The latest generation of GPUs has come out of the gate strong, and the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 OC Edition is no exception. To those who love gaming at high quality, you know you’ll be able to do that. But if you are a content creator, congratulations. You’ve opened up the door to top-notch encoding that will take your career as a streamer or an editor to the next level.
| RTX 4090 24GB | RTX 4080 16GB | RTX 4070 Ti 12GB | RTX 4070 12GB | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Processor | AD102 | AD103 | AD104 | AD104 |
| Transistors | 76.3B | 45.9B | 35.8B | 35.6B |
| Die Size | 608mm² | 379mm² | 295mm² | 295mm² |
| CUDA Cores | 16384 | 9728 | 7680 | 5888 |
| Boost Clock | 2.52GHz | 2.51GHz | 2.61GHz | 2.475GHz |
| Memory Interface | 384-bit | 256-bit | 192-bit | 192-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 1018GB/s | 742GB/s | 557GB/s | 504GB/s |
| TGP | 450W | 320W | 285W | 200W |
| PSU Recommendation | 850W | 750W | 700W | 650W |
| PSU Cables | 4x 8-pin | 3x 8-pin | 2x 8-pin | 2x 8-pin |
| Base Price | $1499 | $1199 | $799 | $599 |
| Release date | October 12th, 2022 | November 16th, 2022 | January 5th, 2023 | April 13th, 2023 |
The TUF Gaming Geforce RTX 4070 OC Edition comes packed with features to up the performance, including 4th Generation Tensor Cores for excellent DLSS3 performance, dedicated 3rd Generation Ray Tracing Cores for up to 3 times Ray Tracing performance and Military Grade Capacitors for over 20,000 hours of performance at higher than average temperatures (105 degrees celsius compared to my top temperature while gaming, which sat at 58 degrees Celsius).
The ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 OC Edition also comes with a lot of gear to keep your GPU from reaching those extreme temperatures, including Axial-tech fans that have been scaled up to allow for 21% more airflow, dual ball fan bearings and a vented exoskeleton. The ability to keep this as cool as possible is critical because, as I mentioned, this is the OC edition, allowing for 2880MHz in OC mode and 2550MHz in default mode.
Gaming has been so smooth with the TUF Gaming Geforce RTX 4070 OC Edition. I have set up all of my games at their top settings, and the GPU just keeps rolling along with no tearing or lag. I’ve even been able to do something that simply wasn’t possible with my other GPUs. I’ve been able to play Minecraft with one of the super detailed texture packs and Ray Tracing on, which has changed the game landscape, making it as realistic looking as possible.
“The ASUS TUF Gaming Geforce RTX 4070 OC Edition’s encoding capabilities are a straight-up game changer.”
The frame rates in my games obviously varied from game to game, but stayed consistent with the other 4070s we’ve tested here at CGM, running an average of 20-40 fps slower than the 4080s. Some of the games, especially Cyberpunk 2077, suffered from Ray Tracing, which cut the frame rate by more than half and dropped it well below 60 fps at 1440p. However, using DLSS3 gave the games quite a boost, increasing the frame rate by up to 20% over when it was off, and even improving on already fantastic results, with Shadow of the Tomb Raider jumping to 181.5 FPS with DLSS on, compared to 156 FPS with it off.
| 1440P Benchmarks | RTX 3070 | RTX 4080 | RTX 4070 OC Edition | RX 7900 XTX |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | 100 | 178 | 156 | 224 |
| Assassin’s Creed Valhalla | 72 | 144 | 113 | 170 |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 63 | 124 | 82.73 | 128 |
| Cyberpunk 2077 + RT | 26.35 | 61 | 36.4 | 55 |
| Cyberpunk 2077 DLSS + RT | 59.2 | 117.44 | 118.75 | – |
| Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 | 81 | 159 | 106 | 171 |
| Rainbow Six Siege | 376 | 590.5 | 475 | 508.8 |
But gaming is only a small part of this new breed of GPUs. The ASUS TUF Gaming Geforce RTX 4070 OC Edition’s encoding capabilities are a straight-up game changer. In addition to the RTX series’ NVENC H.264 encoding, which has been a godsend for streamers, the RTX 4070 is also capable of NVENC AV1 encoding.
Without getting into the nitty gritty of what AV1 actually is, we know that it’s a hyper-efficient encoding method that puts out higher-quality video at a lower bit rate. For streamers (especially those of you with a single PC setup), managing your data is paramount since you want the best quality product you can offer without putting too much strain on the system. AV1 encoding will be everything for streaming in the near future.
As of now, most streaming services aren’t equipped for AV1 encoding. You can stream AV1 on Discord, and you will be able to stream to YouTube with AV1 when OBS Studio hits version 29.1, so you may have some waiting to do to hit the biggest platforms. The good news is that you can still use AV1 for recording, which makes for smaller file sizes. YouTube does support AV1 video uploads currently.
For editors, the more efficient encoding and the smaller file sizes mean faster render times. Using DaVinci Resolve, it is capable of decoding AV1 video. Still, it cannot encode AV1 just yet (Get on it, BlackMagic Designs!) without a separate plugin, which only works for the paid version of Resolve.
Despite not encoding in AV1, the overall editing speed has increased due to the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 OC Edition’s ability to handle content with a lot of rendered content (e.g. graphics, effects, colour correction). My old GPU—an NVIDIA RTX 2060—would often slow down to a snail’s pace when there were too many layers of video in one place, making it difficult to accurately move through your content to find the right spot. Now it’s smooth sailing with the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 OC Edition.
At a price point of $679.99 USD, it is at the lower end of the 40 series GPUs and is a lot cheaper than I paid for my RTX 2060 during the pandemic, when supplies were so incredibly low. The performance for the cost is more than worth it, especially if you are doing more than JUST gaming.
The only thing I would have liked to see was better/more consistent performance with the Ray Tracing, particularly when you have dedicated cores for that purpose. The price jump to a 4080 will get you a pretty giant leap in performance, but whether that’s something you need is up to how you use it and how much it will hurt your wallet.
