NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti 12 GB “Ada” Review – Relaunching The Unlaunched!

ASUS GeForce RTX 4070 Ti TUF Gaming OC Unboxing & Closeup

Keeping their tradition alive of launching a new graphics architecture every two years, this year, NVIDIA introduces its Ada Lovelace GPU. The Ada GPU is built upon the foundation set by Turing. NVIDIA terms the Ada Lovelace GPUs as a quantum leap over Ampere, and the GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition based on NVIDIA Ampere GPU excels at everything versus the previous gen.

The Ada GPU architecture has a lot to be talked about in this review, but so does the new RTX lineup. The Ada lineup offers faster shader performance, faster ray tracing performance, and 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.

The fundamental of Ada was to take everything NVIDIA learned with its Turing & Ampere architectures and not only refine it but to use its DNA to form a product in a completely new performance category. Tall claims were made by NVIDIA when they introduced its Ada lineup last month with up to 4x performance claims & we will be finding out whether NVIDIA hit all the ticks with its Ada architecture as this review will be your guiding path to see what makes Ada and how it performs against its predecessors.

Today, we will be taking a look at the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti graphics card. We will be looking at various AIB models since the 4070 Ti doesn't feature a Founders Edition model.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Series Gaming Graphics Cards - The Biggest GPU Performance Leap in Recent History

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 'Ada Lovelace' Gaming GPU Block Diagram:

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

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti

• 40 TFLOPS of peak single-precision (FP32) performance
• 80 TFLOPS of peak half-precision (FP16) performance
• 348 Tensor TFLOPS
• 641 Tensor TFLOPs with sparsity
• 93 RT-TFLOPs

At the heart of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti 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 Ti will use the full 60 SM configuration for a total of 7428 CUDA cores The GPU will come packed with 48 MB of L2 cache and a total of 80 ROPs. The clock speeds for the graphics card are rated at 2310 MHz base and 2610 MHz boost clocks.

As for memory specs, the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti 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 Ti 12 GB "Official" TBP - 285W
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti 8 GB "Official" TBP - 290W

As far as the power consumption is concerned, the TBP is rated at 285W. The card will be powered by a single 16-pin connector which delivers up to 600W of power. Custom models will be offering higher TBP targets. The card will still ship with the same 12VHPWR connector but they will come in either 3x 8-pin or 2x 8-pin adapter packages.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti 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 Ti will be sitting slightly ahead of the GeForce RTX 3090 with around 40 TFLOPs of Compute power.

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)

Based on a boost clock speed of 2.6 GHz, you get up to 40 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. Even so, it will be a huge upgrade for gaming PCs and an 8.5x increase over the current fastest console, the Xbox Series X.

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 Ti graphics card with older RTX 30 GPUs.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Graphics Cards Price & Availability

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti graphics card will be available starting tomorrow for a price of $799 US. The card will only be available in custom flavors.

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

The MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPRIM X 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 "SUPRIM X" 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 SUPRIM X 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 fully custom design, the new Tri-Frozr 3S cooling system, and a new Torx Fan 5.0 fan and Vapor Chamber cooler 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 Ti) 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 3x 8-pin power adapter. There's also a nice mousepad that MSI ships with its SUPRIM series lineup.

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, 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 142 x 73 mm and weighs in at 2019 grams, respectively. The card features a standard 3.5 slot height which is expected of today's high-end cards.

You would have to keep in mind the height when going for a triple or quad-slot card solution as your case or motherboard PCIe slot combination may not allow such a setup. 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 3S which is now in its eighth variation while for the SUPRIM X series, this is the 2nd iteration. 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 SUPRIM X heatsink that we saw on the 3090 Ti with the main changes being the shroud and heatsink design that feature a neater shroud design on the front, absorbing the black and silver color platelets while featuring the RGB emitting V-shaped acrylic cutouts at the front. The sides also come with a large RGB accent bar which lights up when the card is powered on.

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 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.

There are cutouts in screw placements to easily reach the points on the graphics card. We can also see the new SUPRIM logo which drops the Dragon design and goes for a Diamond shape on the back which looks stunning. 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 3.0 fin 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 such as the RTX 3090 Ti. 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 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. 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.

There's also a dual-BIOS switch on the card which comes pre-configured with Silent & Gaming modes. The BIOS doesn't affect the clock profiles but rather affects the maximum power limit, enabling higher fan speeds for better cooling and more stable clocks. The limits are 285W and 350W for the profiles. You get up to 2775 MHz out of the box but with the Extreme Performance mode, you can get an additional 15 MHz out of the card.

MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPRIM X 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 3x 8-pin bundled adapter or you can connect it directly to a Gen5 connector if you are running an ATX 3.0 PSU.

MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPRIM X RGB Lighting Gallery:

MSI SUPRIM X series cards utilize their Mystic Light RGB technology to offer you a visually pleasing lighting experience on your graphics cards. There are a total of 5 different RGB effects that you can choose from and the cards have 3 RGB accent points on the front, one on the back, and one lightbar surrounding the side of the card which looks really good. You can fully customize the RGB lights to your preference using the MSI Mystic Light application from MSI's web page. Following is what the graphics card looks like when lit up.

The MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti 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 Ti) 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 337 x 140 x 62 mm and weighs in at 1613 grams (making it just around 500g lighter than the SUPRIM X), respectively. The card features a standard 3-slot height which is expected of today's high-end cards.

You would have to keep in mind the height when going for a triple or quad-slot card solution as your case or motherboard PCIe slot combination may not allow such a setup. 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 and one that actually offers better cooling on high-end graphics cards such as the RTX 3090 Ti. 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.

There's also a dual-BIOS switch on the card which comes pre-configured with Silent & Gaming modes. The BIOS doesn't affect the clock profiles but rather affects the maximum power limit, enabling higher fan speeds for better cooling and more stable clocks. The limits are 285W for the silent and 325W for the gaming profile. The card boosts up to 2745 MHz out of the box but users can also enable the fastest 2760 MHz clock through the MSI Center.

MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti 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.

MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Gaming X Trio RGB Lighting Gallery:

MSI Gaming X Trio series cards utilize their Mystic Light RGB technology to offer you a visually pleasing lighting experience on your graphics cards.

There are a total of 6 different RGB effects that you can choose from and the cards have 5 RGB accent points on the front, and one on the side. You can fully customize the RGB lights to your preference using the MSI Mystic Light application from MSI's web page. Following is what the graphics card looks like when lit up.

The GALAX GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SG graphics card comes inside a standard 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 'Serious Gaming' brand.

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 Ti) 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 card comes with an extra 1-clip booster fan, a pair of ARGB/RGB cable headers, a 16-pin to 2 x 8-pin cable connector, and an RGB-Lit anti-sag stand. 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.

The graphics card is massive in terms of size and weighs around 2kg. The card measures 336 x 148 x 62 mm and takes up 3.2 slots worth of space for installation.

You would have to keep in mind the height when going for a triple or quad-slot card solution as your case or motherboard PCIe slot combination may not allow such a setup. 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, the graphics card rocks a singular color scheme which is matte black and along with some white and silver linings on the front, sides, and back. The SG series is the entry-level GPU offering from GALAX so don't expect any fancy designs like the WTF, EX, or HOF series cards.

GALAX is going fully on board the RGB bandwagon with their SG series, offering multiple light zones on the front and sides of the card. The shroud itself extends beyond the PCB.

Coming to the fans, the card rocks triple 102mm '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.

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.

This is also where GALAX's 1-clip booster fan plugs in. It's an easy fit on the backplate and requires no additional screws to be used. The card has a 12V RGB In and a 5-pin fan header on the back of the shroud for the 1-clip booster 2.0.

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. The heatsink is a slightly updated version of the one used on the RTX 3080 SG with an increased surface area for additional heat transfer.

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.

GALAX GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SG Teardown:

GALAX makes use of a high-end PCB design that is made up of high-quality components. 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 card runs at 2670 MHz out of the box clocks but ou can get an additional 15 MHz with the Xtreme Tuner Plus Software using the 1-Click OC profile.

GALAX GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SG RGB Lighting Gallery:

GALAX's SG series cards utilize RGB technology to offer you a visually pleasing lighting experience on your graphics cards. Following is what the graphics card looks like when lit up.

The PNY GeForce RTX 4070 Ti 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 Ti) 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 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.

Being one of my first XLR8 graphics cards, I am really excited to see what PNY has in store for the masses. The PNY XLR8 cooler is massive in sheer size and proportions. The card measures the same at 339 x 137 x 66.5 mm. The card features a standard 3-slot height which is expected of today's high-end cards.

You would have to keep in mind the height when going for a triple or quad-slot card solution as your case or motherboard PCIe slot combination may not allow such a setup. 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, 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 7 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.

Once again, the PNY XLR8 variant of the RTX 4070 Ti has the smallest PCB of all the cards I tested. Even the space on the back is bare enough that it could've been removed entirely for a far shorter design.

PNY GeForce RTX 4070 Ti XLR8 OC Teardown:

The PNY GeForce RTX 4070 Ti XLR8 OC graphics card comes with an 8+2+1 phase VRM design and features a total of 6 GDDR6X memory dies that are rated to operate at 21.0 Gbps speeds. The card runs at up to 2670 MHz clock speeds out of the box and has a TGP rating of 285W.

PNY GeForce RTX 4070 Ti XLR8 OC RGB Lighting Gallery:

The PNY XLR8 graphics card comes with several RGB accent zones. There's the glowing 'XLR8' logo on the sides and then there are the 'X' shaped claws on the front which give this card a very cool effect. Following is what the graphics card looks like when lit up.

The Colorful GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Ultra W OC graphics card comes inside a very colorful cardboard box. The front of the package has a large "GeForce RTX" brand logo along with the "iGame" logo in the top left corner and the "Ultra" 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 Ultra White  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 Ti) 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 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.

The Colorful Ultra W OC is one of the most unique graphics cards that I have laid my eyes on this generation. The white shroud with hints of pink and blue looks absolutely phenomenal.

Despite being a beautifully crafted graphics card, the Colorful iGame GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Ultra W OC is still a beast in sheer size and proportions. The card measures the same at 337 x 150 x 62 mm and weighs in at 1620 grams. The card features a standard 3-slot height which is expected of today's high-end cards.

You would have to keep in mind the height when going for a triple or quad-slot card solution as your case or motherboard PCIe slot combination may not allow such a setup. 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 in the all-white. 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 the Pop Shockwave design which makes use of retro and flashy aesthetics. The card is purely a statement of design and it does so really well with its choice of colors and aesthetics.

The card makes use of the Ultra Cooling system which is said to be both efficient and durable. The card features four layers, the shroud, the heatsink, the PCB, and the backplate.

The fans on the Colorful Ultra W OC graphics card come with a total of 9 ring-shaped blades and each fan measures 100mm to enhance air pressure and air input.

By using a dual-ball bearing design, Colorful ensures that the fans last longer and run silently throughout their operation.

And yes, for those of you wondering, these fans are PWM controlled and feature 0dB fan tech as a standard.

I am back at talking about the full-coverage, full metal-based backplate that the card uses. It is called the 'Pop Backboard' and assists in heat dissipation too.The backplate makes use of a bold color scheme with a white color and pink accents.

There are cutouts in screw placements to easily reach the points on the graphics card. 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 this graphics card. The first thing to catch my eye is the humungous fin stack that's part of the beefy heatsink that the cards utilize.

The cooling module, as Colorful calls it, comes with two large aluminum fin blocks for finer thermal conductivity and utilizes a reflow soldering technique, ensuring that the thermal tube and the fin fit perfectly, optimizing heat dissipation performance and achieving better heat dissipation than standard heatsinks.

Talking about the heatsink, the massive block is comprised of two 8mm and five 6mm copper 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.

The card comes with the standard 285W TGP but there's a one-key overclock switch on the I/O bracket which raises the clocks from the standard 2610 MHz to a much faster boost clock of 2745 MHz.

Colorful GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Ultra W OC Teardown:

The Colorful GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Ultra W OC graphics card comes with a custom PCB design and features a total of 6 GDDR6X memory dies that are rated to operate at 21.0 Gbps speeds. The card runs at up to 2745 MHz clock speeds out of the box and has a TGP rating of 285W.

Colorful GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Ultra W OC RGB Lighting Gallery:

The Colorful GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Ultra W OC comes with a Retro RGB accent plate on the side which features the 'Ultra' label and also has some nice LED zones around the fans which looks great. Following is what the graphics card looks like when lit up.

The ASUS GeForce RTX 4070 Ti TUF Gaming OC graphics card comes inside a standard cardboard box. The front of the package has a large "GeForce RTX" brand logo along with the "TUF Gaming" 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 TUF Gaming 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 Ti) memory available on the card. Opening the box, you are greeted with a nice TUF Gaming 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.

Although not as big as the RTX 4080 or RTX 4090 TUF Gaming graphics cards, the RTX 4070 Ti TUF Gaming still looks great.

While the ASUS TUF & ROG STRIX RTX 4090/4080 are some of the biggest cards I have ever tested, the TUF Gaming 4070 Ti is the smallest 4070 Tis I tested out of the models I received. The card measures the same at 305 x 138 x 65 mm and weighs around 1.5 kilograms. The card features a standard 3.25-slot height which is expected of today's high-end cards.

You would have to keep in mind the height when going for a triple or quad-slot card solution as your case or motherboard PCIe slot combination may not allow such a setup. 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 TUF Gaming cooler which has been around in the market for quite some time. The latest version goes with a more durable look.

The heatsink design has also been changed from the RTX 4090 & RTX 4080 variants. It seems like ASUS has toned down the heatsink a lot on their 4070 Ti designs versus other manufacturers.

ASUS has been one of the pioneers when it comes to adopting the axial-tech fan design. The new cards feature a triple-fan design of the same but upgraded axial-tech fans.

Each fan comes with a total of 11-fan blades and delivers up to 21% more airflow with the updated 100mm design.

There's also 0dB fan technology embedded within the fans and you can expect top-notch cooling from them.

I am back at talking about the full-coverage, full metal-based backplate that the card uses. The back plate makes use of a matte-black finish with a hexagonal pattern.

There are cutouts in screw placements to easily reach the points on the graphics card. 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 this graphics card.

First up, the metal exoskeleton has been replaced by a diecast shroud frame and backplate. These aren't full-on metal designs but do add rigidity and are vented to ensure maximum airflow and heat dissipation.

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.

ASUS GeForce RTX 4070 Ti TUF Gaming OC Teardown:

The ASUS GeForce RTX 4070 Ti TUF Gaming OC graphics card comes with a custom PCB design and features a total of 6 GDDR6X memory dies that are rated to operate at 21.0 Gbps speeds. The card runs at up to 2760 MHz clock speeds out of the box and has a TGP rating of 285W.

ASUS GeForce RTX 4070 Ti TUF Gaming OC RGB Lighting Gallery:

The ASUS GeForce RTX 4070 Ti TUF Gaming OC comes with just one RGB lightning zone and that's the TUF logo on the sides. Following is what the graphics card looks like when lit up.

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.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Test Setup

CPU	Intel Core i9-12900K @ 5.0 GHz
Motherboard	AORUS Z690 Master (DDR5)
Video Cards	Colorful GeForce RTX 4090 Vulcan OC-V MSI GeForce RTX 4090 SUPRIM Liquid X MSI GeForce RTX 4090 SUPRIM X NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 FE NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 FE NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti FE NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 FE MSI Radeon RX 6950 XT Gaming X Trio MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Ti SUPRIM X MSI GeForce RTX 3090 SUPRIM X, MSI Radeon RX 6900 XT Gaming Z Trio MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ti SUPRIM X MSI Radeon RX 6800 XT Gaming X Trio MSI GeForce RTX 3080 SUPRIM X MSI GeForce RTX 3070 Ti SUPRIM X MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Lightning MSI GeForce RTX 3070 Gaming X Trio
Memory	G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series 32GB (2 X 16GB) CL36 6000 MHz
Storage	Teamgroup T-Force A440 Pro 2 TB Gen 4
Power Supply	ASUS ROG THOR 1200W PSU
OS	Windows 11 64-bit
Drivers	AMD Radeon Adrenalin Edition 22.9.2 NVIDIA GeForce 521.90 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Vs RTX 4090 & RTX 4080

No graphics card review is complete without evaluating its temperatures and thermal load. All RTX 4070 Ti 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. Default TDP for the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is rated at 285W and the peak power limit we got was 350W with the SUPRIM X while the rest either stuck by the default TGP or slightly raised it to 325W.

After being unlaunched a few months ago, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 12 GB is finally here and relaunched as the RTX 4070 Ti graphics card. This is the only card that has been rebadged in a long while and for good reason. NVIDIA heard the consumers and made the card slightly cheaper than what would've been a very uncompetitive price point at $899 US. At a starting price of $799 US, the RTX 4070 Ti is the cheapest next-gen graphics card available at the moment but is it worth the wait?

In terms of performance, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti graphics cards are without a doubt faster than the RTX 3090 Ti, the last-gen flagship. You can find it anywhere from 5-10% faster natively but the difference lowers when running higher resolutions and that's due to the smaller 192-bit and 12 GB memory configuration that this card boasts. However, beating the 3090 Ti is still a big feat and the card performs wonderfully at 1440p, making use of that 48 MB of cache that's onboard the new Ada AD104 GPU. For gamers who want smooth and high refresh rate gaming experiences at 1440p, the RTX 4070 Ti might just be the best card on the market to get.

As an extra topping, when DLSS 3 and Ray Tracing are applied, the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti looks like a much better deal than the RTX 3090 Ti and even against the competition who are lagging behind in ray-tracing performance and also don't have any solution on par with NVIDIA's AI-assisted DLSS 3 tech.

The best part about the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti graphics card is its mind-boggling efficiency which blows everything away. The RTX 3090 Ti consumed anywhere between 400-500W and this card offers the same kind of performance or even better at just 200-250W 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. MSI leads the cooling benchmark with its top-notch SUPRIM X & Gaming X designs while GALAX's SG and PNY XLR8 impress with their unique aesthetics and RGB patterns. But of all the cards, the one I personally liked the most is the Colorful Ultra W OC which looks phenomenal in its white-colored design and an out-of-the-box design approach. But each card comes at a different price so let's start with that.

The PNY GeForce RTX 4070 Ti XLR8, the GALAX GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SG, the ASUS GeForce RTX 4070 Ti TUF Gaming, and the Colorful RTX 4070 Ti Ultra W, all retail at $849.99 US. The MSI cards retail at $949.99 and $899.99 US for the SUPRIM X and Gaming X Trio, respectively. The MSI cards have a 100-150 USD premium over the reference MSRP while the rest of the cards have a $50 US premium vs the MSRP. Now given the design, cooling, and performance offered by the MSI cards, I think a $100 US price premium is respectable though the SUPRIM X at $150 US is slightly on the high side. The card doesn't offer the most premium build quality and the best cooling performance from the rest. With that said, $50 US is reasonable for most custom designs, and PNY, GALAX, & Colorful, all have some solid designs this generation. I'd say ASUS was the most lackluster of the bunch when we talk cooling performance.

But overall speaking, even at $799 US (which a lot of options will be available), the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti still feels very expensive. This is a $200 US price hike compared to the 3070 Ti and while the performance exceeds the 3090 Ti, we once used to get this kind of performance at the same price as the predecessor and not at a +30% markup. These are the times we live in and I believe at $699 US, the 4070 Ti would have made a much more positive impression in the consumer space.

With that said, the 4070 Ti still is a worthy option for gamers to consider, it offers a punch with DLSS and impeccable Ray Tracing capabilities while offering performance faster than a 3090 Ti at half the power which is a shining example of Ada's insanely efficient GPU design. For those who are running an RTX 3080 or lower-tier graphics card, the jump to RTX 4070 Ti is well worth the price. We would've hoped for a lower price but at $799 US, the 4070 Ti has enough bells and whistles for us to give it our recommendation.

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