On January 5, Nvidia will launch the RTX 4070 Ti graphics card.
The card was initially announced as a variant of the RTX 4080 with less video memory, but Nvidia changed its mind after critical feedback from customers.
Now the video card is here – with a new name.
Nvidia states that the RTX 4070 Ti will have a guiding price of NOK 10,000 here in Norway, but I know from experience that this has little to do with what the card will actually cost.
In theory, the RTX 3070 Ti should cost NOK 6,500 at launch. It still ended up costing close to 11,000, and you still can’t find a card for less than 7,800 a year and a half later.
Buying video cards today is an unpleasant experience for the wallet, almost regardless of the product one buys.
I have been sent a Gigabyte RTX 4070 Ti Gaming OC video card, and have tested it in a number of games. The manufacturer has not given us information about how much this variant will cost.
That speaks for itself.
High clock speed
The RTX 4070 Ti has 7680 CUDA cores and 12 GB of GDDR6X video memory. The Gigabyte card has a clock speed of 2640 MHz, but manages 2850 MHz out of the box.
This is the first time we have had a look at Gigabyte’s cooler for the Ada Lovelace architecture, and this time they have a more rounded design that looks better than the previous generation.
Mikkjell Lønning/Gamer.no
The card is long at 33.6 centimeters, but is nowhere near as large as many of the RTX 4090 graphics cards.
The back plate is metal with a stylish silver finish, and there is plenty of RGB on the card.
Unfortunately, there are still only DisplayPort 1.4 inputs on the card. There are three of these. Nvidia has received a lot of criticism for not having support for DisplayPort 2.1 as AMD has on its cards.
Otherwise, the video card has one HDMI 2.1 input.
Gaming
Nvidia markets the RTX 4070 Ti as the best graphics card for 1440p. Our tests show that in practice it is a slightly more powerful version of the RTX 3090 and RTX 3080 Ti.
NEW CONNECTOR: The display board has a power connector with 16 pins. You get an adapter for two PCIe connectors with eight pins.
Mikkjell Lønning/Gamer.no
Then let’s not forget that Nvidia sells the RTX 3090 partly as an 8K graphics card. There is a huge difference between 1440p and 8K, but the manufacturer has apparently put away all focus on the latter, also for the RTX 4090.
We have not been able to compare the 4070 Ti against either the RTX 4080 or AMD’s new top models. They don’t end up in our mailbox until a bit in January, I hear.
The newcomer has half as much video memory as the previous flagship RTX 3090, but is still a few percent more powerful in most of the games I’ve played.
However, 12 GB of video memory is too little in demanding games for higher resolutions than 4K.
1080p – is there any point?
It’s starting to be a few years since video card manufacturers hit processor bottlenecks in 1080p. Most new graphics cards are of no use to those who will be playing at this resolution, unless you want the highest possible frame rate to reduce input delay in competitive games.
Few of them need it.
We see that the RTX 4090 is a few notches ahead of the other cards on our new test rig, but the difference is small. On average, the RTX 4090 is 16 percent faster in 1080p without ray tracing.
The RTX 4070 Ti is three percent faster than the RTX 3090 and RTX 3080 Ti in 1080p, and the card is 22 percent faster than the predecessor RTX 3070 Ti.
It varies from game to game how much you get out of more powerful video cards. In games such as Far Cry 6 and Guardians of the Galaxy, there is practically no difference between RTX 4090, RTX 4070 Ti, RTX 3090 and RTX 3080 Ti.
At the same time, one sees in games such as Assassin’s Creed Valhalla that the RTX 4090 takes a lead of around 25 percent over the new card.
Unanswerable questions
It is only at 2560×1440 that some of the bottleneck on the processor disappears. The difference in frame rate to the flagship increases here, but the RTX 4070 Ti still delivers very competent performance.
The difference between RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 3090 is even smaller here. In practice, the performance is identical after testing in eleven different games where we have not activated ray tracing.
It is therefore 1440p Nvidia thinks the RTX 4070 Ti is best suited for. On average, I get a frame rate of 194 across the various games.
Then I tested everything at the highest setting level. Some of the games are a little older, and help to raise the number, but I see, for example, that the video card manages 120 FPS in the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II and 104 FPS in F1 2022. The latter has ray tracing on.
Mikkjell Lønning/Gamer.no
These are resilient figures for what is now supposed to be a mid-range video card.
But then there was this with the price.
At the time of writing, you can get the RTX 3080 Ti with a third-party cooler from NOK 13,500 and up. AMD’s RX 6950 XT costs from 10,500, RX 7900 XT costs 12,000.
The question then is how much the third-party card for the RTX 4070 Ti will actually cost, and whether it is even worth the money.
There is little doubt that the RTX 4070 Ti is a fantastic video card for 1440p. But that description can be used for several other products.
We are therefore waiting to give a final grade, and will rather come back with a new assessment in a collective test in a while.
We almost have to see how the price level compares to the competitors before we have a good enough knowledge base to draw a conclusion.
More than good enough in 4K
In 4K, the RTX 4070 Ti is caught up by the RTX 3090 and RTX 3080 Ti on the average frame rate.
This is primarily due to the fact that the video card makes it very weak in CS:GO, a game which raises the average a lot due to the high frame rate.
Here the result is so bad that it must be a driver error. We get the same average with our other test rig, so we will test this again when Nvidia fixes the problem.
An average frame rate of 110 without ray tracing – in 4K – is sky-high anyway. The RTX 4070 Ti is above the 60 limit in all the games I have tested.
With ray tracing activated, the RTX 4070 Ti is back in line with the Turing video cards, but here I see it struggling more. Even the RTX 4090 sweats in 4K with ray tracing in games like Cyberpunk 2077.
You can see all the results from the 15 games I have tested on the next page.
Extra snacks
What matters in the comparison with the Turing video cards is the extra functionality that the Ada Lovelace architecture can boast.
The performance is practically the same as the RTX 3090. But the Lovelace card has, among other things, a better video codec and support for the third generation DLSS with the so-called “frame generation”.
OLD STANDARD: Nvidia has still not included support for DisplayPort 2.1, as AMD has on its 7000 series.
Mikkjell Lønning/Gamer.no
Unfortunately, there are quite a few games that support this yet. We have tested DLSS 3 with “frame generation” in F1 2022, and there the performance was fine down with turning this on for the RTX 4070 Ti.
The solution for drawing new images (frame generation), not just parts of them, has also not come far enough for it to make sense to use.
These are actually the two things that matter the most to players and those who do streaming. And you hardly ever get to use that one.
Cool and quiet
Let’s skip to looking at our specific model. The RTX 4070 Ti has no Founder’s Edition, and Gigabyte’s Gaming OC variant has the same current limit as the rest of the basic models.
At most, the video card drew 282 watts from the wall. Nvidia has seen the limit at 285.
It is strange that a third-party card does not open up to use more current, but in return the video card produces little heat.
Gigabyte recommends a power supply of 750 watts for the card.
Mikkjell Lønning/Gamer.no
At most, the temperature has been up to 64 degrees. The heat point on the video card has reached 84 degrees during stress testing.
The cooler is therefore not close to reaching the maximum temperature of 90 degrees before the clock speed is delayed, and it also makes so little noise that I cannot measure it over other fans in the test bench.
You can also switch on a quiet mode with a switch on the video card itself for even less fan noise.
The low current limit means that I don’t get anything special out of overclocking. In some games, you can get between two and five percent higher performance, but it is not worth the trouble to stress test the card to get the overclocking stable.
In summary, it is a cool and quiet video card.
Conclusion
It is not so easy to rate a product if you do not know what it costs.
NOK 10,000 is expensive enough for what is supposed to be a mid-range video card (at least for now), but it will soon be many thousands more on the shop shelves.
In addition, the guide price has risen by 35 percent since the RTX 3070 Ti launched in June 2021. That’s a lot.
As a committee, we will not set a grade quite yet.
The prices should be allowed to stabilize a bit, and the RTX 4080 and AMD cards must enter our test bank. Then I will come back with a comprehensive test where I can give a more useful overview of what the product has to offer.
The RTX 4070 Ti is a slightly cooler version of the RTX 3080 Ti with support for some new functions. The price of the RTX 3080 Ti is still sky high, so there is no reason to buy the hottest Turing cards anymore.
The new video card provides more than enough performance for the vast majority of people, and will probably become the most popular choice among cards north of NOK 10,000.
Nvidia is right that it is excellent for 1440p.
Gigabyte’s cooler does what it should. He keeps the card cool and makes little noise, and the silent mode reduces fan noise to almost nothing.
This is probably a safe choice for those who want to buy the RTX 4070 Ti.
