Zotac RTX 4070 Ti AMP Extreme Airo Review

Name: Zotac RTX 4070 Ti AMP Extreme Airo
Brand: ZOTAC
Price: 880 USD

W1zzard

on Feb 14th, 2023,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: ZOTAC

(24 Comments) »

Introduction

Zotac GeForce RTX 4070 Ti AMP Extreme Airo is the company's fastest model based on the most affordable GeForce RTX 40-series graphics card so far. The AMP Extreme denotes Zotac's highest state of tuning, its highest factory overclocked speeds for the RTX 4070 Ti; while Airo is the company's latest generation of cooling solutions that debuted with these Ada Lovelace GPUs. The GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is designed to dominate the performance segment, with a starting price of $800. It offers you the full feature-set introduced with this generation, including DLSS 3 Frame Generation. It targets maxed out gaming with ray tracing enabled at 1440p, although it's reasonably capable of 4K Ultra HD gaming at close to max settings. You can also take advantage of some of the higher quality presets of DLSS in supported games, if needed.

The GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is based on the 5 nm AD104 silicon, NVIDIA's third largest die based on the "Ada Lovelace" graphics architecture. The SKU was originally meant to be called the RTX 4080 12 GB and launched much earlier in 2022, but was hit by controversy surrounding its name, as it was a vastly different product from the RTX 4080 16 GB, besides the memory size. It was finally launched in January 2023 under a new name and a lower starting price.

The GeForce RTX 4070 Ti uses all units physically present on the AD104 silicon—that's 7,680 CUDA cores across 60 SM, 240 Tensor cores, 60 RT cores, 240 TMUs, and 80 ROPs. The card is endowed with 12 GB of GDDR6X memory, but across a narrow 192-bit wide memory bus—one of the key reasons for the controversy behind the SKU's former name. Even at a blistering GDDR6 speed of 21 Gbps, the memory only yields 504 GB/s of bandwidth, which is much lower than the 608 GB/s the RTX 3070 Ti churns out. However, NVIDIA improved the memory sub-system at an architecture-level with these GPUs, with much larger on-die caches, so they aren't as memory bandwidth-sensitive as "Ampere."

The Airo design language behind the Ice Storm 2.0 series of cooling solutions by Zotac is a work of art—with a fluidic design language for the cooler shroud and backplate designed to maximize airflow, and exposure of the massive heatsink underneath, without coming across as too minimal. There's plenty of RGB lighting to be had in the form of the Spectra 2.0 lighting kit, with a large diffuser that runs along the length of the card, and a few bits on the backplate. The card puts out a 3-pin ARGB header, so you can sync the rest of your lighting with it. The AMP Extreme Airo comes with a factory-overclocked speed of up to 2700 MHz boost (compared to 2610 MHz reference). The memory is left untouched at 21 Gbps. Zotac is pricing the card at $880, a 10% premium over the NVIDIA baseline price.

Short 10-Minute Video Comparing 10x RTX 4070 Ti Super

Our goal with the videos is to create short summaries, not go into all the details and test results, which can be found in our written reviews.

GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Market Segment Analysis
	Price	Cores	ROPs	Core Clock	Boost Clock	Memory Clock	GPU	Transistors	Memory
RTX 2080 Ti	$420	4352	88	1350 MHz	1545 MHz	1750 MHz	TU102	18600M	11 GB, GDDR6, 352-bit
RTX 3070	$400	5888	96	1500 MHz	1725 MHz	1750 MHz	GA104	17400M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3070 Ti	$520	6144	96	1575 MHz	1770 MHz	1188 MHz	GA104	17400M	8 GB, GDDR6X, 256-bit
RX 6800	$480	3840	96	1815 MHz	2105 MHz	2000 MHz	Navi 21	26800M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 6800 XT	$560	4608	128	2015 MHz	2250 MHz	2000 MHz	Navi 21	26800M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3080	$570	8704	96	1440 MHz	1710 MHz	1188 MHz	GA102	28000M	10 GB, GDDR6X, 320-bit
RTX 3080 Ti	$750	10240	112	1365 MHz	1665 MHz	1188 MHz	GA102	28000M	12 GB, GDDR6X, 384-bit
RX 6900 XT	$680	5120	128	2015 MHz	2250 MHz	2000 MHz	Navi 21	26800M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 6950 XT	$800	5120	128	2100 MHz	2310 MHz	2250 MHz	Navi 21	26800M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3090	$850	10496	112	1395 MHz	1695 MHz	1219 MHz	GA102	28000M	24 GB, GDDR6X, 384-bit
RTX 4070 Ti	$820	7680	80	2310 MHz	2610 MHz	1313 MHz	AD104	35800M	12 GB, GDDR6X, 192-bit
Zotac RTX 4070 Ti AMP Extreme	$880	7680	80	2310 MHz	2700 MHz	1313 MHz	AD104	35800M	12 GB, GDDR6X, 192-bit
RX 7900 XT	$880	5376	192	2000 MHz	2400 MHz	2500 MHz	Navi 31	57700M	20 GB, GDDR6, 320-bit
RTX 3090 Ti	$1400	10752	112	1560 MHz	1950 MHz	1313 MHz	GA102	28000M	24 GB, GDDR6X, 384-bit
RTX 4080	$1200	9728	112	2205 MHz	2505 MHz	1400 MHz	AD103	45900M	16 GB, GDDR6X, 256-bit
RX 7900 XTX	$1000	6144	192	2300 MHz	2500 MHz	2500 MHz	Navi 31	57700M	24 GB, GDDR6, 384-bit
RTX 4090	$1600	16384	176	2235 MHz	2520 MHz	1313 MHz	AD102	76300M	24 GB, GDDR6X, 384-bit

Packaging

The Card

Zotac is taking an all-smooth approach with their GeForce RTX 4070 Ti AMP Extreme. The curves on their card are almost female-elegant. On the back you get a high-quality metal backplate, the front cooler shroud is made from plastic.

Zotac has integrated a large RGB lighting element along the top edge. There's more lighting at the bottom and an additional illumination zone on the logo in the backplate.

Dimensions of the card are 36.0 x 15.0 cm, and it weighs 1953 g.

Installation requires three slots in your system.

Display connectivity includes three standard DisplayPort 1.4a ports and one HDMI 2.1a (same as Ampere).

NVIDIA introduced the concept of dual NVDEC and NVENC Codecs with the Ada Lovelace architecture. This means there are two independent sets of hardware-accelerators; so you can encode and decode two streams of video in parallel or one stream at double the FPS rate. The new 8th Gen NVENC now accelerates AV1 encoding, besides HEVC. You also get an "optical flow accelerator" unit that is able to calculate intermediate frames for videos, to smooth playback. The same hardware unit is used for frame generation in DLSS 3.

The card uses the new 12+4 pin ATX 12VHPWR connector, which is rated for up to 600 W of power draw. An adapter cable from 3x PCIe 8-pin is included (which is rated for up to 450 W). Of course the 4x 8-pin to 16-pin adapter cables from RTX 4090 will also work with the RTX 4080, but the card won't need that much power.

Right next to the power connector you find the dual BIOS switch which lets you toggle between the default performance BIOS and a secondary quiet BIOS. Interestingly, Zotac chose to use a push button instead of a physical switch, which means you can only switch between the two when the card is powered up. Only power is sufficient, no need to go into BIOS or Windows, there's no need to install any software. After pressing the button, the RGB lights will flash red for the performance BIOS and blue for the quiet BIOS. The setting is saved between reboots and power offs, so no complaints from me.

Hidden behind the power/BIOS switch area is a red connector that's used to sync the RGB lighting effects of the card with your system. The second photo shows the included cable that converts the signal to a classic 3-pin ARGB.

Teardown

Zotac's RTX 4070 Ti AMP Extreme cooler is identical to that of the RTX 4080 AMP Extreme. There's nine heatpipes installed to move heat away quickly from the GPU, to the heatsink. The main cooler also provides cooling for the VRM and memory chips.

The backplate is made of metal and protects the card against damage during installation and handling.

High-resolution PCB Pictures

These pictures are for the convenience of volt modders and people who would like to see all the finer details on the PCB. Feel free to link back to us and use these in your articles, videos or forum posts.