Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GAMING OC 8GB Graphics Card

Product Information

Unfortunately though, the 3070 Ti doesn't really deliver on its premise, offering what is typically a single digit performance bump over the regular 3070 that simply isn't good enough given its 20 percent higher asking price - and that's without factoring in the normal Covid-era markups for graphics cards of any flavour. After a genuinely good value RTX 3060 Ti and an RTX 3080 Ti that brought 3090 performance to a lower price point, the 3070 Ti is therefore something of an unexpected combo-breaker. CUDA cores break down the various tasks required to render a frame, like lighting, geometry, etc., and works on these tasks in parallel, stitching it all together in the end to draw a frame onto the video output for the card. The more CUDA cores the card has, the faster it can churn out frames which in turn gives a better frames per second while gaming or doing other, similar graphics intensive tasks. If that's the case, even with the possible performance increase with DLSS from the RTX 3070 Ti vs RTX 3070 cards, you're going to get an even bigger boost to DLSS performance with the RTX 3080, making it the much better choice if you're looking for something better than the RTX 3070.

Now that you're familiar with the premise, the hardware and our testing apparatus, let's get onto the results!

But why, though?

Based on the rumored specifications and the expected improvements in architecture and features like DLSS 3.0 and Ray Tracing 3.0, the RTX 4060 Ti is expected to outperform the RTX 3070 in many respects on modern games/gaming benchmarks. When you're already working with 5,888 CUDA cores, the extra 256 cores are helpful, but that's only a 4.34% increase. So, if the number of CUDA cores translated directly into frames per second (they don't, but just for the sake of argument), and you were getting 100 fps on an RTX 3070, you would only get 104 fps on an RTX 3070 Ti. Again, it is an improvement, but not a huge one. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is built on the same Ampere graphics architecture as the rest of the RTX 30 series graphics cards. We've gone in-depth on this architecture in our RTX 3080 review, but we'll give a bit of a refresher here. So, should you buy the RTX 3070 Ti or the RTX 3070? At launch, it's probably not going to really matter, since both cards are almost impossible to find. Especially since for most gamers, they're just going to be happy to have the chance to buy a graphics card at all.

Not surprisingly, while 4K ultra gaming gave the RTX 3070 Ti its biggest lead over the RTX 3070 (11%), it also got its biggest loss (17%) against the 3080. 4K also narrowed the gap between the 3070 Ti and the RX 6800, as AMD's Infinity Cache starts to hit its limits at 4K. The only one thing left to mention in terms of the hardware here is that we're again looking at an Ampere-class graphics card, so you get the usual third-gen Tensor cores, second-gen RT cores and industry-leading NVEnc encoders plus AV1 decoding. The minimum required power supply for a RTX 3070 Ti is a 750W with 2x 8 pin PCIe connectors, although we do recommend a higher wattage supply for a comfortable overhead. What case is the NVIDIA GeForce 3070 Ti compatible with? And, obviously, you can't talk about the RTX 3070 Ti without talking about, well, RTX. Just like the rest of the cards of this generation, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti has RT cores, with accelerate ray tracing, making games that support it, well, playable. These days, the amount of games that support the technology is growing, thanks in large part to AMD graphics cards also able to power ray-traced workloads.Between the two cards, the RTX 3080 has 2,560 more CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) cores than the RTX 3070 Ti. This is easily the biggest advantage of the RTX 3080, since CUDA cores are what do all the graphics processing. In the grand scheme of GPU evolution, the RTX 4060 Ti appears poised to make a significant impact in the mid-range market, at least according to the still-circulating rumor mill. This GPU is expected to outperform its predecessor, the RTX 3070, in numerous ways. Its advanced architecture and Ti specifications, coupled with the power of DLSS 3.0 and Ray Tracing 3.0, set the stage for the RTX 4060 Ti to deliver a potent performance in a wide array of workloads due to its processor. This suggests that the RTX 4060 Ti will not just be a viable upgrade from the RTX 3070, but could very well redefine what we expect from mid-range GPUs in the future. Frequently Asked Questions Is RTX 4060 Ti better than the 3070? The basic idea behind the RTX 3070 Ti is simple enough. Nvidia takes the GA104 GPU that powers the RTX 3070 and RTX 3060 Ti, only this time it's the full 48 SM variant of the chip, and pairs it with GDDR6X. While Nvidia could have tried doing this last year, both the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 were already struggling to get enough GDDR6X memory, and delaying by nine months allowed Nvidia to build up enough inventory of both the GPU and memory for this launch. Nvidia has also implemented its Ethereum hashrate limiter, basically cutting mining performance in half on crypto coins that use the Ethash / Dagger-Hashimoto algorithm. Now, the RTX 3070 Ti isn't supposed to be improving on the RTX 3080 (that would be the RTX 3080 Ti), but the RTX 3070 Ti is supposed to partially bridge the gap between the RTX 3070 and RTX 3080, so how well does it do that? It's an extremely effective method of cooling your graphics card, and it meant that even testing it during the middle of a heatwave in New York City, the RTX 3070 Ti peaked at just 82°C. That's a bit higher than the RTX 3080 in the same conditions, but we attribute that to the slightly shorter card.

Interestingly, comparisons between the RTX 4070 and the RTX 3080 have shown that the former, despite having seemingly inferior hardware, can outperform the latter when DLSS 3.0 is enabled. This suggests that the RTX 4060 Ti could potentially deliver superior ray tracing performance despite certain hardware limitations, marking it with some impressive performance levels amid the Ada Lovelace architecture. RTX 4060 Ti vs RTX 3070: Final thoughts Once things have settled down and you have a genuine choice between the two, though, there's really very little reason to go for the RTX 3070 Ti unless you're one of the very few out there who is looking for a huge improvement in gaming performance with modest graphics settings. Otherwise, you're just not going to see the kind of improvement in high end performance to justify the extra cost. However, turning on ray tracing is generally a pretty huge performance hit, which means DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) comes in handy to lighten the load a bit. This tech uses AI to upscale your game from a lower resolution to your native resolution, so you can turn on more eye candy without turning your game into a slideshow.

Clock Speeds

Airflow Control: Don't sweat it, Airflow Control guides the air to exactly where it needs to be for maximum cooling. The RTX 3070 Ti series is 4K/UHD compatible. From gaming to media, RTX graphics cards deliver the performance you need. Can I play VR games with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti? But the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti doesn't exist in a vacuum. At 1440p, the RTX 3070 Ti is faster than the RTX 3070, but not so much that it'll make a huge difference. In Metro Exodus, we're talking the difference between 60 fps and 66 fps. That is a pretty solid 10% jump, but it's not going to exactly be noticeable, and probably isn't worth the 20% price premium you're going to pay. The anticipated performance capabilities of the RTX 4060 Tiare particularly exciting, especially when viewed in comparison to the RTX 3070. Even though the RTX 3070 has a respectable architecture, the 4060 Ti, with its newer architecture, is expected to deliver a more potent punch with its DLSS 3.0 capabilities and great power efficiency.