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Update January 25th 19:00 GMT:
We have just re-visited the RTX 4070 Ti Super using the latest BIOS, which MSI has made publicly available HERE. We published a separate article investigating the latest BIOS compared to the original one, and you can find all the details HERE. In short, even the latest BIOS does not affect the results in any meaningful way, and we saw just a 1% difference on average compared to our original figures in this review.
Update January 23rd 11:49 GMT (2 hours before launch):
We have just received a second BIOS update, along with an official statement from MSI, copied here verbatim:
“MSI discovered there were further areas where the performance of the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER VENTUS 3X graphics cards could be improved. We have introduced a new BIOS designed to elevate the overall performance of the graphics card to be in line with our expectations. We encourage you to update your sample with the attached BIOS. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and express our gratitude for your understanding and support.”
Needless to say it is a bit late to be testing a second update BIOS with just two hours to go until launch. I will aim to revisit any differences made and be sure to publish our findings if possible.
Original testing
Before diving into the benchmarks, we do need to share an important note about the MSI RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X model. On Sunday 21st January at 20:10 GMT, we received an email from Nvidia stating the following:
‘We have discovered an issue with the MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER 16G Ventus 3X GPUs where performance was approximately 5% below expected figures on other RTX 4070 Ti SUPER SKUs. An updated VBIOS from MSI is available here.
We expect your current testing will show performance with this updated VBIOS is now approximately 3% below expected figures. MSI are continuing to work on updates so please note this in your upcoming reviews.'
When I asked Nvidia what the exact issues were, or what the BIOS changed, all I was told is that Nvidia couldn't share any more information. It appears as though the Ventus 3X is the only 4070 Ti Super affected but I didn't get direct confirmation of that.
Above you can see some screenshots I took before and after updating the BIOS using the file Nvidia sent me. Power limit and rated clock speed remains unchanged. The voltage/frequency curve is slightly different but only marginally, with the updated BIOS' curve being every so slightly lower in places but nothing that looks of any significance.
I then ran a 30-minute stress test in Cyberpunk 2077, using GPU-Z to log clock speed. The updated BIOS did offer slightly higher sustained clock speeds, by around 60MHz or so.
However, after testing three games at 1080p, 1440p and 4K resolutions, I didn't observe any real performance gains using the updated BIOS. The frame rates in Alan Wake 2 were basically unchanged, I did see a small 2% increase in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1440p, but that is very close to margin of error, and the performance at 1080p and 4K was essentially unchanged. The same also goes for A Plague Tale: Requiem.
In short, I don't really know why the MSI Ventus 3X isn't performing the way Nvidia think it should, and at the time of writing I've had no real answers from either Nvidia or MSI. Based on the original email, further changes should be expected, but for now this is all I have to go on.
All the data you are about to see, then, was tested using the card's original BIOS. If we get any more updates we will share them and possibly do additional testing, but as I write this the day before launch, time is against us and I need to crack on using the data we have.
