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 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 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.

Zotac's GeForce RTX 3070 Ti AMP Holo is the company's flagship RTX 3070 Ti that comes overclocked out of the box. Rated boost frequency is set to 1830 MHz, which is slightly lower than the other cards tested today. Still, at 1440p, the card achieves a 2% performance uplift over the NVIDIA RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition and is 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 Zotac AMP can match the Radeon RX 6800 non-XT. The GeForce RTX 3080 is 13% faster, 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 seen Zotac's AMP Holo cooler on many GeForce 30 Ampere graphics cards, and I'm again amazed by how mesmerizing the RGB lighting along the top edge looks. Cooling performance is decent, reaching 74°C under full load, which is 8°C better than the Founders Edition. Noise levels, on the other hand, are terrible. With 43 dBA, the card is one of the loudest cards I've reviewed in recent months, reaching noise levels almost as high as the Radeon RX 5700 XT reference and not far from the AMD Vega reference designs. I'm surprised Zotac focused so much on temperatures when their cooler clearly isn't up to the task. The better solution would have been to at least match the Founders Edition in noise and see where temperatures end up. 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 card 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 the RTX 3070 Ti, and the reasons. The bottom line is that the RTX 3070 Ti is not nearly as energy efficient as RTX 3070 non-Ti and can't match AMD's Radeons, either. Zotac's AMP Edition sucks up a lot of additional power on top of that. We measured the Founders Edition to consume around 300 W, and Zotac's card needs 323 W. For a 2% performance increase over the 3070 Ti FE, that's pretty hard to justify. I'm surprised efficiency is so poor since other custom designs tested today were much gentler in their power consumption requirements. With those numbers, the Zotac RTX 3070 Ti AMP Holo has worse energy efficiency than all other Ampere cards, worse than all AMD RDNA 2 cards, and worse than all Turing cards with the exception of the RTX 2080 Super. Not good.

NVIDIA has announced a $600 price point for the RTX 3070 Ti, which is $100 higher than the RTX 3070. Zotac hasn't provided any pricing, so we're left guessing. I'd say an additional $50 is something we can certainly expect. In the current market, MSRPs are irrelevant, and any responsible reviewer must take into account the craziness happening out there, with the RTX 3060 selling 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 Zotac RTX 3070 Ti AMP Holo is around $1350. Hopefully, the low-hash-rate (LHR) mining limiter works out on 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 or RX 6800 are in stock and the RTX 3070 Ti is available, I'm sure many gamers will happily to swallow the higher power consumption pill of the RTX 3070 Ti.

While I have no doubt that Zotac will sell out of all their AMP Holo cards, I don't think this card can be recommended. Power consumption, heat, and noise are simply too high. The other RTX 3070 Ti cards reviewed today handled this much better and should be prioritized if available. Strong alternatives are the RTX 3070 non-Ti, Radeon RX 6800, and RX 6700 XT.