NVIDIA RTX 4070 review: The new 1440p gaming leader

Slowly, however certainly, NVIDIA is making its 40-series GPUs extra reasonably priced. Now it is all the way down to $599 with the brand new RTX 4070, a mid-range card targeted on 1440p gaming. Whereas it is $100 greater than its predecessor’s launch worth, the fabulous RTX 3070, that card usually offered for greater than $1,000 as a result of provide chain crunch, scalpers and insatiable crypto bros. Primarily based on what we have seen from the 4070 Ti, NVIDIA’s new playing cards are literally staying near their retail worth, which is nice information for anybody itching for an improve.

Judging from Valve’s Steam hardware statistics, I might wager many avid gamers are ready on the eventual RTX 4060 earlier than giving up their outdated playing cards, particularly if it finally ends up promoting nearer to $400. However primarily based on my testing, the 4070 remains to be a strong selection for sensible avid gamers who could wan to splurge a bit. It is quick sufficient to ship glorious 1440p efficiency with ray tracing enabled, and it might even ship strong 4K gaming in a pinch too. Although it is noticeably slower than the $799 RTX 4070 Ti in most benchmarks, that will not matter a lot whenever you’re truly within the warmth of battle. (Simply consider all you possibly can do with that additional $200!)

The RTX 4070 options NVIDIA’s new Ada Lovelace structure, sporting 5,888 CUDA cores, a base clock pace of 1,920 MHz (enhance to 2,475 MHz) and 12GB of GDDR6X RAM. The 3070, in the meantime, had the identical quantity of CUDA cores, nevertheless it was primarily based on NVIDIA’s older Ampere structure. It might solely attain as much as 1,725 MHz and had 8GB of slower GDDR6 reminiscence. Regardless of these variations, the 3070 nonetheless holds up effectively, so I would not rush out to exchange it anytime quickly. However if you happen to’re nonetheless holding onto an RTX 20-series GPU or one thing older, the 4070 often is the GPU you’ve got been ready for.

We obtained the RTX 4070 Founder’s Version card from NVIDIA, which principally appears like a shrunken down model of the 4080 and 4090. It looks like a premium card, with a modern steel case, a bevy of heatsink fins and two giant followers to take care of warmth. It is also a two-slot GPU, just like the 4070 Ti, permitting it to suit within smaller instances much better than the big 4080 and 4090. Port-wise, there are three DisplayPort connections and a single HDMI. As with all of NVIDIA’s current playing cards, it additionally consists of an adapter to attach two 8-pin PCIe energy cables (a single PCIe Gen 5 cable may also work).

As soon as I began benching and taking part in video games with the RTX 4070, it carried out simply as I anticipated: Someplace between the RTX 3080 (which launched at $699) and the 3080 Ti ($1,119). The distinction, although, is that it helps NVIDIA’s DLSS 3 know-how, which may help pace up ray tracing efficiency by inserting AI-generated frames. I used to be significantly impressed by how effectively it dealt with Cyberpunk 2077: in 1440p with maxed out graphics and “extremely” ray tracing settings, it delivered a easy 120 fps. The RTX 3070, as compared, struggled to carry 75 fps with the identical settings utilizing the older DLSS 2, which does not use body era.

Management, an older title that solely helps DLSS 2, had a much less dramatic efficiency bump with the 4070. Whereas taking part in in 1440p with maxed graphics and all of its ray tracing settings flipped on, it reached 106 fps, in comparison with 90 fps with the 3070. Nonetheless, it is a bit of a shock to see a mid-range card scoring triple digit body charges with the entire sport’s ray tracing options enabled (which incorporates reflections, shadows and particles). Not too way back, Management used to humble the mightiest video playing cards.

NVIDIA is clearly positioning the 4070 as a 1440p-focused card, however it might nonetheless deal with some 4K eventualities, as long as you are not too demanding. It hovered at 70 fps in Cyberpunk with maxed graphics and “extremely” ray tracing settings — that is actually higher than you’d see on any trendy sport console. Management, in the meantime, hit 56 fps on common. In the event you’re solely dabbling in 4K sometimes, maybe for a lazy Sunday session in your TV, that is not too dangerous. 

As with all of NVIDIA’s new {hardware}, the RTX 4070 can be a useful gizmo for streamers and media creators due to its hardware-based AV1 encoder. The corporate claims it is round 40 % extra environment friendly than the earlier era H.264 encoder — which means it will take much less bandwidth to ship clear streams, a boon for anybody who desires to indicate off 1440p or 4K streams. The favored broadcast software program OBS will quickly be up to date to help AV1 streaming to YouTube, which gives some dramatic readability boons, according to PCWorld. On the subject of typical H.264 encoding, the 4070 transformed 4K take a look at clip to 1080p in 33 seconds, three seconds longer than the 4070 Ti.

Due to the 4070’s glorious cooling setup and comparatively modest energy calls for (it requires a 650W PSU), its temperature by no means climb above 70 Celsius throughout my testing. I might solely hear its two followers after I spent greater than half-hour in a sport utilizing ray tracing. However actually, it isn’t something that’ll distract you throughout gameplay.

Now that we have seen NVIDIA’s RTX 4070 in motion, is it truly price $599? For anybody with a GPU older than the RTX 30-series, I might say so. (Although if you happen to can spare an additional $200, the 4070 Ti is noticeably higher.) A number of years in the past, we had been hoping and praying for GPU costs to come back again all the way down to Earth. We have seen 4070 Ti playing cards stick near its preliminary $799 launch worth, so there is a good likelihood you may truly have the ability to discover a 4070 this yr with out overpaying an excessive amount of. To be good, it is price ready a couple of months for the 4060 to drop earlier than you make any choices. 

However if you happen to’ve been hankering for higher framerates and playable ray tracing, go along with the gaming gods. The RTX 4070 is the brand new king of mid-range GPUs.