Conclusion
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.
Contents
You can find additional information about our hardware review process and ethics policy here.
About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
