We have posted a total of four GeForce RTX 3070 Ti reviews today: MSI RTX 3070 Ti Suprim X, NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition, Palit RTX 3070 Ti GameRock OC, and Zotac RTX 3070 Ti AMP Holo.

Just last week NVIDIA launched their GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, and today, we have the RTX 3070 Ti reviews. Both cards were announced earlier this month at Computex. With the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, NVIDIA is pushing their Ampere x70 lineup forward to better compete with AMD's Radeon RX 6700 XT and RX 6800 non-XT. To achieve their goal, NVIDIA is using the same GA104 GPU as on the RTX 3070, but with all its 6,144 cores enabled. The GeForce RTX 3070 non-Ti has 5,888 cores active, a 4% difference, which by itself isn't big enough to justify a new SKU. That's why NVIDIA switched the memory chips from GDDR6 to GDDR6X, which improves memory bandwidth by 35%.

Memory size on the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti has remained at 8 GB, probably because the only other feasible option is 16 GB, which would have increased cost significantly without major performance improvements. The underlying reason is that VRAM capacity is tied to the memory bus width on the card. In theory, a 12 GB 192-bit design like with the RTX 3060 is possible, but the performance loss from the narrower memory bus would more than negate any gains from the larger memory buffer. On the other hand, AMD is offering 16 GB VRAM on the Radeon RX 6800, so NVIDIA achieving parity would have certainly had a psychological effect. Personally, I'm not a fan of going all out on VRAM size, none of our benchmarks show any noteworthy performance issues arising from the 8 GB VRAM capacity. Actually, it seems likely DirectStorage, a technology that was first pioneered on the new consoles, will reduce VRAM pressure by optimizing the disk to GPU memory path.

MSI's GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Suprim X is the company's flagship RTX 3070 Ti that comes with a large overclock out of the box. Rated boost frequency is set to 1860 MHz, which is the second-highest available on the market. Only the Gigabyte AORUS Master with 1875 MHz is higher. However, rated clocks aren't everything. We've also tested the Palit GameRock OC today, which is rated for 1845 MHz Boost. Palit has increased their card's power limit to 330 W, while MSI only uses 310 W, which holds the MSI card back. Overall, the Palit is 1% faster than the Suprim X despite its Rated Boost suggesting the opposite.

Averaged over our 22-game-strong test suite at 1440p resolution, the MSI Suprim X is 2% faster than the Founders Edition and 7% ahead of the RTX 3070 non-Ti. I have to say I expected a bigger improvement from the RTX 3070 Ti, especially considering the investment by NVIDIA: full GA104 GPU, GDDR6X, new PCBs, and completely new cooler design for the FE. Compared to the Radeon RX 6800, the gap shrinks to only 2%; at 4K, the MSI Suprim X can match the Radeon RX 6800 non-XT. The GeForce RTX 3080 is 13% faster than the MSI card, and the newly released RTX 3080 Ti is 23% faster. Last generation's GeForce RTX 2080 Ti flagship is 11% behind the RTX 3070 Ti, and the difference to the RTX 2070 Super is 30%.

With those performance numbers, the RTX 3070 Ti is the perfect choice for the huge 1440p gamer crowd, but the card also has enough muscle to drive many titles at 4K 60 FPS, especially if you are willing to dial down settings a little bit. The RTX 3070 Ti is also a great choice for 1080p Full HD if you want to drive a high-refresh-rate monitor with 120 or 144 Hz. For just 1080p at 60 Hz, it's overkill unless next-generation titles go overboard with their hardware requirements, which is highly unlikely. Raytracing performance of the RTX 3070 Ti is better than the Radeon RX 6800 because NVIDIA executes more raytracing functions in hardware and is on their second-generation of the technology. Differences vary between titles, though. The new consoles are built using AMD RDNA 2 technology, so going forward, game developers may invest more resources into optimizing RT for AMD's architecture, or they simply dial down the RT effects to reduce the performance hit, which is what happened recently with Resident Evil 7.

We've reviewed MSI's Suprim X card design before and were impressed. The card is massive, which of course adds tons of cooling performance. By default, MSI has the "Silent" BIOS activated, which achieves amazing noise levels. With 29.5 dBA in that state, it is the quietest RTX 3070 Ti we've tested today by a HUGE margin. Looks like MSI is the only vendor you can rely on to consistently produce quiet graphics card. At these noise levels, the card is strong competition to the ultra-quiet AMD reference designs, which are still a tiny bit quieter. Even at those amazing noise levels, temperatures are fine; we measured 76°C under full load—that's exactly the noise/temperature balance I would choose if I were a graphics card designer. Good job, MSI! If you want to prioritize lower temperatures, you can switch to the "Gaming" BIOS, which brings temperatures down to only 66°C, the best result today. Noise levels increase to 37 dBA, though, which is still quieter than every other RTX 3070 Ti tested today, including the NVIDIA Founders Edition. With Ampere, NVIDIA introduced idle fan stop on their Founders Edition, which makes fan stop a mandatory capability for custom designs, too. In idle, during desktop work, internet browsing, and light gaming, the MSI RTX 3070 Ti will turn off its fans completely for the perfect noise-free experience.

In my RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition review I talked a lot about the increased power consumption of RTX 3070 Ti, and the reasons. The bottom line is that the RTX 3070 Ti is not nearly as energy efficient as the RTX 3070 non-Ti, and can't match AMD's Radeons either. Usually, you'd expect factory overclocked custom designs to lose some additional energy efficiency due to the higher clock speeds and possible voltage increases. This isn't the case with the MSI Suprim X. The card offers 2% higher performance and consumes only 3% more power, resulting in no noteworthy loss in energy efficiency—other cards tested today don't do so well here. As mentioned before, what's holding back the card a bit is that the default power limit isn't as high as on other cards. What makes things worse for overclockers is that the manual adjustment limit is quite low, too. No idea why, the cooler could certainly handle more.

NVIDIA has announced a $600 price point for the RTX 3070 Ti, which is $100 higher than the RTX 3070. MSI hasn't provided any pricing, so we're left guessing. No doubt, the cooler is much better than the one on the Founders Edition, actually better than on any other card tested today. Noise levels are amazing, and the factory overclock achieves performance that matches the RX 6800. I'd probably be willing to spend another $50 for that, maybe slightly more. In the current market, MSRPs are irrelevant—any responsible reviewer must take into account the craziness happening out there: The RTX 3060 sells for $900, RTX 3070 for $1300, RX 6700 XT for $1000, and RX 6800 for $1400. That's why I think a more realistic price for the Palit RTX 3070 Ti GameRock is around $1350. Hopefully, the low-hash-rate (LHR) mining limiter works out on the RTX 3070 Ti, so gamers can get their hands on these cards. It also puts a new kind of value proposition on the RTX 3070 Ti: If neither the RTX 3070 nor RX 6800 are in stock and the RTX 3070 Ti is available, I'm sure many gamers will be happy to swallow the higher power consumption pill of the RTX 3070 Ti.

I can recommend the card if power, heat, and noise are only secondary to you, and you can find the RTX 3070 Ti at a reasonable price, whatever that may be in your estimation. Strong alternatives are the RTX 3070 non-Ti, Radeon RX 6800, and RX 6700 XT.