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 MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Gaming X Trio is a factory-overclocked custom-design variant selling at $650. It runs at a rated boost clock of 2610 MHz, which is a 5.5% increase over the NVIDIA Founders Edition clocks of 2475 MHz. MSI is also including adjustable RGB lighting and a triple-slot, triple-fan thermal solution.

Averaged over the 25 games in our test suite, at 1440p resolution, the MSI RTX 4070 Gaming X Trio comes out 3% ahead of the NVIDIA RTX 4070 FE. This makes the card the fastest RTX 4070 we've tested so far. Just 3% isn't much though, it seems all vendors were very conservative with their factory overclocks. Compared to last generation's RTX 3070, the performance uplift is 30%—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 MSI is slightly faster than the Radeon RX 6800 XT, and is close behind 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.

MSI's Gaming X Trio is clearly a more premium design than the MSRP cards that we've tested yesterday. The noise levels are fantastic—only 26 dBA under full load, whisper-quiet, even with the factory overclock—very impressive. Temperatures are good, too, with only 62°C, the card runs cool at all times. While the ASUS TUF is still a little bit quieter with 23 dBA, the differences are small and subjectively impossible to tell apart, especially when you have other noise sources in the room. MSI does not include a dual BIOS on their card, and I don't think it's needed anyway. Rather they picked great fan settings by default. Our apples-to-apples cooler test confirms that the MSI Gaming X Trio has a very powerful cooler that's better than all the other RTX 4070s that we've tested, except for the ASUS TUF, which is another 2.5°C cooler at the same noise levels and heat load.

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. Unlike most other cards tested, MSI has increased their card's default power limit from 200 W to 215 W, which definitely helps gain a bit in performance. MSI also gives you the largest manual adjustment range of the whole market—up to 240 W, which will make the card interesting for more advanced overclockers.

Just like the NVIDIA FE, MSI is using a 16-pin power input, an adapter is included. Considering that an 8-pin (plus the PCIe slot) only give you up to 225 W of power, it makes sense to use the 16-pin. I think people are sufficiency educated now that they need to properly plug it in, so no complaints from me.

According to MSI, the RTX 4070 Gaming X Trio will sell for a price of $650, which is a $50 increase over the NVIDIA MSRP, or +8%. The factory overclock is good for 3%, 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. Even if you want a low-noise experience, then the ASUS Dual for $600 has you covered, it runs as quiet as the MSI Gaming X Trio, just with higher temperatures.

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 $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.