The RTX 4070 Ti Super is an interesting proposition for those who have held onto their aging GPUs in the hopes of a better perf to dollar ratio with the newest cards on the market. Slotting in at the same price the non-Super 4070 Ti launched with last year, the RTX 4070 Ti Super aims to provide even more performance for that same value. However, how does it stack up, and is the RTX 4070 Ti Super just that, super?
Specs:
- CUDA Cores: 8448
- TMUs: 264
- ROPs: 96
- SM Count: 66
- Tensor Cores: 264 (Fourth Generation)
- RT Cores: 66 (Third Generation)
- L1 Data Cache/Shared Memory: 8448 K
- L2 Cache: 48 MB
- Boost Clock: 2.61 GHz
- Base Close: 2.34 GHz
- Memory: 16 GB GDDR6X
- Memory Bus: 256-bit
- Memory Speed: 21 Gbps
- Memory Bandwidth: 672.3 GB/s
- Fabrication Process: 4N Nvidia Custom Process
- Transistor Count: 45.9 billion
- Connectors: 1 x HDMI; 3 x DisplayPort
- Power connection:
- 2x PCIe 8-pin cable (with adapter) OR
- 300 W or greater PCIe Gen 5 cable
- Required PSU: 700 W
- Power: 285 W Total Graphics Power
- Price: $799
First Thoughts
Our review unit provided this time by Nvidia is the ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 4070 Ti Super, which is the same model the company provided for our original RTX 4070 Ti review last year. Like its predecessor, the ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 4070 Ti Super boasts a three-fan design across the front, gunmetal greys to color the shroud, as well as metal backplate. The TUF logo on the side of the card is RGB because it is a gaming card after all, which can be addressed using ASUS’ proprietary app should you choose.
Given that there isn’t a Founders Edition card on the RTX 4070 Ti line of GPUs (which, if you’ll recall is likely due to the fact that this used to be the RTX 4080 12GB when Nvidia first announced the Ada Lovelace GPUs), you’ll only see AIB cards flood the market at launch. Our card is one of the few that retails at the RTX 4070 Ti Super’s MSRP of $799, though ASUS and other companies have OC variants that will, invariably, drive up the price.
The RTX 4070 Ti Super throws off the shackles of the AD104 chip in favor of the faster AD103 chip and offers multiple improvements over its non-Super brother. For starters, the major improvement is with memory. The RTX 4070 Ti Super comes equipped with 16GB of VRAM, 4GB more than the RTX 4070 Ti, but the boost to memory also comes with a boost of memory bandwidth - a 256-bit memory bus for the Super.
The RTX 4070 Ti Super comes equipped with 8448 CUDA cores, 66 third-generation RT cores, 264 fourth-generation Tensor cores, all a bump from last year’s standard RTX 4070 Ti at the same price point.
As this is an Ada Lovelace card from Nvidia, the ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 4070 Ti Super is set to take advantage of everything the new architecture has on offer, including Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling, or DLSS, and its version of frame generation to give even more performance. Nvidia are slotting this card right in as a 1440p GPU, but the higher memory bus and VRAM should allow the RTX 4070 Ti Super to perform well enough in many 4K gaming applications. This is a high-end card, there is no doubt about it given its price and spec, so we tested it against other high-end products, namely at 4K to see how well the GPU scales
ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 4070 Ti Super Synthetic And Gaming Benchmarks
As with all our GPU tests, we put the ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 4070 Ti Super through a series of gaming and synthetic benchmark tests to give the best indication of real-world performance. With this test, we threw our suite of games at the card at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K to test across all the major resolutions players typically game. While 1080p is more academic than anything else at this level of GPU as it tends to show where we bottleneck with the CPU, the tests mostly focus on 1440p, which is Nvidia’s target resolution for the card, and 4K, which given the extra memory headroom the 4070 Ti Super should comfortably do, especially with DLSS and frame gen.
As always, we chose ray tracing heavy games, utilizing both DLSS and AMD’s Fidelity FX Super Resolution, or FSR, to gauge the real-world performance the vast majority of our readers would experience. As always, we suggest reading other reviews to get a broad picture of how the GPU performs, as methodology differs across sites and channels.
We test this as we feel it gives the best indication of how games will perform as our readers use them, especially with ray tracing enabled. No one is playing path-traced Cyberpunk 2077 without DLSS or FSR, especially without frame gen, for example, so testing without those features doesn’t give the most accurate data for our readers based on how most will utilize the card.
We also made sure to test how the card handles AMD’s frame generation solution, called Fluid Motion Frames, with Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. This solution is platform agnostic, meaning that in supported games it will operate across Intel, Nvidia, and AMD GPUs.
You can check out our full post about our test bench and the various parts we’ve chosen to put GPUs and other PC hardware through their paces. Here it is broken down for quick reference:
Test Bench:
- CPU: Intel i9-13900K
- Motherboard: MSI MPG Carbon Wifi Z790
- RAM: XPG DDR5 32GB RAM @ 5200Mhz
- Cooling: Corsair H150i Elite LCD 360mm Liquid Cooler
- Storage: Intel 760p 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD; Samsung 970 EVO 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD
- PSU: Gigabyte P1200 80+ 1200W Platinum
- Case: ASUS ROG Strix Helios
Nvidia Cards Included:
AMD Cards Included:
Like with our Nvidia RTX 4070 Super review last week, we opted to test only games that had built-in benchmark suites this time around to get the most consistent result possible, removing the human element of not accurately repeating a circuit to benchmark. We tested both gaming applications and 3DMark’s suite of synthetic tests to push each GPU in DirectX 11, DirectX 12 and ray tracing processes.
ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 4070 Ti Super Synthetic Benchmarks
As expected the RTX 4080 Founders Edition, a card that retails at $1199, tops the charts on almost all of these tests. Firestrike is the exception, and given we’re running this test at 1080p the likely culprit is a CPU bottleneck. The RTX 4070 Ti Super comes out on top in that test with its overall score, while coming in third in the TimeSpy 1440p result. The RX 7900 XT Reference card, which retailed at $900 when it released but can usually be found for less than $800 now, takes second place in TimeSpy, though gets beaten when we look at 3DMark’s new Speedway test.
Not surprisingly, when we look at Port Royal, the ray tracing test, the RTX 4080 and RTX 4070 Ti Super are clear winners ahead of everything else. Those extra RT cores, and given they are all third-generation cores, really do work - something we’ll see play out in the gaming benchmarks.
ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 4070 Ti Super Gaming Benchmarks
In gaming tests, Nvidia claims that we should see around a 10% uplift over the RTX 4070 Ti, which is a good performance boost when you remember it’s debuting at the same price. Though that result does seem to vary depending on the resolution you’re comparing.
Looking over the benchmarks, we see the ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 4070 Ti Super drop its first game at 1080p compared to the non-Super RTX 4070 Ti, with the latter beating the newer card by about 5% in Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker. However, that lead evaporates when we flip over to the 1440p benchmark, where the Super takes a 4% lead over its non-Super brother. At 4K that lead is widened to 21%, and even beats the AMD competition at 4K by about 3% at 4K.
The RTX 4080 Founders, meanwhile, dominates every game compared to the RTX 4070 Ti Super, averaging double-digit percent increases across the board at all resolutions. Cyberpunk 2077 we see the RTX 4070 Ti Super beat the RTX 4070 Ti by 6% at 1440p, while it loses to the RTX 4080 by a whopping 15% on average.
AMD’s lone win over everything is Forza Horizon 5, which is a game that adores AMD cards. At 1080p we see the RX 7900 XT beat even the RTX 4080 Founders Edition by 7% on average at 1080p, and beats the RTX 4070 Ti Super by 8% on average at the same resolution. However, as we up the pixel count, we see those leads disintegrate, eventually seeing the RTX 4080 overcome the RX 7900 XT at 4K.
Returnal is another game that favors AMD’s card, with the RX 7900 XT beating the RTX 4070 Ti Super by a whopping 11% at 1440p, and we see the RTX 4070 Ti take up the bottom of the pack, losing to the RTX 4070 Ti Super on average by 5%. Avatar also boggled the mind a little bit with the RX 7900 XT’s average framerate at 4K, just 67fps. Given Avatar bakes its ray tracing into its presets, meaning even at ultra there is some ray tracing automatically enabled, we could be seeing the effects of AMD’s second generation ray tracing cores at work here. I ran this test multiple times to make sure we weren’t getting an anomaly with the result and it consistently came up around the 67fps mark. As a result, we see the RTX 4070 Ti Super beat this handily at 46% faster at 4K.
ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 4070 Ti Super Ray Tracing Benchmarks
When we open the taps in ray tracing tests, the RTX 4070 Ti Super seems to come into its own. The 4th generation Tensor Cores and 3rd generation RT cores do work, as we see the RTX 4070 Ti Super come out on top compared to both the RTX 4070 Ti and the RX 7900 XT across the board, even without frame gen.
With our tests, we run them as people will play the games to provide the best indication of what you can expect when you boot up your new card. As such, each test has upscaling enabled: DLSS on the Nvidia cards, AMD’s FSR on their cards. At 1080p we see the RTX 4070 Ti Super lead the RX 7900 XT by 37% in Cyberpunk 2077’s benchmark test, while at 1440p that gulf is widened to 45% in our testing. Compared to the RTX 4070 Ti non-Super, we’re only seeing about a 5% difference at most at 1440p across all games.
The RTX 4080 Founders Edition, though, is still far and away topping everything across the board. On average the RTX 4070 Ti Super comes up 11% short of the RTX 4080 Founders Edition, though keep in mind this is a card that costs 33% more at its retail price.
One surprising tidbit is that while we see the RTX 4070 Ti Super win against the RX 7900 XT at 1440p, topping it by 9% on average, the AMD card ekes out a win at 4K, with a 3% advantage over the new card. Meanwhile, we see the RTX 4070 Ti Super get close to that advertised 10% uplift over the RTX 4070 Ti, with an 8% lead at 4K on average.
When frame generation is activated, we see the framerates rocket even higher in some games. At 1080p we’re seeing framerates over 200fps, while the ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 4070 Ti Super handles itself well at 4K here. In Cyberpunk 2077, the RTX 4070 Ti Super averages 96fps over the RTX 4070 Ti non-Super at 77fps, a 24% increase when frame gen is enabled. Interestingly everything else is pretty similar, but that is one game where the extra VRAM really helps the newer card achieve even better results than before, all for the same price.
ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 4070 Ti Super Temperatures And Acoustics
The ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 4070 Ti Super, thanks to its three fan design, stays pretty cool under pressure, much like every Ada Lovelace card we’ve tested over the years. In our tests, the GPU barely broke 60 degrees Celsius, maxing out at 61 degrees when running Cyberpunk 2077 with path tracing and Avatar at 4K. It’s impressive knowing what we’re throwing at this card, though it should be noted that like all these high-end Ada Lovelace GPUs there is a chonky, chonky heatsink sitting atop the chip, which helps. Either way, these cards remain incredibly efficient under load, something that I’ve always appreciated with the 40-series GPUs.
In terms of power usage, we do see the RTX 4070 Ti get close to that rated 285W TGP draw, with a PCAT reading of 283 watts when running our Avatar benchmark. However, in most of our tests, we see the power draw of the card somewhere around the low 200s, ekeing into the high 260s and 270s when we push the ray tracing and resolution, so it scales accordingly.
Noise-wise, the card is does get load when being pushed. Avatar seems to be the biggest culprit here, as we ramped up the 4K testing, I could clearly hear the GPU doing work, something I’m not sure I can say even when I was testing the RTX 4080 for this review. The extra fans and the cooler design of the ASUS board seems less efficient than the Founders design Nvidia goes with on their card, but that’s not to say the noise is unbearable. It’s really not, especially if you’re like me and you wear headphones while gaming. Just know that if your PC is sitting next to you, you might hear it if you’re not donning your cans for a gaming sesh.
ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 4070 Ti Super Conclusion
So what do we make of all this? On average, the ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 4070 Ti Super does what it sets out to do: it is a performance uplift over the non-Super variant of the card, for the same money.
While Nvidia is marketing this as a 1440p card, this is not a mid-range GPU. Asking $800 for a GPU puts this solidly into the high-end range in my opinion, and here the market has some options, especially if you’re looking to eke into 4K gaming. Overall, the RTX 4070 Ti Super performs quite well, the extra frame buffer helping it when we look at 4K numbers. 8% better than the RTX 4070 Ti, while it even tops out the RX 7900 XT, a card that was positioned as an option against the RTX 4080 when they both launched.
We see that 8% gain over the non-Super card at 1440p as well, though the gap is considerably smaller at 1080p, only a 3% lead. That said, like all of these higher-end Lovelace cards, the RTX 4070 Ti Super feels more at home at higher resolutions.
Compared to the RTX 4080 Founders Edition, we see the more expensive card beat out the RTX 4070 Ti Super by 11% at 1440p, while the gap widens to 14% at 4K - though keep in mind this card launched at 33% more money, so the price difference doesn’t help it here.
However, speaking of price difference compared to the 4080, we are in kind of a GPU no man’s land right now as we look ahead to next week’s launch of the RTX 4080 Super, which also comes with a reduction in price. If you’re already looking at spending $800 on a GPU, what’s an extra $200? That is going to be an interesting point of comparison and might be worth waiting for independent reviews to shake out before ultimately deciding here.
If high-end ray tracing support is important to you, Nvidia’s lead on hardware accelerated ray tracing support is clear here over AMD. Nvidia’s approach to frame generation also generally, in our experience, provides better image quality, and even when using AMD’s FSR 3 in Avatar, the Nvidia cards seemed to take advantage of it more, hurtling past the AMD competition. Ray tracing is king on Nvidia cards, especially with ray reconstruction and path tracing in games like Alan Wake II and especially Cyberpunk 2077.
That said, the RX 7900 XT can generally be found cheaper nowadays on the market than the RTX 4070 Ti Super’s retail price, which can make it a compelling option if you want a 1440p and 4K performer and want to save a few extra bucks.
For me, though, the RTX 4070 Ti always was an attractive option. When I would be asked which card I would buy if I didn’t have access to cards for work, I would usually give the RTX 4070 Ti as my answer. With the RTX 4070 Ti Super giving more performance for the same price, that answer doesn’t change. While the RTX 4090 is really nice to use as a daily driver, it is, in many way, overkill for my personal needs (and I daresay most people’s). What might change my mind here is the RTX 4080 Super, but we’ll have to see how those benchmarks shake out next week to be sure.
That said, $800 is still alot of money for a GPU, so I’m very glad we’re finally getting the extra VRAM and wider memory bus here to help future proof for intense 4K applications. For that money, this needs to be a card that will last, not simply beg to be upgraded when the next generation loops around. And honestly, frame gen from Nvidia and AMD will help extend that life even more as more and more games adopt the technology.
However, if you already nabbed a 40-series GPU, there isn't enough compelling here to necessitate an upgrade so quickly, especially if you nabbed the RTX 4070 Ti already.
I do wish there was a Founders Edition variant of this card, though. As much as I love “gamer aesthetic” on my cards (seriously, if a card has RGB or is painted like a sports car, I honestly believe it goes faster), the refined look of Nvidia’s Founders treatment has grown on me over the years.
That said, the ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 4070 Ti Super is a solid choice if you are looking to upgrade, especially from an Ampere or Turing card before it. For the same price you’re getting more performance overall than the RTX 4070 Ti did when it launched last year, and it’s competitive against other cards around the same price range. It’s a solid upgrade that should serve you well.
