done, I will now start taking a glance at what's beneath the hood of these monster graphics cards. The first thing to catch my eye is the humungous fin stack that's part of the beefy heatsink that the cards utilize.

The large fin stack runs all the way from the front and to the back of the PCB and is so thick that you can barely see through it. It also comes with the wave-curved 2.0 fin stack design which I want to shed some light on as it is a turn away from traditional fin design. The card also uses antegrade fins on the back that direct and optimize air pass-through on the back, allowing more warm air to pass out of the card like a nozzle.

The heatsink has been designed to be denser by using a wave-curved and filled-fin design. It allows more air to pass through the fins smoothly, without causing any turbulence that would result in unwanted noise. Airflow Control Technology guides the airflow directly onto the heat pipes, while simultaneously creating more surface area for the air to absorb more heat before leaving the heatsink. The heat pipes have also been arranged in a way that allows MSI to stack even more fin room.

Talking about the heatsink, the massive block is comprised of 7 copper squared-shaped heat pipes with a more concentrated design to transfer heat from the copper base to the heatsink more effectively. The base itself is a solid nickel-plated base plate, transferring heat to the heat pipes in a very effective manner. To top it all off,

MSI adds extra protection to its impressive PCB by including a rugged anti-bending plate. This also acts as a memory and MOSFET cooling plate while the PWM heatsink with micro fins keeps the VRM cool under stressful conditions. I/O on the graphics card sticks with the reference scheme which includes three Display Port 1.4a & a single HDMI 2.1 port.

MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Gaming X Trio Teardown:

MSI makes use of a high-end PCB design that is made up of high-quality components such as  HCI or High-Efficiency Carbony Inductors, SPS (Smart Power Stages), and hardened defense fuse. The card also uses the latest GDDR6X DRAM from Micron which operates at 21.0 Gbps alongside a 192-bit wide memory interface.

The card ships with a single 16-pin connector that is powered by the 2x 8-pin bundled adapter or you can connect it directly to a Gen5 connector if you are running an ATX 3.0 PSU.

The MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ventus 3X graphics card comes inside a standard cardboard box. The front of the package has a large "GeForce RTX" brand logo along with the "MSI" logo in the top left corner. A large picture of the graphics card itself is depicted on the front which gives a nice preview of the Ventus 3X design.

The packaging has put a large emphasis on the RTX side of things as the first feature enlisted by AIBs will be NVIDIA Ada architecture, Ray Tracing & DLSS support. NVIDIA has bet the future of their gaming GPUs on Ray Tracing support as these are the first cards to offer support for the new feature.

The back of the box is very typical, highlighting the main features and specifications of the cards. The three key aspects of MSI's top-tier custom cards are its blazing performance which is achieved by a fully custom design, the new triple-fan cooling system, a new Torx Fan 4.0 fan, & the Core Pipe design which will offer better cooling performance.

There's also a focus towards GeForce.com on each AIB card through which users can download the latest drivers and GeForce Experience application which are a must for gamers to access all feature sets of the new cards.

The sides of the box once again greet us with the large GeForce RTX branding. There's also the mention of 12 GB GDDR6X (RTX 4070) memory available on the card.

Outside of the box, the graphics card and the accessory package are held firmly by foam packaging. The graphics card comes with a few accessories and manuals which might not be of much use for hardcore enthusiasts but can be useful for the mainstream gaming audience.

The card is nicely wrapped within an anti-static cover which is useful to prevent any unwanted static discharges on various surfaces that might harm the graphics card. After the package is taken care of, I can finally start talking about the card itself. The Ventus 3X sticks to a more futuristic card design.

The MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ventus 3X graphics card comes with a black and silver color scheme.  The card measures 308 x 123 x 52 mm and weighs close to 1 KG. The card features a standard 2-slot height which is expected of today's high-end and mainstream cards.

The cooling shroud extends all the way beyond the PCB and it requires a casing with good interior space for proper installation.

The back of the card features a solid backplate that looks stunning. The backplate offers a lot more functionality than just looks which I will get back to in a bit.

The MSI Ventus series has been around for many generations now. First introduced with the Turing GPUs, the lineup was mostly aimed at the entry-level segment but recently, the design has come to more high-end solutions. The addition of Torx Fan 4.0 and more has led MSI to deliver balanced cooling and cost.

The shroud on the MSI Ventus 3X is an all silver design which looks very nice and clean compared to the gaming options.

Coming to the fans, the card actually features the Torx 4.0 system. All three fans feature a ring-based design to allow for higher airflow to be channeled within the main heatsink. All fans deploy a double ball bearing design and can last a long time while operating silently. Each fan has five sets that include a pair of blades that make up a total of 10 fan blades.

MSI also features its Zero Frozr technology on the Tri Frozr heatsink. This feature won’t spin the fans on the card unless they reach a certain threshold. If you notice closely, you can see that the card features beveled edges that are polished several times with a diamond-tipped cutter to achieve a mirror finish, and that can give a slight gold effect which looks great.

In the case of the Ventus 3X heatsink, that limit is set to 60C. If the card is operating under 60C, the fans won’t spin which means no extra noise would be generated.

I am back at talking about the full-coverage, full metal-based backplate that the card uses. The whole plate is made of solid metal. The matte-black finish on the backplate gives a unique aesthetic. The graphics card also comes with a compact PCB design which means that the shroud, heatsink, and backplate are all extended beyond the PCB. The third fan blows air through the heatsink and blows it out from the cutouts that are situated at the very end of the backplate.

There are cutouts in screw placements to easily reach the points on the graphics card. MSI is also using heat pads beneath the backplate which offer more cooling to the electrical circuitry on the PCB. The most interesting thing to spot on the back aside from the backplate is the large retention metal bracket which adds more mounting pressure to effectively disperse heat from the GPU to the heatsink. With the outside of the card done, I will now start taking a glance at what's beneath the hood.

The large fin stack runs all the way from the front and to the back of the PCB and is so thick that you can barely see through it. It also comes with the airflow control stack design which I want to shed some light on as it is a turn away from traditional fin design and one that actually offers better cooling on high-end graphics cards.

Airflow Control Technology guides the airflow directly onto the heat pipes, while simultaneously creating more surface area for the air to absorb more heat before leaving the heatsink. The heat pipes have also been arranged in a way that allows MSI to stack even more fin room.

Talking about the heatsink, the massive block is comprised of 6 copper squared-shaped heat pipes with a more concentrated design to transfer heat from the copper base to the heatsink more effectively. The base itself is a solid nickel-plated base plate, transferring heat to the heat pipes in a very effective manner.

I/O on the graphics card sticks with the reference scheme which includes three Display Port 1.4a & a single HDMI 2.1 port. Power is provided through a single 8-pin connector.

The GALAX GeForce RTX 4070  EX Gamer graphics card comes inside a large cardboard box. The front of the package has a large "GeForce RTX" brand logo along with the "GALAX" logo in the top left corner and a large hooded figure in the middle which is part of the new 'EX Gamer' brand. You can see similar hooded figures on the Serious Gaming packages too.

The packaging has put a large emphasis on the RTX side of things as the first feature enlisted by AIBs will be NVIDIA Ada architecture, Ray Tracing & DLSS support. NVIDIA has bet the future of their gaming GPUs on Ray Tracing support as these are the first cards to offer support for the new feature. The back of the box is very typical, highlighting the main features and specifications of the cards.

There's also a focus towards GeForce.com on each AIB card through which users can download the latest drivers and GeForce Experience application which are a must for gamers to access all feature sets of the new cards.

The sides of the box once again greet us with the large GeForce RTX branding. There's also the mention of 12 GB GDDR6X (RTX 4070) memory available on the card.

Outside of the box, the graphics card and the accessory package are held firmly by foam packaging. The graphics card comes with a few accessories and manuals which might not be of much use for hardcore enthusiasts but can be useful for the mainstream gaming audience. After the package is taken care of, I can finally start talking about the card itself. The GALAX GeForce RTX 4070 EX gamer is definitely a looker!

The graphics card is massive in terms of size and weighs around 1kg. The card measures 323 x 131 x 52 mm and takes up 2.2 slots worth of space for installation.

The cooling shroud extends all the way beyond the PCB and it requires a casing with good interior space for proper installation.

The back of the card features a solid backplate that looks stunning. The backplate offers a lot more functionality than just looks which I will get back to in a bit.

In terms of design, the graphics card rocks a singular color scheme which is black and along with some white and silver linings on the front, sides, and back.

The card features RGB lighting on the side and within the fans which should look great.

Coming to the fans, the card rocks triple 'Wings 2.0' fans. Each fan is comprised of 11 blades which have a very angular shape that is made to disperse hot air out of the card faster than standard designs. The fans on the sides are 92mm while the one in the middle is 102mm.

GALAX also features a 0db fan technology on the fans which isn't explicitly mentioned. This feature won’t spin the fans on the card unless they reach a certain threshold. In the case of the GALAX heatsink, that limit is set to 60C. If the card is operating under 60C, the fans won’t spin which means no extra noise would be generated.

I am back at talking about the full-coverage, full metal-based backplate that the card uses. The whole plate is made of solid metal with that add to the durability of this card. The brushed matte-black finish on the backplate gives a unique aesthetic. The graphics card also comes with a compact PCB design which means that the shroud, heatsink, and backplate are all extended beyond the PCB. The third fan blows air through the heatsink and blows it out from the cutouts that are situated at the very end of the backplate.

With the outside of the card done, I will now start taking a glance at what's beneath the hood of these monster graphics cards. The first thing to catch my eye is the humungous fin stack that's part of the beefy heatsink that the cards utilize.

The large fin stack runs all the way from the front and to the back of the PCB and is so thick that you can barely see through it.

Talking about the heatsink, there are two blocks of aluminum fins that are interconnected by six heat pipes running through the copper base plate and heading out toward the dual heatsink blocks.

There are several heat pads included for the VRMs and memory chips. They are full-sized, making full contact with the components to offer stable and efficient heat transfer.

GALAX adds extra protection to its impressive PCB by including a rugged anti-bending plate. This also acts as a memory and MOSFET cooling plate while the PWM heatsink with micro fins keeps the VRM cool under stressful conditions.

I/O on the graphics card sticks with the reference scheme which includes three Display Port 1.4a & a single HDMI 2.1 port. Power is provided through a single 8-pin connector.

The PNY GeForce RTX 4070 XLR8 graphics card comes inside a standard cardboard box. The front of the package has a large "GeForce RTX" brand logo along with the "PNY" logo in the top left corner. A large picture of the graphics card itself is depicted on the front which gives a nice preview of the XLR8 design.

The packaging has put a large emphasis on the RTX side of things as the first feature enlisted by AIBs will be NVIDIA Ada architecture, Ray Tracing & DLSS support. NVIDIA has bet the future of their gaming GPUs on Ray Tracing support as these are the first cards to offer support for the new feature. The back of the box is very typical, highlighting the main features and specifications of the cards.

There's also a focus towards GeForce.com on each AIB card through which users can download the latest drivers and GeForce Experience application which are a must for gamers to access all feature sets of the new cards.

The sides of the box once again greet us with the large GeForce RTX branding. There's also the mention of 12 GB GDDR6X (RTX 4070) memory available on the card.

Outside of the box, the graphics card and the accessory package are held firmly by foam packaging. The graphics card comes with a few accessories and manuals which might not be of much use for hardcore enthusiasts but can be useful for the mainstream gaming audience. The card is nicely wrapped within an anti-static cover which is useful to prevent any unwanted static discharges on various surfaces that might harm the graphics card.

Being only the second XLR8 graphics card that I have tested, I am really excited to see what PNY has in store for the masses. The PNY XLR8 cooler is a callback to the 2016's Pascal era when the triple-slot and dual-fan designs were what you would expect on high-end graphics cards. The card features a standard 2-slot height which is expected of today's high-end cards.

The cooling shroud extends all the way beyond the PCB and it requires a casing with good interior space for proper installation.

The back of the card features a solid backplate that looks stunning. The backplate offers a lot more functionality than just looks which I will get back to in a bit.

In terms of design, PNY is using its latest generation of Verto TF coolers that are designed to cool down the impressive Ada Lovelace GPUs from NVIDIA.

The heatsink comes in two modules, each of which is stacked with numerous amounts of fins made out of aluminum. The card uses a massive heatsink structure that makes direct contact with GPU & memory.

PNY is using its latest Double Ball bearing fan design which comes in a triple-fan solution and each fan has an XLR8 sticker placed on top of it.

Each fan is 100mm in size and compared to the traditional 90mm fans, these are said to offer 40% more airflow and gain 55% air pressure.

The fans also come with 0dB fan technology and the limit of fan operation is set at 60C for fan off and on modes.

I am back at talking about the full-coverage, full metal-based backplate that the card uses. The whole plate is made of solid metal with rounded edges that add to the durability of this card. The brushed metallic finish on the backplate gives a unique aesthetic. The graphics card also comes with a compact PCB design which means that the shroud, heatsink, and backplate are all extended beyond the PCB. The third fan blows air through the heatsink and blows it out from the cutouts that are situated at the very end of the backplate.

There are cutouts in screw placements to easily reach the points on the graphics card. We can also see the iconic PNY XLR8 Gaming logos towards the back of the backplate. The whole 'V' shape of it looks pretty cool.

With the outside of the card done, I will now start taking a glance at what's beneath the hood of these monster graphics cards. The first thing to catch my eye is the humungous fin stack that's part of the beefy heatsink that the cards utilize.

The large fin stack runs all the way from the front and to the back of the PCB and is so thick that you can barely see through it.

The heatsink makes use of a total of 6 heat pipes that extend throughout the internal assembly and dissipate heat from the various components to the fins. The base itself is a solid nickel-plated base plate, transferring heat to the heat pipes in a very effective manner. To top it all off,

I/O on the graphics card sticks with the reference scheme which includes three Display Port 1.4a & a single HDMI 2.1 port. Power is provided through a single 8-pin connector

We used the following test system for comparison between the different graphics cards. The latest drivers that were available at the time of testing were used by AMD and NVIDIA on an updated version of Windows 11. All tested games were patched to the latest version for better performance optimization for NVIDIA and AMD GPUs.

The Wccftech Test Bench

CPU	Intel Core i9-13900K @ 5.0 GHz
Motherboard	MSI MEG Z790 ACE
Video Cards	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 FE NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 FE NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti FE NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 FE MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ventus 3X GALAX GeForce RTX 4070 EX Gamer PNY GeForce RTX 4070 XLR8 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 FE NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti FE NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 FE MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Ti SUPRIM X MSI GeForce RTX 3090 SUPRIM X MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ti SUPRIM X MSI GeForce RTX 3080 SUPRIM X MSI GeForce RTX 3070 Ti SUPRIM X MSI GeForce RTX 3070 Gaming X Trio MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Lightning ASRock Radeon RX 7900 XTX PG MSI Radeon RX 6950 XT Gaming X Trio MSI Radeon RX 6900 XT Gaming Z Trio MSI Radeon RX 6800 XT Gaming X Trio
Memory	G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series 32GB (2 X 16GB) CL38 7200 Mbps
Storage	Teamgroup T-Force A440 Pro 2 TB Gen 4
Power Supply	MSI MEG Ai1300P 1300W PSU
OS	Windows 11 64-bit
Drivers	AMD Radeon Adrenalin Edition 23.3.1 NVIDIA GeForce 531.42 WHQL

• All games were tested at 3840x2160 (4K) resolution.
• Image Quality and graphics configurations are provided with each game description.
• The "reference" cards are the stock configs except where mentioned otherwise.

Speed Way

Developed with input from AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, and other leading technology companies, Speed Way is an ideal benchmark for comparing the DirectX 12 Ultimate performance of the latest graphics cards. 3DMark Speed Way’s engine is assembled to demonstrate what the latest DirectX API brings to ray-traced gaming, using DirectX Raytracing tier 1.1 for real-time global illumination and real-time raytraced reflections, coupled with new performance optimizations like Mesh Shaders.

Firestrike

Firestrike is running the DX11 API and is still a good measure of GPU scaling performance. In this test, we ran the Extreme and Ultra versions of Firestrike which runs at 1440p and 4K and we recorded the Graphics Score only since the Physics and combined are not pertinent to this review.

Time Spy

Time Spy is running the DX12 API and we used it in the same manner as Firestrike Extreme where we only recorded the Graphics Score as the Physics score is recording the CPU performance and isn't important to the testing we are doing here.

 

Port Royal

Port Royal is another great tool in the 3DMark suite, but this one is 100% targeting Ray Tracing performance. It loads up ray-traced shadows, reflections, and global illumination to really tax the performance of the graphics cards that either has hardware-based or software-based ray-tracing support.

 

Crysis Remastered (DXVK RT)

Crysis is back with a vengeance to reclaim its title of the graphics crown. The remastered version of the game uses DX11 API but has Vulkan extensions on top which enable Vulkan Ray tracing. That's also something that the original game didn't offer. DXVK, along with improved textures and visual effects, leads to higher performance demand making us question once again "Can It Run Crysis?"

Doom Eternal

DOOM Eternal brings hell to earth with the Vulkan-powered idTech 7.  We test this game using the Ultra Nightmare Preset and follow our in-game benchmarking to stay as consistent as possible.

Red Dead Redemption 2

Developed by Rockstar San Diego, Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the most visually stunning open-world games I've played to date that is backed up by a rich story set around the protagonist, Arthur Morgan. The game is based on the RAGE engine which features an insane amount of graphics fidelity but also requires a lot of power to run maxed out. For the purpose of this test, we set the graphics settings to Ultra with AA turned disabled.

Wolfenstein: Youngblood

Wolfenstein is back in The New Colossus and features the most fast-paced, gory, and brutal FPS action ever! The game once again puts us back in the Nazi-controlled world as BJ Blazkowicz. Set during an alternate future where Nazis won the World War, the game shows that it can be fun and can be brutal to the player and to the enemy too. Powering the new title is, once again, id Tech 6 which is much acclaimed after the success that DOOM has become. In a way, ID has regained its glorious FPS roots and is slaying with every new title.

Atomic Heart

Atomic Heart is set in an alternate universe where the Soviet Union achieved incredible technological breakthroughs thanks to a scientist named Dr. Sechenov, who invented a liquid programmable module called Polymer that links robots in a so-called Kollektiv network.

Battlefield V

Battlefield V brings back the action of the World War 2 shooter genre. Using the latest Frostbite tech, the game does a good job of looking gorgeous in all ways possible. From the open-world environments to the intense and gun-blazing action, this multiplayer and single-player FPS title is one of the best-looking Battlefields to date.

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 is an action role-playing video game developed by CD Projekt Red and published by CD Projekt. The story takes place in Night City, an open world set in the Cyberpunk universe. Players assume the first-person perspective of a customizable mercenary known as V, who can acquire skills in hacking and machinery with options for melee and ranged combat. The game uses CD Projekt Red's in-house Red Engine which is one of the most visually breathtaking and also one of the most graphics-intensive engines designed to date.

Dead Space (Remake)

Remaking Dead Space was a bold choice but I would say that the team at EA Motive nailed every bit and piece of this horror classic. The remake makes the USG Ishimura twice as scarily beautiful. The gore, the endless corridors of terror, the void of space, all of it looks incredible while the game remains true to its core to the original Dead Space formula. Modern cards can run the game really well but it can also be really demanding if you crank the settings all the way to the max with ray tracing enabled.

Death Stranding

Sam Porter Bridges has delivered one of PS4's most anticipated games to the PC community and opened a whole new world of possibilities. This was the first game to feature the Decima Engine on PC and unarguably did it the best. Death Stranding may not feature ray tracing effects, but it does showcase that DLSS can be used effectively even when RT isn't around. We tested this one just like we did in our launch coverage with DLSS enabled.

Forza Horizon 5

Forza Horizon 5 carries on the open-world racing tradition of the Horizon series.  The latest DX12-powered entry is beautifully crafted, amazingly well executed, and a great showcase of DX12 games.  We use the benchmark run while having all of the settings set to non-dynamic with an uncapped framerate to gather these results.

Halo Infinite (DX12 Highest)

Next up, we have the latest entry in the Halo franchise, Halo: Infinite, which uses the brand new Slipspace engine (although there are rumors it will be ditched in the future for Unreal Engine) based on the DX12 API. The game rocks some incredible environments for Master Chief to visit on the Halo ring.

Hogwarts Legacy

Hogwarts Legacy, as the name suggests, is set in the world of Hogwarts and retains its landscape true to the books and the movies. The game looks visually stunning although it can be a total hog when running at the highest settings with all visual candy enabled.

Hitman III (DX12 Highest Settings)

Hitman III is the highly acclaimed sequel to the 2016 Hitman & 2018 Hitman II, which was a redesign and reimaging of the game from the ground up. With a focus on stealth gameplay through various missions, the game once again lets you play as Agent 47. The game runs on the IO Interactive Glacier 2 engine which has been updated to deliver amazing visuals and environments on each level while making use of DirectX 12 API.

Shadow of The Tomb Raider

The sequel to Rise of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of The Tomb Raider is visually enhanced with an updated Foundation Engine that delivers realistic facial animations and the most gorgeous environments ever seen in a Tomb Raider Game. The game is a technical marvel and really shows the power of its graphics engine in the latest title.

Metro Exodus

Metro Exodus continues Artyom's journey through Russia's nuclear wasteland and its surroundings. This time, you are set over the Metro, going through various regions and different environments. The game is one of the premier titles to feature NVIDIA’s RTX technology and does well in showcasing the ray-tracing effects in all corners.

Resident Evil Village

Resident Evil Village is the latest in the horror franchise that was wonderfully rekindled with RE7 and onto the RE2 Remake. But now the RE Engine is back and better than ever with Ray Traced Reflections and Lighting that makes the world just come to life, unironically. The game was tested in the center of the village itself with all graphical settings maxed out and with raytracing enabled.

Resident Evil IV Remake

The remake of the beloved and highly acclaimed Resident Evi IV is here, boasting the latest RE engine which adds stunning visuals and even better ray tracing effects, the game looks just as incredible as it plays.

Stray (That Cat Game)

Stray is a 2022 adventure game developed by BlueTwelve Studio and published by Annapurna Interactive. The story follows a stray cat who falls into a walled city populated by robots, machines, and mutant bacteria, and sets out to return to the surface with the help of a drone companion, B-12. The game uses Unreal Engine 4, but DX12 Ray tracing can be enabled by adding the "-dx12" extension to the game.

Quick DLSS 3 Tests

No graphics card review is complete without evaluating its temperatures and thermal load. All RTX 4070 graphics cards were tested with their default 'Performance' BIOS and the results are below:

I compiled the power consumption results by testing each card under idle and full stress when the card was running games. Each graphics card manufacturer sets a default TDP for the card which can vary from vendor to vendor depending on the extra clocks or board features they plugin on their custom cards. The default TDP for the GeForce RTX 4070 is rated at 200W but in gaming, the card never hit this power limit.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 arrives in the gaming segment and with it, brings the pricing of Ada GPUs down to an MSRP of $599 US. This is so far the lowest price we have seen for any next-gen graphics card but the true question is, whether the card is worth the price if we take into account its performance increase-gen-over-gen.

In our 20+ games that we benchmarked the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 through, the card came out ahead of the RTX 3080 across all titles. It even managed to get really close to the RTX 3080 Ti in the more RT-intensive titles and while that should be a good thing, here's where my first issue with the card pops up.

The predecessor to the RTX 4070, the RTX 3070, was either similar or faster in performance versus the last-gen flagship, the RTX 2080 Ti. The RTX 2080 Ti. The RTX 2080 Ti had an MSRP of $999 US & the RTX 3070 had an MSRP of $499 US. So the 3070 was faster or on par with the 2080 Ti at half the price. In a similar fashion, we can use the same comparative methods for the RTX 4070 and the RTX 3080 Ti. The RTX 4070 has an MSRP of $599 US and the RTX 3080 Ti had an MSRP of $1199 US but it looks like despite the gen-over-gen price bump, the RTX 4070 is unable to consistently match last-gen Ti as its predecessor did. The GPU can at best consistently match or outperform the 12 GB RTX 4080 which had an MSRP of $899 US or the $699 US 10 GB variant.

With that said, the card can offer some great performance at 1440p and can even run 4K titles but you are going to rely heavily on DLSS since the card's memory and cut-down cache (36 MB versus 48 MB on RTX 4070 Ti) is going to be pushed a lot at higher resolutions.

But coming back to the feature set, Ada's faster DLSS and Ray Tracing capabilities do make for a very enticing offer. With DLSS 3, the GeForce RTX 4070 outperforms a 3090 Ti and as I mentioned earlier, the RT-heavy titles bring the card close to the RTX 3080 Ti at half the price of its MSRP. This card is perfect for those wanting to play eSports titles on some really high refresh rate monitors at maximum details with NVIDIA Reflex and DLSS-3 enabled. You'll easily be doing multiple 100s of FPS while being super-smooth and lag-free.

The best part about the GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card is its mind-boggling efficiency which blows everything away. The RTX 3080 series consumed anywhere between 250-350W and this card offers the same kind of performance or even better at sub-200W which is simply impressive. NVIDIA's Ada architecture truly shines when it comes to GPU efficiency and the competition is simply nowhere close to what the green team has achieved this gen with the TSMC 4N process.

The top-class efficiency and lower power consumption mean that you also don't have to worry about higher temperatures. All the cards I tested ran super cool with most designs even ending below the 60C mark. I was pleasantly surprised that all the custom models surpassed NVIDIA's FE with sub-60C temperatures so all of them are a worthy option especially when they can be bought at the same price as the MSRP of $599 US.

We are also told by multiple retail partners and AIBs that the stock for the RTX 4070 is going to be plenty for the masses and they don't expect to run into any big shortage which means that this can be the first card with lots of stock and MSRP prices at launch in a while. We will be adding more premium model reviews tomorrow but at $599 US, you will have a lot of AIB designs to select from, and the question of why you should go for an AIB model when a FE model performs and runs just as good. Well, it all comes down to preference, I mean we all want a card that ideally matches our gaming PC or we like the way the RGB or a certain card looks.

In my personal opinion, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 should have retained a $499 US pricing and would have been a much better recommendation but at its given price, you have to really think of your choice and ask yourself if you need those extra ray tracing and DLSS capabilities. For anyone with an older card such as the RTX 3070, the RTX 4070 is a decent gen-on-gen upgrade that adds more performance, new features, more memory, and sips very low power but if you were one of those expecting a performance similar to the 3080 Ti, then you might be a bit disappointed. For eSports gamers, this card is going to rock your world at 1440p with some amazing broadcasting & streaming features that the older cards simply do not offer.