The RTX 4070 Ti GPU is here and ready to take on the competition. Slightly less powerful than other cards in the 40-series, the RTX 4070 Ti delivers where it counts, making it a mid-range card with teeth. While the launch has been somewhat overshadowed by reports of the cancelled 12GB 4080, the RTX 4070 Ti GPU stands as a formidable graphics card in NVIDIA’s 40-series lineup.
With an MSRP of $799, the RTX 4070 Ti is an affordable yet competitive offering compared to the more expensive RX 7900 XT or the other cards in the Ada Lovelace range so far. For the money, the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is a powerful tool for 1440p gaming at 120FPS, powered by NVIDIA’s latest GPU architecture, which features a much more compact TSMC process than the previous NVIDIA generations. Since there is no Founder’s Edition of the RTX 4070 Ti, for this review, we are looking at the ASUS TUF RTX 4070 Ti variant of the card, but more on that later.
At 4nm, compared to Ampere’s 8nm process, we’re seeing accelerated clock speeds and improved power efficiency with this generation. With more than twice as many transistors as the RTX 3070, the RTX 4070 Ti packs them into a GPU die that is about 75% the size of the RTX 3070 silicon, resulting in an impressive TDP of 280W.
The RTX 4070 Ti GPU boasts the same specs as the now scraped RTX 4080 12GB, with 7,680 CUDA cores, 60 ray tracing cores, and 240 Tensor cores. This power enables DLSS 3 with Full Frame Generation, a cutting-edge technology that is as revolutionary today as DLSS 2.0 was when it was released with NVIDIA Ampere, making 4K gaming a reality for gamers everywhere.
| RTX 4070 Ti | RTX 4080 | RTX 4090 | |
| Architecture | Ada Lovelace | Ada Lovelace | Ada Lovelace |
| Process node | TSMC N4 | TSMC N4 | TSMC N4 |
| CUDA cores | 7,680 | 9,728 | 16384 |
| Boost clock speed | 2,610MHz | 2,505MHz | 2520 MHz |
| VRAM | 12GB GDDR6X | 16GB GDDR6X | 24GB GDDR6X |
| Memory clock speed | 21 Gbps | 23 Gbps | 21 Gbps |
| Memory Bandwidth | 504 GB/s | 736 GB/s | 1008 GB/s |
| Total Graphics Power (TGP) | 285W | 340W | 450W |
On paper, this power allows it to easily handle 1440P tasks and even ray tracing workloads, though it will be less capable than the more powerful cards in the 40-series lineup. As a result, the RTX 4070 Ti GPU is more than capable of driving a high-resolution 4K display, a feat that the RTX 3070 could only achieve with the most stringent settings.
As such, users need not worry about the 12GB of VRAM being insufficient for 4K gaming and should be more than enough to enjoy even today’s most demanding games, although ray tracing at high FPS may be out of reach. As the third fastest card in the Ada Lovelace series, it is able to match or exceed the performance of its predecessors, the GeForce RTX 3090 and GeForce RTX 3090 Ti, while consuming less power.
The ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Ti OC Edition graphics card offers reliable and powerful performance thanks to its triple-fan cooling system and backplate. This ensures optimal cooling and increased longevity, but it does mean that even though it is less power-hungry than its bigger brothers, it is still a sizable offering. The ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Ti OC Edition is a triple-slot card, requiring just as much space as the RTX 4080, and is best suited for larger tower cases, thankfully it does look fantastic while taking up that PC real estate.
“The ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Ti OC Edition boasts impressive thermal performance…”
I appreciate the impressive thermal performance of the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Ti OC Edition, thanks to its thicker construction. Comparable to the ASUS TUF Gaming RX 7900 XTX, the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti OC Edition GPU includes the same thermal and build features that make it just as reliable. The TUF brand that ASUS has established is clearly evident in the solidity and design of the RTX 4070 Ti OC Edition, and I am a fan of how industrial and built-out the TUF cards look, although that is a personal preference.
This card features a single 16-pin “12VHPWR” power connector that splits into three 8-pin PCIe cables, providing an efficient power solution with a maximum draw of 200-220W. This is an ideal setup for those looking to reduce their power consumption. With more PSUs now releasing with the 12VHPWR connector, the adapter is less important, but thankfully it is included in the box.
TUF Gaming and ROG series custom graphics cards come equipped with two HDMI 1 connectors, enabling 4K 120Hz at 30fps. Additionally, these custom graphics cards boast three x DisplayPort 4 connectors, providing the same level of quality as their other custom graphics cards.
With the card now unboxed and ready to go, we slotted the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Ti OC Edition in our test rig to see how well it fares compared to the competition. As we did with the RTX 4080, the RX 7900 XTX, and RX 7900 XT cards, we used the be quiet! Dark Base Pro 900 test system with the 13th Gen Intel Core i9-13900K, MSI 850W PSU, 64 GB SK Hynix DDR5, and a PCIe Gen 4 2 TB Kingston Fury M.2 SSD. This will keep all variables the same and give us a better idea of just how well the latest from NVIDIA fares against the competition.
Starting things off with our synthetic benchmarks, the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Ti OC Edition shows a storing start, resting just behind the RX 7900 XT and well ahead of the RTX 3070. This gives a taste of the power that Ada Lovelace brings to the table, even in its scaled-down form. We are also getting a sense of why this was originally going to be an RTX 4080, especially with the level of processing under the hood. It does manage to be a bit behind the more expensive 7900 XT, even if just a few points, but for the price, that is a solid showing.
“Despite some controversy surrounding the release of the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti, the new GPU offers impressive performance.”
When it comes to gaming performance, the RTX 4070 Ti offers slightly superior gaming performance compared to the RX 7900 XT, especially in ray tracing. However, the difference between the two is not particularly noteworthy, making it difficult to choose one over the other based on this criterion alone. Both are solid, if not expensive, cards, so it is not surprising to see them go head-to-head, and due to NVIDIA’s lead in ray tracing, it has a slight advantage when that is thrown into the mix.
Considering the RX 7900 XT has 20GB of memory compared to the 12 GB in the RTX 4070 Ti GPU, NVIDIA is keeping the pace very well, with it neck-in-neck in Hitman 3, and it even managed to beat AMD in F1 22 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, even if it was only by around 10FPS on average. Considering the $100 MSRP premium to jump into the RX 7900 XT, the RTX 4070 Ti is coming out strong and more than capable, even with less raw hardware under the hood.
The RTX 4070 Ti is an impressive 1440p graphics card that has surprisingly strong performance at 4K. When we compare it to how the RTX 3070 struggles at 4K, particularly when ray tracing is enabled, it is night and day. The RTX 4070 Ti almost doubles its scores, especially in games like F1 22, Hitman 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II. This makes the RTX 4070 Ti’s 4K capabilities all the more impressive, especially considering the RX 7900 XT has more hardware advantages at 4K, such as 66% more VRAM and 58.66% more memory bandwidth.
That being said, hardware and specs do win out on some games, with AMD bringing a solid showing at 4K, with the RX 7900 XT beating the RTX 4070 Ti in games like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, and it slightly taking the lead with Cyberpunk 2077. These are two very capable cards, and considering the more aggressive price, and lower RAM configuration, NVIDIA stands as a fantastic option if budget is an issue.
One area where the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti struggles is when you turn on ray tracing, especially in games like Cyberpunk 2077. NVIDIA has a head start in this area, with AMD still playing catch-up, but with the RTX 4070 Ti’s limited 12GB of video memory, you’re going to hit a bottleneck, and that means it can’t keep up with cards that are better spaced, even if it’s built to take on that kind of workload. The real kicker comes when you try to run 4K with ray tracing, and the card’s limitations become apparent, even if it still exceeds our expectations.
The need for ray tracing as a major draw with game performance is still questionable at best. While it can bring some stunning effects to the table, such as in Cyberpunk 2077, it is often a major performance hit for only minor improvements in visual fidelity. I would always recommend that a user play at a higher framerate and resolution and forgo ray tracing if that is the only thing holding their PC back, but that needs to be a question you ask yourself when looking to upgrade.
Where the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti really shines is in 1440P and 4K workloads sans-ray tracing, and it does so very well even when you push the limits of what you think you can run. With the graphics card market getting more interesting as the months go on, this could be a card worth revisiting. Not only does it take on the best of the 30-series and come out on top in most tests, but it also brings some of the latest technology to the table. Personally, I would have liked to see a little better ray tracing performance, but unfortunately, that is a limitation of the hardware, so it is understandable.
At CGMagazine, we don’t use DLSS or FSR for any of our formal benchmarking, but this is one area in which NVIDIA does have a leg up on AMD and the RX 7900 XT. We find that since these boosts are dependent on software, things can break, and often a benchmark could be different from one day to the next based on a new update. But with the option now there for players, it is a valuable tool and allows mid-range cards to perform far better than the numbers would dictate.
“Games like Cyberpunk 2077 almost doubled the performance we saw in our raw benchmarks with DLSS 3 enabled…”
In practice, with the titles available, we found that DLSS 3 offers significant performance gains in games compared to the RX 7900 XT running FSR 2.2, meaning that the RTX 4070 Ti will provide a superior gaming experience despite the slightly better benchmark results of the RX 7900 XT.
Games like Cyberpunk 2077 almost doubled the performance we saw in our raw benchmarks with DLSS 3 enabled, making the game very playable at 4K with almost no trade-off. This is not the case in every game, and it has to be titles that support DLSS, but if you are on the fence between these two cards and price is a concern, this is something to take note of.
Despite some controversy surrounding the release of the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti, the new GPU offers impressive performance, coming in just behind the RX 7900 XT in synthetic benchmarks. However, when you sift through the data, the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Ti OC Edition is the superior choice, given a GPU that is ready to take on a range of workloads and gaming tasks. Once you throw technology like DLSS into the mix, the choice is simple, for mid-range gaming, NVIDIA takes the crown with the RTX 4070 Ti.
