Today we have another round of reviews for GeForce RTX 4070 cards selling above the MSRP: ASUS TUF, Galax EX White, MSI Gaming X Trio, Palit JetStream and PNY XLR8. Yesterday we've posted reviews for cards at MSRP: NVIDIA Founders Edition, ASUS Dual, Gainward Ghost, MSI Ventus and PNY RTX 4070.

This week NVIDIA is launching their fourth GeForce 40 Series graphics card—the GeForce RTX 4070. Just three months ago we saw the release of the $800 RTX 4070 Ti, now the green team's new card comes without the "Ti," for $200 less. Under the hood, the RTX 4070 is very similar to the RTX 4070 Ti. Both cards are based on the NVIDIA AD104 graphics processor and feature 12 GB GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit wide memory bus. Of course you're getting all of NVIDIA's GeForce 40 series goodies, like DLSS 3 Frame Generation and improved ray tracing cores. What is different is the number of cores in the GPU—the RTX 4070 has 5,888 cores, which is a pretty hefty 30% difference to the 7,680 cores on RTX 4070 Ti. Clock speeds are lower, too, the RTX 4070 Ti had a rated boost of up to 2610 MHz, whereas the non-Ti is rated for 2475 MHz.

The ASUS GeForce RTX 4070 TUF is a factory-overclocked custom-design variant selling at $650. It runs at a rated boost clock of 2550 MHz, which is a 3% increase over the NVIDIA Founders Edition clocks of 2475 MHz. ASUS is also including adjustable RGB lighting, dual BIOS and a triple-slot, triple-fan thermal solution with an all-metal cooler shroud.

Averaged over the 25 games in our test suite, at 1440p resolution, the ASUS RTX 4070 TUF comes out a meager 1% ahead of the NVIDIA RTX 4070 FE. Other custom designs aren't much faster either, only the MSI Gaming X gains 3%. It seems all vendors were very conservative with their factory overclocks. Compared to last generation's RTX 3070, the performance uplift is 28%—a relatively small gen-over-gen gain (RTX 4090: +64%, RTX 4080: +49%, RTX 4070 Ti: +44%). It is still a substantial improvement, especially when you consider other factors like DLSS 3 and efficiency. Compared to AMD's offerings, the RTX 4070 from ASUS ends up right between the Radeon RX 6800 XT and the RX 6900 XT. AMD hasn't released any Radeon RX 7000 graphics card competitive to the RTX 4070 yet, actually they haven't released any graphics card this year.

These performance numbers make GeForce RTX 4070 an excellent choice for gaming at 1440p. Even smooth 4K is in reach in most titles, especially if you're willing to enable upscaling technologies like FSR or DLSS 2, or DLSS 3 Frame Generation. Just like the RTX 4070 Ti, I've noticed that RTX 4070 does a little bit worse at 4K than at 1440p relative to our other comparison cards. It seems the smaller L2 cache and 192-bit memory bus hold those cards back a little bit.

Just like on other NVIDIA cards, ray tracing performance is better than on AMD's offerings, because NVIDIA is executing more operations in dedicated hardware, and they have had a one GPU generation head start. While the performance differences are not night-and-day, they are still noteworthy. For example, the Radeon RX 6800 XT matches the RTX 4070 in pure rasterization workloads, but falls behind over 20% with ray tracing enabled. While RX 7900 XT offered 30% higher FPS with RT off, turning RT on makes that gap shrink to just 8%. Everybody agrees that ray tracing is the future, they just disagree on how fast it will become an essential part of gaming. If you're in the "RTX on" camp, then NVIDIA's GeForce graphics cards will give you higher framerates than AMD's offerings.

Another important selling point is that NVIDIA's GeForce 40 Series graphics cards support DLSS 3 Frame Generation. The algorithm takes two frames, measures how things have moved in those two frames and calculates an intermediate frame in which these things moved only half the distance. While this approach is definitely not problem-free, especially when pixel-peeping at stills or slowed down video, in real-time it's nearly impossible to notice any difference. As you run at higher FPS and resolution it becomes even more difficult, because the deltas between each frame are getting smaller and smaller. Implementing DLSS 3 is very easy for developers if they already have DLSS 2 support in their game, and NVIDIA is offering a lot of support to developers for integrating these technologies. Another interesting NVIDIA tech is Reflex, which reduces the total gaming latency (which NVIDIA likes to call whole system latency), so you see things earlier on your screen and can react faster, to get more kills or survive for longer.

Leading up to this launch, I've noticed a lot of discussion around the 12 GB VRAM size of RTX 4070. While I agree that 16 GB would be better, I disagree with people who say that 12 GB is already too small, or obsolete. There are a few (badly coded) games out there that use a ton of VRAM, especially at 4K, but the vast majority of titles won't even get close to such VRAM usage numbers. In our whole test suite not a single game saw a meaningful performance hit with 12 GB, not even at 4K—and RTX 4070 is fundamentally a 1440p card. You'll also have to consider that making a 16 GB card isn't just "let's add another 4 GB memory chip," but you also need to put additional signal traces on the PCB, and widen the memory controller inside the GPU, so that it can talk to all these chips in parallel. I don't think anyone would be willing to pay $700 for a 16 GB RTX 4070, would you? On the other hand, AMD does offer 16 GB VRAM on the Radeon RX 6800 XT and 6900 XT, which could make them an option for those who want to focus on VRAM future-proofing.

The ASUS TUF comes with a premium physical construction, both the backplate and the cooler shroud are made of metal, which definitely helps with the look and feel. The card also includes a dual BIOS feature, which lets you toggle between a "Quiet" and a "Performance" BIOS. While previously "Performance" was the default, which I kept complaining about, ASUS now ships the card with the "Quiet" BIOS enabled. Gamers who are willing to accept more noise for lower temperatures can easily switch to the "Performance" BIOS, which runs the fans at higher speed. I have to applaud ASUS for this change, as it ensures that the vast majority of buyers will get the best experience out of the box, and more-advanced users, who are aware that a dual BIOS exists, what a BIOS is and that it can be switched, get additional control. Noise levels on the ASUS TUF are out of this world—just 23.3 dBA is whisper-quiet. The card is so quiet that even in a quiet neighborhood, in a room with everything turned off, you have to stand right next to the card on an open bench and focus on it, to hear what little noise it emits. As soon as you move, the noise of your clothes rubbing against each other will overpower the fan noise—really impressive. Temperatures are good, too, with only 61°C, the card runs cool at all times. Our apples-to-apples cooler test confirms that the cooler on the ASUS TUF is the most powerful one of all the RTX 4070s tested. Compared to the NVIDIA FE the card runs 14°C cooler at the same noise level and heat output.

Being able to run at these speeds with such a small cooling solution is an amazing feat, thanks to the stunning energy efficiency of NVIDIA's Ada architecture. With just 200 W, the power supply requirements are minimal, any beige OEM PSU will be able to drive the RTX 4070 just fine, so upgraders can just plop in a new graphics card and they're good to go. Performance per Watt is among the best we've ever seen, slightly better than RTX 4070 Ti and Radeon RX 7900 XTX; only the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 are even more energy-efficient. Even though it's an OC SKU, ASUS has decided to leave the board's power limit at the NVIDIA default of 200 W. The manual adjustment range goes up to 216 W. MSI's Gaming X comes with a higher default power limit of 215 W, and allows up to 240 W manually.

Unlike the FE, ASUS is using an 8-pin power input, just one, which is a good alternative to the 16-pin, especially for people wanting to avoid the adapter. The 8-pin cable can also be bent more tightly, people are less scared of plugging it in the wrong way, and I suspect it's also a few cents cheaper to integrate, so no complaints from me. In theory, the 16-pin could deliver up to 600 W, which would allow higher power limits than 225 W (150 W 8-pin + 75 W slot), but the ASUS TUF isn't even close to that, so a 16-pin wouldn't make any difference.

According to ASUS, the RTX 4070 TUF will sell for a price of $650, which is a $50 increase over the NVIDIA MSRP, or +8%. The factory overclock is good for 1%, so the performance gains alone can't justify the expense. You definitely get a better cooler than on the MSRP cards, but as we've seen yesterday, these cards are really good, too, and there's no serious compromises to make. I really like the metal cooler shroud, but not sure if that is worth $50. The same is the case for noise. No doubt, the ASUS TUF is unbelievably quiet, but the ASUS Dual for 50 dollars less is very similar with its quiet BIOS activated (but runs higher temps).

It seems that NVIDIA's push for MSRP pricing will make life of the more expensive custom designs more difficult. No doubt, I'd be willing to spend $20-$30 more, but not sure about $50. NVIDIA's $600 MSRP is an alright price given the current GPU pricing landscape, but it's still $100 more expensive than the launch-price of RTX 3070 and RTX 2070. At that price point the RTX 4070 is clearly the best option, even though it's not standing out spectacularly, like it would had it been $500 instead. There's no way I'd buy RTX 3080 10 GB for $550 if I can get the RTX 4070 for $600. The selling points here are DLSS 3 and energy efficiency. Strong competition comes from the RX 6800 XT at $510, and the RX 6900 XT at $620. Both offer a larger framebuffer of 16 GB and similar rasterization performance, but slower ray tracing and worse efficiency. Spending $200 more for an $800 RTX 4070 Ti is out of reach for people shopping with a $600 budget, just like Radeon RX 7900 XT.

NVIDIA knows these numbers, too, and that's exactly why the RTX 4070 is positioned like that. It's the best choice in its segment no doubt, with good performance and impressive efficiency. Still, graphics cards have become extremely expensive in the last years, and people are frustrated, and looking elsewhere. Consider $500 will buy you a PlayStation 5, a complete gaming system that's ready to go, which will run 4K and has every single game hand-optimized for the platform, without any compatibility issues, shader compilation, stutter, or other hoops to jump through.