The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 has been out for about eight months now, so it shouldn't be too surprising that the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is here. This is usually the lag we see for mid-gen upgrades, but in the world of top graphics cards, we're a long way from "typical times." It's incredibly difficult to buy a new graphics card right now, let alone the RTX 3070, which is generally the best GPU for most people. So you would think that an upgraded version of this graphics card would make sense, but the price is completely wrong. Starting at $599 (£529, AU$959), with aftermarket prices likely to rise exponentially, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is 20% more expensive than the RTX 3070, and you don't get much more performance out of that. . In most games, the RTX 3070 Ti is only 5-10% faster, according to our tests, and it's not worth the price difference. Once the market returns to normal, there will be no more reason to buy this card. But right now, the market is anything but normal, and our advice is always to "buy any graphics card you can find at or near MSRP." And at the end of the day, if the RTX 3070 Ti is the graphics card you can find, it still offers excellent 1440p gaming and can even stretch its legs in 4K if the opportunity presents itself, even if it doesn't. t be your first choice for a 4K graphics card.
(Image credit: Avenir)
Prices and availability
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is available June 10, starting at $599 (£529, AU$959). That makes it slightly more expensive than the original RTX 3070 at €499 (£469, AU$809), with the same difference between it and the RTX 3080 at €699 (£649, around AU$950). However, while the RTX 3070 Ti sits right in the middle of the two-amp heavyweights in terms of price, it's much closer to the RTX 3070 in terms of performance than the RTX 3080. This puts the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti in a very awkward position, especially once the graphics card market returns to some semblance of normalcy. Because, as we'll explore later, this graphics card doesn't separate enough from the RTX 3070 to really be worth the extra money. And, even if you have the budget to buy something more expensive than the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070, you shouldn't go with the RTX 3070 Ti, because the RTX 3080 will be a much bigger difference. Where the RTX 3070 is a champion of great value offering, the RTX 3070 Ti goes completely against this card's legacy and looks more like a cash grab - it should really cost around $549, with a real improvement over the table. But the fact is, if you're looking for a graphics card and you see the RTX 3070 Ti around its actual MSRP, you should really jump on it. But we don't recommend looking exclusively for the RTX 3070 Ti, because in any other world the RTX 3070 or RTX 3080 just makes more sense.
(Image credit: Avenir)
Chipset and features
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is built on the same Ampere graphics architecture as the rest of the RTX 30-series graphics cards. We looked at this architecture in depth in our RTX 3080 review, but we'll go over it for a bit here.
With the Ampere graphics architecture, the biggest difference compared to the last generation Turing range is that Nvidia was able to essentially double the FP32 data paths using Streaming Multiprocessor (SM). This basically means that if something like the RTX 2070 Super had 2.560 CUDA cores in 40 SM, an Ampere graphics card with the same amount of SM would have 5.120 CUDA cores.
When paired with 30nd gen RT cores and 20rd gen Tensor cores, that means the Nvidia GeForce RTX XNUMX series is a pretty big improvement over the XNUMX series.
As for the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti itself, you're looking at 48 SMs with a total of 6.144 CUDA cores, 48 RT cores, 96 Tensor cores, and 8GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, which is a huge hit the latest generation RTX 2070 Super. But that's a different story when you look at the RTX 3070.
The original midrange champion has 46 SM with 5,888 CUDA cores, as well as 8GB of GDDR6 memory on the same 256-bit bus. So you're basically paying $100 more, assuming you can buy at MSRP, for 2 more streaming multiprocessors and faster memory. When we look at the specs on paper, this graphics card would have served much better as a replacement for the RTX 3070 at around the same price, rather than a significantly more expensive successor.
This slight increase in power also comes with a higher TGP (Total Graphics Power) budget of 290W, which is roughly where the RTX 3070 Ti peaked in our tests. With such a high power budget, Nvidia recommends at least a 750W PSU, which is more than the 650W PSU recommended for the Vanilla RTX 3070. This means that the RTX 3070 is also probably a better option for people using a small form factor case.
Unlike the RTX 3070, however, every RTX 3070 Ti will come with Nvidia's LHR (Lightweight Hash Rate) cryptocurrency limiter. This will detect the Ethereum mining algorithm and slow down the graphics card. Ideally, this will prevent miners from buying all the shares, but only time will tell how effective it is.
Of course, since the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is an Ampere GPU, that means you get access to all of Nvidia's juicy software features. RTX Broadcast is a boon for streamers and anyone who has to make a lot of video calls alike: it filters out background noise from your microphone and headphones, and can even completely replace your camera background with no green screen. These features also work much better than similar solutions built into Zoom or Google Hangouts.
And obviously you can't talk about the RTX 3070 Ti without talking about, well, RTX. Like the rest of the cards this generation, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti has RT cores, with accelerated ray tracing, which makes games that support it, well, playable. Today, the number of games supporting the technology is increasing, largely thanks to AMD graphics cards, which are also capable of powering ray-traced workloads.
However, enabling ray tracing is usually a big hit in terms of performance, which means that DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) is useful to lighten the load a bit. This technology uses AI to downgrade your game to a lower resolution than its native resolution, so you can turn on more visual appeal without turning your game into a slideshow.
Generally speaking, especially if you plan to push the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti to 4K, you should enable DLSS whenever it's available.
(Image credit: Avenir)
Integrated
One of the biggest drawbacks of the RTX 3070 and RTX 3060 Ti Founders Editions, compared to the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090, was the fan setup. Instead of the unique step-through design, they looked like a traditional dual-fan design. It wasn't a big problem for these cards, mainly due to the lower TGP. However, the RTX 3070 Ti clocks in at closer to 300W, meaning it needs tougher cooling, and Nvidia provided that. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition looks a lot like the RTX 3080 Ti, except it's a bit shorter at 10,5 inches compared to the RTX 11,2 Ti's 3080 inches. This will make it a bit easier to fit into smaller cases, but it's still slightly larger than the original RTX 3070, which is 9.5 inches long. This extra inch allows Nvidia to move one of the fans from the front of the card to the back of the card. This cooling setup draws in air from the bottom of your case and directs it through your graphics card, blowing hot air out the top of your case. This is an extremely efficient method of cooling your graphics card, and it means that even testing it in the middle of a heat wave in New York City, the RTX 3070 Ti peaked at just 82°C. than the RTX 3080 under the same conditions, but we attribute that to the slightly shorter card. Like the rest of this generation's Founders Editions, the RTX 3070 Ti is a beautiful graphics card with a black heatsink, surrounded by a gunmetal gray trim. It looks amazing on our test bench, and we can hardly imagine a case where it would look out of place. But it also has the same problem as the others: the power connector. Nvidia sticks to the 12-pin power connector, and that's something we'll have to get used to. Fortunately, since hardly anyone gets power from these power connectors, Nvidia includes a 2 x 8-pin to 1 x 12-pin adapter in the box. As for ports, you get one HDMI 2.1 and three DisplayPort 1.4, also identical to every other card in the RTX 30-series. And we still miss USB-C, and we'll keep complaining until Nvidia brings it. back. Image 1 of 28
(Image credit: Infogram; Future) Image 2 of 28
(Image credit: Infogram; Futur) Image 3 of 28
(Image credit: Infogram; Futur) Image 4 of 28
(Image credit: Infogram; Future) Image 5 of 28
(Image credit: Infogram; Futur) Image 6 of 28
(Image credit: Infogram; Futur) Image 7 of 28
(Image credit: Infogram; Future) Image 8 of 28
(Image credit: Infogram; Futur) Image 9 of 28
(Image credit: Infogram; Futur) Image 10 of 28
(Image credit: Infogram; Futur) Image 11 of 28
(Image credit: Infogram; Future) Image 12 of 28
(Image credit: Infogram; Futur) Image 13 of 28
(Image credit: Infogram; Futur) Image 14 of 28
(Image credit: Infogram; Futur) Image 15 of 28
(Image credit: Infogram; Futur) Image 16 of 28
(Image credit: Infogram; Futur) Image 17 of 28
(Image credit: Infogram; Futur) Image 18 of 28
(Image credit: Infogram; Futur) Image 19 of 28
(Image credit: Infogram; Futur) Image 20 of 28
(Image credit: Infogram; Futur) Image 21 of 28
(Image credit: Infogram; ...