The RTX 4070 Founder's Edition is the latest graphics card to take advantage of the newest Ada Lovelace architecture by Nvidia. Priced starting at an MSRP of $599 USD, the RTX 4070 is aimed squarely at those users still rocking an RTX 2070, 3070 Ti, or even those hanging onto that RTX 1080. How does it stack up, and does it deliver on the promise of high refresh rates using the best settings at 1440p?
Specifications
- Graphics Processing Clusters: 4
- Texture Processing Clusters: 23
- Streaming Multiprocessors: 46
- CUDA Cores: 5888
- Shader FLOPS: 29
- Tensor Cores: 184 (4th Gen)
- RT Cores: 46 (3rd Gen)
- RT FLOPS: 67.4
- Texture Units: 184
- ROP Units: 64
- Base Clock: 1920 MHz
- Boost Clock: 2475 MHz
- Memory Clock: 10500 MHz
- Memory Data Rate: 21 Gbps
- L1 Data Cache/Shared Memory: 5888 K
- L2 Cache Size: 36864 K
- Total Video Memory: 12 GB GDDR6X
- Memory interface: 192-bit
- Total Memory Bandwidth: 504 GB/s
- Texture Rate (Bilinear): 455.4 GigaTexels/second
- Fabrication Process: 4N Nvidia Custom Process
- Transistor Count: 35.8 Billion
- Total Graphics Power: 200 W
- Max GPU Temperature: 90 Celcius
- Required PSU: 650 Watts
- I/O:
- 3 x DisplayPort
- 1 x HDMI
- Price: MSRP $599 USD
First Thoughts And Design
At first, when the RTX 4070 Founder's Edition showed up on my doorstep, I was afraid it would be the same size as the previous Founder's Edition cards this generation, thanks to the fact the carton is an identical size. However, once I had freed the 4070 from its cardboard prison, I was happy to see that we're firmly back in very normal-sized GPU territory. The card itself is about the same size as the Founder's Edition RTX 3080, though it keeps the same cooler design as the 40-series cards. This is a card that you won't need to upgrade your case to fit.
I truly love that design as well, with its two-tone board, the silver-hued möbius strip wrapping itself around the body of the board. The nondescript RTX 4070 stamp on the top of the card and the GeForce RTX LED logo on the side eschew the typical gaudy gamer aesthetic normally seen on GPUs, especially AIB partner boards. Instead, the minimalistic approach here looks beautiful, and when the fans do spin up the blend right into the look of the board it's hard to see them spinning at first glance. It helps that they are insanely quiet as well.
The RTX 4070 Founder's Edition still uses the same 16-pin power adapter, but like the RTX 4070 Ti it only requires 2 8-pin connections from the power supply to the included octopus cable adapter. This does help to cut down on cable management, but I still would prefer to just plug my power supply cables directly into the GPU for the cleanest look.
We took a deep dive into the Ada Lovelace architecture when we published our RTX 4090 Founder's Edition review, and rest assured that the RTX 4070 takes advantage of the new features. Included are the advancements in Tensor and RT cores, giving the 4070 the best 4th and 3rd generation cores, respectively. Additionally, the Ada Lovelace architecture gives players the benefits of the new Shader Execution reordering which improves ray tracing performance, as well as the black magic that is Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sampling Frame Generation, or DLSS 3. The RTX 4070 Founder's Edition also benefits creators with its AV1 encoders, as well as Nvidia Studio benefits for those who dabble in 3D rendering, video editing, and more.
When compared to the RTX 3070 Ti, which also launched with an MSRP of $599, the RTX 4070 has higher clock speeds, though the Ampere card has higher counts of CUDA cores, Tensor Cores, and RT Cores (though those are previous generation versions compared to the latest generation on the Lovelace cards). The RTX 4070 is packing more transistors, more L2 cache, and more efficiency under the hood compared to its Ampere cousin. Crucially the RTX 4070 Founder’s Edition is equipped with 12 GB of fast GDDR6X VRAM compared to the RTX 3070 Ti’s 8GB of GDDR6X RAM, which will be felt in more demanding games that eat VRAM up like it’s nothing. However, one-to-one spec comparisons are inadvisable on the whole as the 4070 is built on an entirely different architecture (Ada Lovelace vs Ampere).
Nvidia RTX 4070 Founder’s Edition Synthetics, Benchmarks, and Thermal Performance
The RTX 4070 Founder’s Edition aims to give generationally better performance than its Ampere cousins, especially at 1440p with ray tracing enabled. We put it through its paces, comparing performance against the 3070 Ti, but also wanted to see how it stacked up against the Ampere RTX 3080, as generationally we typically see performance on par with the next badge number up from the previous generation. The RTX 3080 launched at just $100 more than the RTX 4070 will, so it’s an interesting comparison in my mind.
As such, we put the RTX 4070 through its paces in a series of gaming and synthetic benchmarks, testing an array of game engines at both 1080p and 1440p. We chose Ray Tracing heavy games as well, choosing to see how both the generational improvements in ray tracing shake out, as well as the deployment of DLSS 3 in these titles.
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 its 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 Driver: 531.42 (pre-release driver)
- AMD Driver: Adrenalin Edition 23.4.1
Nvidia Cards included:
- ASUS TUF RTX 4070 Ti OC
- RTX 3070 Ti Founder’s Edition
- Gigabyte RTX 3080 Gaming OC 10GB
- RTX 4070 Founder’s Edition
AMD Cards Included:
We ran through a number of titles from various games showing different game engines at work in a mixture of DX11 and DX12 tests. We also ran 3DMark’s Synthetic benchmarks at their default settings to show relative performance across DX11, DX12 and Ray Tracing Applications. For DLSS 3 we also ran 3DMark’s DLSS 3 Feature test against the full range of 40-series cards to show how DLSS 3 scales across the full architecture suite.
Where we could, such as Hitman World of Assassination, Final Fantasy XIV and Cyberpunk 2077 we ran the in-game benchmark tool to get as consistent a result as possible. For games such as Miles Morales, A Plague Tale: Requiem and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, we ran a predefined circuit in the game that pushed the card to its limits, such as a circuit around Oxenfurt in Witcher 3 and swinging through New York, pushing reflections and alpha transparencies in Spider-Man: Miles Morales. We ran these tests, replicating the circuit as closely as we could, loading a save to ensure the time of day in these games also always matched.
For ray tracing tests, all tests were done with either Nvidia’s DLSS enabled for the Lovelace and Ampere cards, and AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.1 on the RDNA3 cards. These were all set to the Quality preset to show the best looking results when using these technologies, though obviously setting them to the Performance preset can give even more performance in these games. We opted to test ray tracing with these technologies enabled as no one is going to be playing ray tracing-enabled games without them turned on, and we wanted to show real-world results (and a way to declutter the graphs). We used the standard versions of DLSS and FSR that shipped with the most recent updates of the games we tested, as we know some power users might swap the dll file powering the techs in-game. In our test bench we also ensured that we had ReSizeable BAR and XMP enabled in the BIOS.
RTX 4070 Founder’s Edition Synthetic Benchmarks
The RTX 4070 Founder’s Edition in FireStrike Extreme, the 1440p version of the DX11 benchmark, sits pretty much on par with the Gigabyte RTX 3080 10GB OC, while it solidly beats out the RTX 3070 Ti by a pretty nice margin (a 21% increase in overall score when jumping from the Ampere card). Unsurprisingly the more expensive RDNA3 cards, as well as the RTX 4070 Ti - which we’ll remind readers was originally meant to release as an RTX 4080 variant - outperform 4070 here.
In TimeSpy, the DX12 benchmark, we see similar results shake out, with the 4070 on par with the RTX 3080, while a shade ahead of the RTX 3070 Ti. As always, these numbers only tell part of the story. How does this all hold up in real-world performance?
RTX 4070 Founder’s Edition Gaming Benchmarks
When looking at regular rasterization numbers, the RTX 4070 Founder’s Edition is no slouch, both at 1080p and 1440p. Games such as Final Fantasy XIV, which deals with just every alpha effect known to man during massive trials and Duty runs hold up beautifully, getting over 200fps at 1080p and 170fps at 1440p.
In more demanding games, such as Cyberpunk 2077, at the full ultra preset we see the RTX 4070 trade blows effectively with the RTX 3080, though the gap widens at 1440p where the Ampere card enjoys an 11% advantage. However, looking at the RTX 4070 versus the 3070 Ti at 1440p, we see the Lovelace card take a 14% lead in average framerate over the last generation GPU (63 to 72fps).
Spider-Man: Miles Morales takes a lead over the RTX 3080 at 1440p, with the RTX 4070 enjoying an average framerate of 120 to the 3080’s 109 (a 10% increase in performance). This is one title where the addition of VRAM really helps the RTX 4070 here, as the RTX 3070 Ti sits at a meager 64fps by comparison (an 87% jump in performance). The Witcher 3 sees the RTX 3080 take a lead over the RTX 4070, though the new Lovelace card beats out the RTX 3070 Ti here as well. Compared to the RTX 4070 Ti, and even the AMD cards, though, the mid-range 4070 sits solidly behind each.
RTX 4070 Founder’s Edition Ray Tracing Benchmarks
In ray tracing applications, the RTX 4070 is leap over the RTX 3070 Ti, as shown in the Port Royal results. Again, the RTX 4070 is pretty much on par with the RTX 3080, and its ray tracing performance is bettered by the 4070 Ti and the RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT cards in the Port Royal test. But this test doesn’t show the full picture, and the gaming ray tracing benchmarks should carry much more weight.
We can also see how DLSS 3 scales in the 3DMark DLSS 3 graph, with the performance scaling accordingly from the RTX 4090 on down the line. This test is done at 4K, and with a 93fps result with DLSS 3 on, it makes the argument that 4K is in the cards with some applications with the RTX 4070 - so long it also supports frame generation.
Despite scoring higher in the Port Royal test, on average our RTX 4070 Founder’s Edition pretty much on par with the RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT - both more expensive cards targeting 4K. At 1440p with DLSS 2/FSR 2.1 Quality enabled, the results in Cyberpunk 2077 are even at 62fps average between the 7900 XTX and the RTX 4070. Keep in mind as well the 7900 XTX costs 66% more at retail price for that statistical deadlock in Cyberpunk.
Compared to the RTX 3070 Ti, the RTX 4070 performs 49% better on average, while the RTX 3080 closes that gap, with the 4070 enjoying just a 2% boost in performance on average compared to the Ampere card.
However, DLSS 3’s Frame Generation widens the gap considerably, with DLSS 3 giving the RTX 4070 a 130% boost in average performance over the RTX 3070 Ti at 1440p, while the boost over the RTX 3080 is more conservative 58%. Compared to the RX 7900 XTX, DLSS 3 gives the RTX 4070 a 47% boost in performance on average across the games we tested.
RTX 4070 Founder’s Edition Peak Temperatures And Power Usage
The RTX 4070 benefits from using the same cooler design as the more powerful RTX 40-series cards. Across all our testing the highest temperature we recorded was 64 degrees Celcius, which came in A Plague Tale: Requiem with DLSS 3 and Ray Tracing enabled at the time. Surprisingly, even the behemoth that is Cyberpunk 2077 didn’t cause the RTX 4070 to break a sweat, not even clearing 60 degrees Celsius.
The RTX 4070 is also incredibly power efficient staying below its rated TGP of 200W across our testing. In our benchmarks the highest we saw the GPU pull was 191 Watts in A Plague Tale in that same pass that rated the peak temp. Power usage was measured using Nvidia’s PCat tool along with Frameview, which was used to capture all the framerate data across our suite of tests.
RTX 4070 Founder’s Edition Final Thoughts
DLSS 3 is black magic, as I mentioned early in this review, and it’s key to unlocking the full potential of the RTX 4070. Each time we enabled the frame generation setting in our testing, the RTX 4070 felt more and more powerful. Indeed, this technology allows for some incredible performance results, enabling users to get the best visuals and ray tracing without sacrificing performance in the process.
Nvidia also says that DLSS 3 has “one of the fastest options of any Nvidia technology to date,” and over 50 announced titles will have DLSS 3 enabled. This includes some highly anticipated games like Diablo IV, Redfall and even The Finals - a game where the addition of generated frames really made that arena shooter feel fast, fluid, and even more responsive than with frame gen turned off.
Since so many of our benchmarks were done without the use of a built-in tool, I controlled the action each pass. Every time I used DLSS 3 in these tests it felt precise with next to no latency felt with each turn of the camera or every websling in Miles Morales. The image being reconstructed also looked incredibly clean, something that has improved since the inception of DLSS 3 back with the launch of the 4090.
Gone was the visible ghosting I could see in Miles Morales when Miles would move quickly from one jump to the next, and even games like F1 2022 didn’t have the noticeable wheel wobble that came with the AI predicting the next frame somewhat inconsistently. It’s improving, and if the history of DLSS as a whole is any indication, it’s going to get even better the more data the algorithm has to learn from.
It’s one of those technologies I’m a firm believer that every game needs - especially since Frame Generation can be enabled without the need to have DLSS 2 Super Resolution or even Ray Tracing running. That is simply free performance that can be used to push graphics and resolutions to even greater heights if you so choose.
I mentioned in my review of the ASUS TUF RTX 4070 Ti OC GPU that DLSS 3 will benefit these middle-of-the-stack cards the most, and that is bearing itself out here. The technology is allowing the 4070 to punch above its weight class - as showcased with the recently released path tracing update for Cyberpunk 2077.
While we didn’t have a chance to really test this out on the full suite of cards, I was curious as to how well path tracing would run on the RTX 4070 - and it didn’t disappoint. It’s a true generational leap in ray tracing, and at 1440p, Ultra Preset and Path Tracing RT enabled, using DLSS 3 Performance we averaged 78fps - and hit a peak power usage of 174 Watts. That blows my mind.
To put it this way: a GPU drawing only 174 Watts of power is giving full path tracing in a triple-A title at more than 70fps. This card is an engineering marvel and speaks to how efficient the Lovelace architecture truly is capable of being.
When compared to the Ampere cards we tested, the RTX 4070 feels like a good generational leap, especially if you’re upgrading from the RTX 3070 Ti to Lovelace. It not only provides a boost in rasterization applications but provides a generational leap with its ray tracing performance. Throw DLSS on top of that and it begins to make an extremely compelling argument.
Even RTX 3080 users will find a good upgrade path here, despite the card costing less for its Founder’s Edition than the 3080 did at launch. When compared to the more expensive RDNA cards, I have a hard time recommending them over even the 4070 - especially as right now AMD has no answer to the better ray tracing performance out of the box in some applications, without even adding DLSS 3 onto the equation.
It also doesn’t help that in the last few GPU tests we’ve done the drivers for AMD have felt rather unstable (just look at our 4070 Ti graphs), with crashing and annoying flicker when running ray tracing tests. It took three installs of the driver suite to get Spider-man Miles Morales to stop crashing, which compared to the beta driver from Nvidia, the latter was next to flawless. For that trouble, plus worse performance when DLSS 3 is added to the equation, it’s hard to recommend spending more on an AMD card at the moment.
Compared to the RTX 4070 Ti, the more powerful Lovelace card solidifies its spot at the $749 price point, sitting just underneath the RX 7900 XT. The 4070 Ti outperformed the RTX 4070 at every turn - as it should, and if you can justify the extra cost, it might be worth the upgrade there instead for even more future proofing (including better performance at 4K).
While it’s $100 more expensive than the RTX 3070 when it launched last generation (sitting at the price the 3070 Ti launched at), the generational leap, including the advanced technologies on display here feel like it’s worth that upgrade cost. When compared directly with the RTX 3080, which retailed starting at $699, it's pretty much on par until you turn on DLSS 3. And while I'm a big champion of frame generation, not every game has it yet despite the fast adoption rate. However, even with regular rasterized games, the RTX 4070 is a nice improvement over the 3070 Ti, with a huge upside thanks to the future-facing techs Ada Lovelace enjoys.
As such, the RTX 4070 Founder’s Edition feels like a solid choice at the price for anyone looking to finally upgrade their GPU this generation. DLSS 3 allows the card to punch way above its weight class, and compared to even just the Ampere generation it's a nice upgrade option for those looking to jump into Lovelace.
