Nvidia RTX 4070 Review ft. Gigabyte and Palit

1. Introduction2. Nvidia RTX 4070 Founders Edition3. Gigabyte RTX 4070 Windforce OC4. Palit RTX 4070 Dual5. Testing Methodology6. 3DMark Fire Strike & Time Spy7. 3DMark DirectX Raytracing8. Assassin's Creed Valhalla9. Cyberpunk 207710. Days Gone11. Dying Light 212. God of War13. Horizon Zero Dawn14. Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered15. A Plague Tale: Requiem16. Red Dead Redemption 217. Resident Evil Village18. Total War: Warhammer III19. Uncharted 4: A Thief's End20. Performance Summary (12-Game Average)21. Cost Per Frame Analysis22. Ray Tracing: Control23. Ray Tracing: Cyberpunk 207724. Ray Tracing: F1 2225. Ray Tracing: Hitman 326. Ray Tracing: Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered27. Ray Tracing: Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition28. Ray Tracing Performance Summary29. DLSS Testing30. Testing the AIBs31. Clock Speed32. GPU Temperatures33. Memory Temperatures34. Acoustics35. Noise-Normalised Temperatures36. Power Draw: 1080p37. Power Draw: 1440p38. Power Draw: 2160p (4K)39. Performance per Watt: 1080p40. Performance per Watt: 1440p41. Performance per Watt: 2160p (4K)42. Total System Power Draw43. Overclocking44. Closing Thoughts45. View All Pages

It's been a fairly slow few months in the consumer GPU space, with the RTX 4070 Ti being the last graphics card to hit the market back in January. That changes today however, as Nvidia is now ready to release the RTX 4070 (non-Ti). Offering a cut-down GPU die compared to the RTX 4070 Ti, the 4070 also comes in with a lower price-point of £589. We look at gaming performance, ray tracing, power draw, efficiency and much more in today's review.

The Nvidia RTX 4070 is the fourth Ada Lovelace GPU to hit shelves, with the launch of the 40-series flagship, the RTX 4090, now six months behind us. How time flies! It's essentially a cut-down RTX 4070 Ti, using the same AD104 silicon but with 23% fewer cores, though it shares the same memory subsystem, with 12GB GDDR6X VRAM.

Alongside the Nvidia Founders Edition, today we also take a look at the Gigabyte RTX 4070 Windforce OC, alongside the Palit RTX 4070 Dual. Both are targeting the £589 MSRP, so it'll be interesting to see how they stack up today. If you want to read this review as a single page, click HERE.

	RTX 4090	RTX 4080	RTX 4070 Ti	RTX 4070	RTX 3080	RTX 3070 Ti
Process	TSMC N4	TSMC N4	TSMC N4	TSMC N4	Samsung 8N	Samsung 8N
SMs	128	76	60	46	68	48
CUDA Cores	16384	9728	7680	5888	8704	6144
Tensor Cores	512	304	240	184	272	192
RT Cores	128	76	60	46	68	48
Texture Units	512	304	240	184	272	192
ROPs	176	112	80	64	96	96
GPU Boost Clock	2520 MHz	2505 MHz	2610 MHz	2475 MHz	1710 MHz	1770 MHz
Memory Data Rate	21 Gbps	22.4 Gbps	21 Gbps	21 Gbps	19 Gbps	19 Gbps
L2 Cache	73729 KB	65536 KB	49152 KB	36864 KB	6144 KB	4096 KB
Total Video Memory	24GB GDDR6X	16GB GDDR6X	12GB GDDR6X	12GB GDDR6X	10GB GDDR6X	8GB GDDR6X
Memory Interface	384-bit	256-bit	192-bit	192-bit	320-bit	256-bit
Memory Bandwidth	1008 GB/Sec	716.8 GB/Sec	504 GB/Sec	504 GB/Sec	760 GB/Sec	608 GB/Sec
TGP	450W	320W	285W	200W	320W	290W

First, for a quick spec recap. Just like the RTX 4070 Ti,  RTX 4070 uses a cut-down AD104 die, measuring 295mm². The fundamental building blocks are still the same of course, with the RTX 4070 offering a total of 46 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), each housing 256 CUDA Cores, for a total of 5888. We also find 46 RT cores, 184 Tensor cores, 184 Texture Units, and 64 ROPs.

TSMC's N4 node has Nvidia cranking up the clock speed significantly this generation, with the RTX 4070 sporting a 2475MHz rated boost clock. That's 135MHz slower than the rated clock speed of the RTX 4070 Ti however, but we would expect GPU Boost to push things further still.

The memory configuration is another area where AD104 has been cut-back significantly. The memory interface has been reduced to 192-bit, and even with 12GB GDDR6X running at 21Gbps, that brings total memory bandwidth down to 504 GB/s, lower than even the RTX 3070 Ti. That said, there has been a substantial upgrade to the L2 cache with the Ada architecture, with the RTX 4070 now offering 36.8MB, compared to just 6MB for GA102.

Considering these cut-backs, power draw is naturally lower than the RTX 4070 Ti, with the 4070 boasting a 200W TGP. This is something we focus on closely, using our updated GPU power testing methodology in this review, so read on for our most detailed power and efficiency testing yet.

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