Gigabyte RTX 4070 Ti SUPER WINDFORCE OC Graphics Card Review

Just a few days ago we brought you many reviews, such as the new Nvidia RTX 4070 Founders Edition, and a fair few models from their partner brands, and now, we're moving up a notch to the more powerful RTX 4070 Ti class cards, and we kick things off today with the Gigabyte RTX 4070 Ti Super WINDFORCE OC, an MSRP card, but featuring the infamous Windforce cooler design and a factory overclock that should make it pretty potent option for those wanting to upgrade their graphics card. Admittedly, I think the SUPER series are largely going to appeal to those still on the 3000 or even the 2000 series cards rather than directly upgrading your 4000 non-super cards, with their increased core counts and more attractive prices compared to a few years ago, the market is heading in the right direction at long last. Gigabyte RTX 4070 Ti SUPER WINDFORCE OC Gigabyte has equipped its cards with 16GB of GDDR6X running at 21 Gbps and a 256-bit bus using PCIe 4.0 interfaces, which should help push the performance up rather nicely. There's an increased boost clock over the founders edition too, not much, but when combined with the larger cooler from Gigabyte, it should see a nice uplift in the overall GPU performance from this card. Plus, we know the cooler is decent, as it's the Windforce we've seen dozens of times before, it's well tested, well proven and we know it to deliver near bulletproof levels of reliability at this point. Features Powered by NVIDIA DLSS 3, ultra-efficient Ada Lovelace arch, and full ray tracing 4th Generation Tensor Cores: Up to 4X performance with DLSS 3 vs. brute-force rendering 3rd Generation RT Cores: Up to 2X ray tracing performance Powered by GeForce RTX™ 4070 Ti SUPER Integrated with 16GB GDDR6X 256bit memory interface WINDFORCE Cooling System RGB Fusion Dual BIOS Protection metal back plate Anti-sag bracket 4 Years Warranty (Online registration required) Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti SUPER A Closer Look Gigabyte cards do tend to look very similar, as they use largely the same cooler and shroud design throughout their range, which has always helped them to remain competitive on price, while ensuring more reliable build quality and consistent performance. Despite being obviously smaller than the top-end RTX cards, it still looks pretty great, with the grey making a nice contrast to the visible copper heatpipes on the interior. The fan configuration is still the triple-fan design they often use, where the middle fan spins in the opposite direction to the outside fans, creating a vortex of air within the card. All the fans support zero RPM modes and are individually PWM-controlled to cool each part of the GPU and heatsink. Down the side of the card, you can see the heatsink is pretty hefty, with tightly packed fins and a thicker card design overall to allow for the increased surface area of the cooler. On the side of the cooler, you'll also find the ever-popular (for better or for worse) 12VHPWR connector. At the back, there's some ventilation, which is largely for show as the card vents heat sideways mostly. There are three DisplayPort and a single HDMI connector too, which is more than enough for most PC users. One thing I do love is this premium backplate design, which is made from thick metal, and features a nice printed graphic, and most importantly, a huge ventilated section of the thickest part of the heatsink, allowing it to exhaust lots of heat up and away from the GPU. I get Deux Ex vibes from this heatink; it's simple, but just really nicely done. Tearing down the cooler, there's quite a lot going on with this card, and it's clear to me now the PCB is the same as the RTX 4070 SUPER (non-TI), which had two unused VRAM slots and few spots for additional capacitors and phases in the VRM, which are now filled in on the Super Ti. There are 8 x 2 GB memory ICs here, giving the Ti 16GB of RAM in total vs the 12 GB found on the non-Ti variants. There's an increased number of capacitors too, quite a big increase actually with a more comprehensive set of phases to deal with the increased power intake of the card and higher TDP of the chipset itself. Plus, we need to factor in that this is an OC edition of the card, so it's pushed that little bit higher up the power scale too. The backplate is a single-piece construction with a screw-through design so that it doesn't put additional strain on the PCB of the card. The heatsink is comprehensive, with an oversized copper cold plate that covers the chipset and VRAM, with lots of smaller thermal pads ensuring any capacitors or chokes around that area are making contact, and a large strip of thermal material towards the back for the phases over a large nickel-plated contact plate, all of which feeds into six thick heat pipes and through the two-part radiator design. How We Test We continue to update our testing methods around once per year. As such, we re-test older hardware to reflect changes over time. These can be driver updates, Windows updates, game patches, and more; all of which have an impact on performance figures. Furthermore, we update our test benches to newer and more relevant hardware. This means that our new reviews aren’t always comparable to those of older reviews, so please compare the testing methodology on older reviews should you be trying to compare them with newer ones. Replicate Our Results When it comes to our benchmarks in our reviews, the benchmarks are pretty self-explanatory and are kept as simple as possible, although there are a few exceptions. Remember that your choice of a graphics card, CPU, the silicon lottery, and other factors can yield different numbers, and there’s always a margin for error when using any software. Links are provided below, as well as the settings we use. We encourage you to not just look at how one product compares to any other, but how it compares to your own. If you’re looking to build a new system, you should benchmark your current PC using the benchmarks available to you. You should then look at the percentage improvement from your current hardware to the hardware tested here to give you a ballpark figure of how much of an upgrade this will provide you with. Processor Test Systems Test System (GPU) Motherboard Gigabyte B650E AORUS MASTER Buy Now Processor Ryzen 7 7800X3D Review Buy Now GPU Changes Per Review RAM Corsair VENGEANCE RGB 6000MHz CL30 Review Buy Now CPU Cooler NZXT Kraken Z73 RGB Buy Now Power Supply NZXT C1000 Gold Review Buy Now Storage Seagate FIRECUDA 530 1TB Review Buy Now Chassis NZXT H9 Flow Review Buy Now OS Windows 11 Pro Version 21H2 Drivers AMD Graphics: 22.10.1NVIDIA Graphics: 521.90 Software We use a variety of software from different developers to assist in our testing and to give us the most consistent results possible. Some applications are specifically used for testing, while others are simply used for monitoring and to aid us in making sure that our results are as accurate as possible. Software Used 3DMark FireStrike & TimeSpy (download) Gaming To gauge performance levels which are easily reproduced time after time, by both ourselves and our readers, we now stick strictly to games default profiles. Given how powerful most modern cards are getting, we've began using more demanding profiles for most games, but will otherwise state on a per game basis if we use other profiles beyond High, Ultra, Maximum or their respective equivalent at all resolutions. V-Sync is always disabled in our testing, and all FPS caps that can be removed are. We also enable XMP and Resizable bar technology across all platforms to keep things as fair as possible. Games While we test a lot of games, it's not possible to display all of the data on the website or in our videos. Instead, we include access to all of our testing data for our Patreon members (link), where members get a ton of other benefits as well. What we do, however, is display charts for averages across all game titles to give a better picture of performance across all titles tested. A Plague Tale: Requiem Assassin's Creed Valhalla Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Control Cyberpunk 2077 Death Stranding Doom Eternal Dying Light 2 F1 22 Far Cry 6 Hogwarts Legacy Horizon Zero Dawn Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 Watch Dogs: Legion Resolutions 1080 (Full HD) 1440 4K Some tests will also include features such as NVIDIA DLSS and Ray Tracing. However, these will be clearly labelled and may only appear in reviews for graphics cards that support those features. Power Consumption Not being content on simply reading total system power draw, we now run F1 22 for an hour loop and measure power draw at the end of the loop for the most accurate measurement that represents real-world gameplay experience. Temperatures We take temperature readings after the same hour-long F1 22 loop with no other background programs running, again to simulate a real-world gaming experience. A Plague Tale: Requiem Far across the sea, an island calls… Embark on a heartrending journey into a brutal, breathtaking world twisted by supernatural forces. After escaping their devastated homeland, Amicia and Hugo travel far south, to new regions and vibrant cities. There, they attempt to start a new life and control Hugo’s curse. But, when Hugo’s powers reawaken, death and destruction return in a flood of devouring rats. Forced to flee once more, the siblings place their hopes in a prophesized island that may hold the key to saving Hugo. Discover the cost of saving those you love in a desperate struggle for survival. Strike from the shadows or unleash hell, overcoming foes and challenges with a variety of weapons, tools and unearthly powers. Available now on Steam. So kicking things off with A Plague Tale: Requiem and the 4070 Ti SUPER isn’t off to the best start at 1080p with just a single FPS difference higher than the 4070 Ti non-SUPER, though the SUPER does manage to increase the 1% lows by a more respectable 5% though in all honesty, I was expecting a lot more. At 1440p we do see a slightly better increase in performance, but at just 2%, it’s not groundbreaking by any means and the 1% lows don’t improve at all so the higher core counts don’t offer much in this title at this resolution. Then at 4K, the margin grows to 6% in favour of the Ti SUPER, now sitting at 50 FPS so a better gameplay experience, but still below my expectations and shows no movement in the chart whatsoever. Baldur's Gate 3 Gather your party and return to the Forgotten Realms in a tale of fellowship and betrayal, sacrifice and survival, and the lure of absolute power. Mysterious abilities are awakening inside you, drawn from a mind-flayer parasite planted in your brain. Resist, and turn darkness against itself. Or embrace corruption, and become ultimate evil. From the creators of Divinity: Original Sin 2 comes a next-generation RPG, set in the world of Dungeons & Dragons. Available now on Steam. Moving onto Baldur’s Gate 3 we start to see things look up slightly as the Ti SUPER now comes in 4% faster than the non-SUPER which moves it up in our rankings above the 6950 XT which was 1 FPS ahead of the 4070 Ti so again, nothing that’s going to shatter records but it’s something as a point of contention. 1440p sees similar increases. A 3% increase in performance, which helps push past the 6950 XT but for beating an older generation card that also comes in cheaper, it doesn’t exactly have the wow factor. At 4K the gap grows, likely due to the increase in VRAM from 12GB to now 16GB, which again puts it slightly ahead of the 6950 XT by a mere 2% so again, it’s enough but also feels a bit like a hollow victory. Call Of Duty Modern Warfare II Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® II drops players into an unprecedented global conflict that features the return of the iconic Operators of Task Force 141. From small-scale, high-stakes infiltration tactical ops to highly classified missions, players will deploy alongside friends in a truly immersive experience. Infinity Ward brings fans state-of-the-art gameplay, with all-new gun handling, an advanced AI system, a new Gunsmith and a suite of other gameplay and graphical innovations that elevate the franchise to new heights. Modern Warfare® II launches with a globe-trotting single-player campaign, immersive Multiplayer combat and a narrative-driven, co-op Special Ops experience. Available now on Steam. Now Call of Duty is an odd one because at 1080p we see performance decrease by 3% going from the 4070 Ti to the Ti SUPER. Admittedly, our 4070 Ti non-SUPER is a Gaming OC so is slightly overclocked beyond reference spec, but it’s still odd to see, and confirmed with other sources that the results are correct based on what they saw too. Got to love Activision right? At 1440p it’s a similar story, with the Ti and Ti SUPER coming in identically at 141 FPS, only separated by a single FPS margin in the 1% lows. The higher specs and higher memory count don’t make any difference in this title at 1440p, which is a shame, given how popular Call of Duty is. At 4K we see things turnaround a bit, with the Ti SUPER now pushing ahead by just over 3% and now edging past the 7800 XT, which is nice for NVIDIA to be ahead of AMD but we’re talking about a GPU that is $300 cheaper and has seen price cuts lately so overall really disappointing. Cyberpunk 2077 Cyberpunk 2077 is an open-world, action-adventure RPG set in the megalopolis of Night City, where you play as a cyberpunk mercenary wrapped up in a do-or-die fight for survival. Improved and featuring all-new free additional content, customize your character and playstyle as you take on jobs, build a reputation, and unlock upgrades. The relationships you forge and the choices you make will shape the story and the world around you. Legends are made here. What will yours be? Available now on Steam. Booting up Cyberpunk and 1080p is frankly, all over the place. It’s clear to see that a lot of cards are severely bottlenecked at 1080p so analysing the data serves no purpose other than saying that anything from the 3080 Ti upwards will net you some strong performance. 1440p sees the results line up a lot better and sees some steady gains of 7% from the Ti to the Ti SUPER and a stronger 11% increase in the lows too. This also means that the Ti SUPER now pushes past the RTX 3090, 3080 Ti and 6950 XT, so this is more like it, and hopefully continues this trend. At 4K, it shows that this upward trend is short-lived as we now drop down to just a 3% uplift in performance so that extra 4GB of VRAM isn’t doing much at all, though we could potentially see game updates or driver fixes improve upon it, but I’m not expecting miracles. Enabling Ray Tracing at 1080p sees much better gains of around 11%, likely down to the increased RT core count, and much more of what I was expecting from this card. It doesn’t mean that the standings in our charts change, but better performance for the same price is welcomed at this level. It’s a similar affair at 1440p where we we do see the same 11% increase in performance, which again just further extends the lead, and draws closer to the RTX 4080, though with that being replaced by the SUPER variant soon, that gap will increase yet again. 4K sees the biggest margin of 26%, which pushes the TI SUPER above the RTX 3090, 3080 Ti and 7900 XTX, though with such a demanding game and resolution, DLSS is going to be the saviour here because even with the increased performance, 24 FPS and lows of 20 aren’t going to cut it. Far Cry 6 Welcome to Yara, a tropical paradise frozen in time. As the dictator of Yara, Antón Castillo is intent on restoring his nation to its former glory by any means necessary, with his son, Diego, following in his bloody footsteps. Their oppressive rule has ignited a revolution. Available now on Steam. As we move onto Far Cry 6, we see a similar 5% lead in favour of the Ti SUPER, but with some bottleneck going on, that doesn’t account for much as the 4080 sits below, and the 4090 only just ahead, so not much of a fair test to look at overall. 1440p sees things line up better, though again, the increase in performance from the 4070 Ti is still only at 4%, and again does nothing for our standings, other than seeing the 4070 Ti SUPER draw closer to the cheaper and last generation RX 6950 XT. Luckily 4K sees things improve by a larger margin of 10%, which finally sees some movement, now overtaking the 3090, 7800 XT, and 3080 Ti which sounds great but doesn’t exactly shout out “next level performance” in the grand scheme of things, especially considering the price points of some of those cards. Back at 1080p, but now with Ray Tracing enabled it all goes a bit south as the Ti SUPER only offers up 2% more performance compared to the non-SUPER Ti model. Yes, it does mean that the Ti SUPER draws closer to the 7900 XTX but that’s about the only real talking point, if any as NVIDIA should have the upper hand in terms of Ray Tracing performance. That gain is slightly improved at 1440p to an uplift of 5%. Still, again, other than edging within a margin of error difference to the 6950 XT, there isn’t anything going on, especially as the 6950 XT improved further in the 1% lows. Without sounding like I’m saying the same thing, it’s a tough one to talk about, because at 4K, the gain from the Ti to the Ti SUPER has grown to a little under 7%, but older, and cheaper cards are still managing to outperform it from team red, namely by way of the 6950 XT, so while I’m trying to find a silver lining, I think the overall averages across all games are going to be very interesting. F1 23 Be the last to brake in EA SPORTS™ F1® 23, the official video game of the 2023 FIA Formula One World Championship™. A new chapter in the thrilling "Braking Point" story mode delivers high-speed drama and heated rivalries. Available now on Steam. Switching over to F1 23 on high and at such a high level of performance anyway, the Ti SUPER only managed to squeeze out another 2% more frames, now drawing closer to the RTX 3090 and a bit disappointing overall considering the extra specs and VRAM though this could all change as we move up in resolution. Sadly, that’s not the case. We do see a larger 4% lead which again means the Ti SUPER now pushes ahead of the 3080 Ti and RTX 3090, but the likes of the 7800 XT and 6950 XT are still ahead of it, and for a cheaper price. The gap increases again, ever so slightly at 4K, now to 6% which is more like it, but that 7800 XT and 6950 XT is still a huge sticking point considering the price point. Sure they don’t beat NVIDIA in every game, but they are putting up a fight. Enabling Ray Tracing at 1080p sees some movement, with the Ti SUPER now surpassing the 7900 XT, though with its recent price cuts and the performance being so similar, have NVIDIA won here? Sure, F1 is more AMD biased but I’m struggling to find good things to say. 4% improvements come by way of 1440p where that extra VRAM and RT cores come into play, and with the same $799 price tag, you could argue that’s a good thing, but with no movement in our chart, it just makes it all seem somewhat redundant to even bring this to market. If you haven’t guessed by now, it’s the same at 4K. A 4% improvement, and again no movement in the standings which is disappointing as again, it makes the launch, at least in this game seem mathematically pointless. Hogwarts Legacy Hogwarts Legacy is an immersive, open-world action RPG. Now you can take control of the action and be at the centre of your own adventure in the wizarding world. Available now on Steam. Moving onto Hogwarts Legacy we see a larger gain going from the 4070 Ti to the Ti SUPER of 7% which also manages to push past the 3080 Ti and RTX 3090, though again it’s evident to see bottlenecks occurring as the RTX 4090 only sits just ahead by only 5%. We see the same 7% uplift at 1440p, again overtaking some of the last generation NVIDIA 30 series high-end cards, though it’s easy to see that if you’re already rocking a 4070 Ti, there’s no reason to upgrade whatsoever, for such small gains. The gain at 4K is slightly bigger, with an increase in framerate of 8%, though AMD’s 6950 XT still sits 7% ahead and for a cheaper price, and some older 30 series cards sit just below that, but still above the newer 4070 Ti SUPER. At 1080p with RT enabled we see a whopping… 1 FPS improvement and now beating the performance of the 7900 XTX, also by a single FPS, though the 1% lows do improve slightly on the Ti SUPER but only by around 7% which is welcomed, but doesn’t translate to overall performance. Moving up to 1440p the 4070 Ti and 4070 SUPER were within margin of error of each other, which placed the 4070 SUPER ahead by a single FPS and with stronger lows too. Luckily the Ti SUPER manages to improve upon this by increasing performance by 8% in the averages and an astonishing 32% in the lows, which now puts it more in line with the 4070 SUPER with a 6% improvement. Sadly at 4K the Ti SUPER does nothing in the averages, with matched performance to the non-SUPER ti, but does still manage to tighten things up slightly with a 24% improvement in the 1% lows which is great, but at just 30 FPS, it’s unlikely you’d be playing at this level without utilising DLSS. Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered Developed by Insomniac Games in collaboration with Marvel, and optimized for PC by Nixxes Software, Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered on PC introduces an experienced Peter Parker who’s fighting big crime and iconic villains in Marvel’s New York. At the same time, he’s struggling to balance his chaotic personal life and career while the fate of Marvel’s New York rests upon his shoulders. Available now on Steam. Spider-Man at 1080p comes in with similar performance gains moving from the 4070 Ti to the 4070 Ti SUPER at 5% but again improves much more in the 1% lows by around 15%. Sadly, there are still bottlenecks which is pretty evident when we look at the RTX 4090 performance, so again, not really much to say as performance is so similar across the board when looking at the mid to high-end range. 1440p has a smaller increase in performance of 3% which means that NVIDIA pushed past AMD’s 7900 XT and 7900 XTX by a small margin, and again improved in the lows which is nice to see but at such a small gain, it’s nothing really to write home about, even if it does come in at the same $799 MSRP price. If you hadn’t guessed again, 4 seems to be the magic number as the Ti SUPER comes in 4% faster than the non-SUPER. Again, this pushes passed the 7900 XT but as a cheaper card overall, it’s not really too much of a win. Enabling Ray Tracing sees the severe bottlenecks coming through yet again, with the 4070 Ti topping our charts, though I’d take these standings with a reservation, as even with a 7800X3D, they don’t really account for much. 4% again at 1440p between each model in both the averages and the 1% lows which again is enough to beat the 7900 XTX of which the 4070 Ti was performing identically with before. Considering the 7900 XTX is more expensive overall, this is a sizable win for Team Green at least in this title. 4K sees the biggest gain thanks to the extra RT cores and increase VRAM size where the Ti SUPER improves upon the non-SUPER by 9% in the averages and a much healthier 27% uplift in the 1% lows. Ratchet & Clank Blast your way through an interdimensional adventure with Ratchet and Clank – now on PC! Help them take on an evil emperor from another reality as you jump between action-packed worlds and beyond at hyper-speed! Available now on Steam. Ratchet & Clank is notorious for favouring AMD, especially in the lows which is clear to see across all of our results, though the SUPER still manages to push performance ahead of the non-SUPER by 6% along with 14% better 1% lows, though AMD have this title at 1080p pretty sewn up. Another 6% increase comes at 1440p which puts the 4070 Ti SUPER closer to the levels of performance seen by the 7900 XT but still sees those frankly miserable 1% low figures that could lead to some choppy gameplay in places. Luckily DLSS could be a saving grace for any RTX GPU here so it’s worth keeping that in mind. At 4K, the RTX 4070 Ti really ran out of steam for some odd reason and re-testing confirmed that as its performance matched the RTX 4070. Due to this, the gains were much larger moving to the Ti SUPER of just under 30% and firmly cementing its position just below the 7900 XT, though again, the 1% low figures are hard to ignore. At 1080p with RT enabled, the 1% lows smooth themselves out quite dramatically and NVIDIA shows they are back in the game. Sadly, this does only equate to another 6% performance jump from the Ti to the Ti SUPER, but considering the same price point, it’s still not one to ignore unless you already have a 4070 Ti, in which case, I wouldn’t be looking to change to the SUPER version. The margin at 1440p increases closer to 7%, but AMD’s stronger lows really do start to be noticeable again with the 7900 XTX, though that does sit dramatically lower in the standings and NVIDIA essentially owns the top part of our chart. Then at 4K we’re looking at 5% between the Ti and Ti SUPER, which actually only equates to 2 frames per second in both the averages and 1% lows, but shows the strong Ray Tracing performance that NVIDIA have in this title, and again, enabling DLSS will see those numbers increase quite dramatically. Starfield Starfield is the first new universe in over 25 years from Bethesda Game Studios, the award-winning creators of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4. In this next-generation role-playing game set amongst the stars, create any character you want and explore with unparalleled freedom as you embark on an epic journey to answer humanity’s greatest mystery. Available now on Steam. In our last game, we booted up Starfield at 1080p on the Ultra preset and again saw a strong performance from AMD, of which the 4070 Ti SUPER was almost able to match in the averages, falling just 1 FPS behind, but more than made up for it in the 1% lows where it came in with 12% more performance. When compared to its predecessor, we’re still only talking 2% improvements which isn’t great considering the higher core counts. As we move up in resolution, the gap increases slightly but even then it’s only 3 FPS between the Ti SUPER and the card it's replacing, and in terms of the standings, yes it brings it closer to the levels of the 7900 XT, but as that card comes in cheaper, it’s not really much of a win. Finally, we’re at the last game on the last resolution, and we’re talking 5% improvements over the 4070 Ti. Again, as you may have guessed, it does nothing for our standings, and the 7900 XT still sits ahead, which is kind of expected as this game has an AMD bias. Cost Per Frame & Overall Average FPS To get an idea on the money side of things and how things did overall, it’s worth taking a look at the overall averages and the cost per frame. It’s here where the 4070 Ti SUPER does improve upon the non-SUPER in the averages by a lowly 5%. I get that being the same price, you could argue that any extra performance is a great thing to have, but at just 5%, most of that could be deemed as margin of error to a degree. Also couple in the cost per frame where the Ti SUPER does come in better, but only by 3 cents per frame, which equates to about 0.4% so again, it makes you question what the point was overall of even having the card, but again, for the same price, is there really an argument? What is clear is that there are other cards that are far superior in terms of value for money, like the RX 7900 XT. Sure it doesn’t have DLSS, but at $5.52 compared to $6.12 from NVIDIA, that’s quite a stark difference, or even NVIDIA’s own 4070 SUPER at $4.77, that’s where things get a lot more exciting. DLSS One area where NVIDIA will of course have the upper hand is with AI upscaling, DLSS and more importantly with frame generation. For the sake of including some figures we took the RTX 4070, 4070 SUPER and 4070 Ti and tested in various scenarios with DLSS disabled, enabled and with Frame Generation turned on, to see what kind of gains could be had at 1440p where the 4070 SUPER is targeted towards. It’s here in Cyberpunk where the 4070 Ti SUPER is evenly matched when enabling DLSS and DLSS 3, which is a shame as before, with no DLSS, the 4070 Ti SUPER was around 8% faster, but through some reason, lost its momentum, while the 4070 Ti non-SUPER caught up. When enabling Ray Tracing, it manages to keep its lead of which it held an 11% lead with no upscaling to just 4% when using DLSS and just 3% difference with DLSS 3 showing that even with DLSS, the SUPER variant doesn’t really offer up much as scaling seemingly falls more inline. In Hogwarts Legacy, we started with a 7% lead to the Ti SUPER, to then a 10% margin with DLSS enabled and 17% variance with frame generation enabled, and that’s more of what I was expecting. If every game was like that, then it would be quite an exciting product. Again, turning Ray Tracing on keeps the same consistency. The Ti SUPER lead over the non-SUPER by 8%, which then increases to 15% with DLSS set to balanced, and an equally impressive 14% with DLSS 3. Ok, so DLSS helps but, and it’s a big but. Not everyone is sold on upscaling and not every game is going to see huge gains over its predecessor as shown in Cyberpunk. Maybe we’ll look at more games in an upcoming feature if that’s something you want to see. Now some people, and I’m not in this argument consider DLSS as “fake frames” and would rather see performance be at a decent level from the get-go, and while the 4070 Ti SUPER performance is strong, I’m struggling to see why NVIDIA invested time and money into the card when the 4070 Ti was essentially doing the same thing. Personally, I would have much rather seen a price cut to the 4070 Ti to make it more competitive against AMD and to give gamers on older hardware a cheaper upgrade path to be able to utilise the potential of newer games. I get that upscaling is the big thing right now, but not every game has it, and for the ones that don’t, there are more options now than ever in terms of older used cards, or cheaper AMD cards that get very close to the same performance, if not beating it in some areas. Power & Temperatures It’s here where we booted up F1 23 for an hour on each card to see exactly how things perform in that area, if you are looking at a 4070 Ti SUPER in general, you’ll be faced with choices of which AIB card to go for, especially as there is no Founders Edition for the 4070 Ti SUPER. The Gigabyte Windforce OC where during our stress test, the GPU temperature remained just under 69 degrees, with the hotspot peaking at around 82 degrees. Our memory junction temperature stayed fairly cool at 72 degrees all while using around 274 Watts of power. The clock speed did manage to boost up to 2775MHz in places, and the fans were bordering on the more audible side at just shy of 2000 RPM. How Much Does it Cost? The Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti Super Cards launch today with an MSRP of $799, and while I don't know all the prices for Non-MSRP cards, they will of course vary depending on the cooler and overclocks they each feature. What is interesting, however, is that these new Super cards launch at the same MSRP as the non-Super variants, and while our testing showed some hits and misses in benchmarking, this is still a more powerful card for the same money, so it's hard to argue with that when Nvidia could have simply put the prices up again. Overview So I’m going to admit. That was painful. When looking at performance and analysing the point of our content, it’s easy to get excited when we see an evolutionary jump, but that’s not the case here. It’s slightly faster, and I’m talking marginally. When you look at the specifications, this new graphics card is better in every way. There are higher core counts, there are more RT and Tensor cores, there's more VRAM, the clock speeds are up, and really, that should be an indication of a pretty potent performance boost. However, from our pretty extensive testing, that's not really what we see in the real world. It's a little bit better, but does it feel like an upgrade? Not really, if I'm being honest. More VRAM is nice and does improve the 1% lows, but not as much as the fanatics in the internet comment sections would have you believe it would have. DLSS and other technologies should have seen a boost too, but in games like Cyberpunk and Hogwarts Legacy, some were up, some were down, and some were about the same, so it is splitting hairs on whether this is better or not. Not that there's anything wrong with the performance though, it's still largely a very great card, the performance is fantastic, but it just feels like something may be missing. I hope and honestly largely expect that this will improve with a few driver updates, as things always do. I suspect in a few weeks or a couple of months, the Super variants will have a bigger lead on the non-Super cards they are replacing. What I do like about both the Gigabyte and INNO3D cards is the cooler upgrades. Gigabyte has honed its Windforce designs over the years, and INNO3D has a great-looking product too with a 2-slot form factor. Having a premium quality cooler on this chipset showed that it can run nice and cool and quiet, while still delivering great performance overall. Should I Buy One? So overall, the 4070 Ti SUPER can be taken one of two ways. If you’re already rocking a 4070 Ti, then there is no reason to change to a Ti SUPER, and if you want more performance then you need to be looking at 4080 levels or above, but even then I’d personally wait for the 4080 SUPER to see what that brings, though I fear it could be the same levels as what we saw today. If however, you’re on something older and your heart was set on a 4070 Ti, then obviously it makes sense to pay the same, and get a 4070 Ti SUPER, though I’d seriously be questioning how much extra performance you’re going to be gaining over what you already have.