Unveiling the Power of Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti
The RTX 4070 Ti was a short-lived product from Nvidia, initially introduced as a 12GB version of the RTX 4080, but withdrawn due to negative public response to its specs and high proposed price of £949. The hardware remains unchanged, only the name and reduced price are new.
However, its price is still higher compared to previous GeForce cards with a 70 suffix, setting an unwanted trend. The launch prices of the previous cards were £259 (GTX 970), £399 (GTX 1070), £469 (RTX 2070), and £529 (RTX 3070 Ti). On the other hand, the high demand for high-end graphics cards, such as the RTX 4090 selling for £1,699 or more and the mostly sold-out RX 7900 XTX for £1,200, suggests that prices will not drop in the near future.
The £799 price for the RTX 4070 Ti cards is a guide price for “stock” versions and is not set by Nvidia. Unlike the 4080 and 4090, Nvidia is not manufacturing the RTX 4070 Ti. For testing purposes, Nvidia provided an Asus RTX 4070 Ti TUF Gaming OC which is available for £950 on store.nvidia.com.
This card represents a fair performance of factory overclocked cards, but it will perform slightly faster than stock designs. The Asus RTX 4070 Ti TUF Gaming OC measures 298 x 138 x 62mm and is considered a triple-slot graphics card by normal definition, although Asus lists it as a 3.25-slot card.
The extra quarter-slot provides room for the fans. The GPU is supported by a stand to prevent sagging and weighs 1.4kg. The card uses a triple fan cooling setup, which runs cool and quiet with a 285W total board power. Despite not needing a 16-pin adapter, Asus included a two 8-pin to single 16-pin adapter for those with older ATX 3 power supplies.
Just like the 4080 and 4090, the 4070 Ti utilizes Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace architecture, albeit with reduced specs. Specifically, the 4070 Ti employs the AD104 GPU, the 4080 the AD103, and the 4090 the AD102. Online sources can provide a detailed comparison of the three chips, but to put it simply, the AD102 is just under half the size of the AD104. From transistors (35.8 billion vs 76.3 billion) to ray tracing cores (60 vs 128) to streaming processors (60 vs 128), this general rule applies.
Despite its £799+ price tag, the RTX 4070 Ti is designed for 4K gaming. Tests were conducted on nine different games, with four key results shown in the graphs. With Ultra or similar settings, the 4070 Ti can run 4K games at a frame rate of 50-100fps, placing it between a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and 3090 Ti. Overclocking brought it closer to 3090 Ti levels, but it should be noted that the 3090 Ti also has the capability to overclock (using more power with a TBP of 450W).
GPUs are widely utilized for professional applications, AI training, and inferencing. To assess performance, the SPECviewperf 2020 v3 suite of eight tests were run.
The RTX 4070 Ti performed similarly to the RTX 3090 Ti but lagged behind the 4080 by 18% and the 4090 by 34%. However, results may vary based on the specific test and the apps being used.
For 3D rendering, the latest Blender Benchmark was used, which includes a new Cycles X engine that leverages ray-tracing hardware for GPUs from AMD, Nvidia, and Intel Arc. The 4070 Ti slightly outperformed the 3090 Ti in this benchmark, winning in two out of three individual scenes and in the aggregate score. AMD’s GPUs were significantly less impressive, with the 4070 Ti nearly doubling the performance of the 7900 XTX.
Torn between the performance and pricing, the RTX 4070 Ti offers better performance compared to most 30-series GPUs, including a 10% increase over the 3080 Ti and DLSS 3 support.
Despite this, the question remains who the target audience is for the RTX 4070 Ti. Is it for those with disposable income to invest in high-performance graphics cards, but not enough to buy the RTX 4080 or 4090?
This creates a niche market, neglecting those who would be satisfied with 1440p gaming rather than spending nearly a grand on a graphics card. Although it may be the best sub-£800 graphics card available, it is disappointing to see that it offers roughly the same level of performance as the RTX 3090 which was released over two years ago
