Two faster GPUs, one better deal

For the discerning gamer who didn’t rush out to grab NVIDIA’s RTX 40-series GPUs over the last few years, the company’s new Super cards are genuinely compelling. They all deliver far more power than before — so much so that the $599 RTX 4070 Super is actually a decent 4K gaming card. But the $999 RTX 4080 Super is also a solid deal for power-hungry gamers, since it’s $200 less than the original 4080. Between those two cards, NVIDIA now has desirable upgrade options for mid-range and high-end gamers.

But what of the new RTX 4070 Ti? It’s stuck right between its two siblings, with no clear audience. After all, if you’re ready to spend $799 on a video card, stretching a bit more for the 4080 Super might make more sense for the additional power. Otherwise, you might as well just get the 4070 Super, overclock it a bit, and spend the extra $200 on another SSD or more RAM. It’s a conundrum entirely of NVIDIA’s making, one that might have been solved by giving the 4070 Ti Super a slight $50 discount. (And it’s even more confusing when some cards, like the ASUS model we reviewed, are priced above MSRP.)

Just like the 4070 Super, the 4070 Ti Super and 4080 Super feature more CUDA cores than the original models, as well as slightly higher clock speeds. The 4070 Ti Super packs in 8,448 CUDA cores compared to 7,680 on the 4070 Ti, while the 4080 Super has 10,240 CUDA cores instead of 9,728. The 4070 Ti Super also has 4GB more VRAM, bringing it up to 16GB of GDD6X memory, while the 4080 Super sticks with 16GB. (NVIDIA likely doesn’t want to edge much closer to the beastly RTX 4090, which is now selling for hundreds more than its original $1,599 launch price.)

NVIDIA

The 4080 Super is a solid value for high-end gaming, since it’s both faster and $200 less than its predecessor.

Pros

• Excellent 4K and 1,440p performance
• Cool performance with quiet fans, Cool performance with quiet fans

Cons

• Still far more expensive than previous high-end cards

$999 at NVIDIA

Given the RAM bump, I expected the RTX 4070 Ti Super to be far faster than the 4070 Ti, but it ended up scoring only 742 points higher in the 3DMark TimeSpy Extreme benchmark. It fares better on games, scoring 15fps higher in both Halo Infinite (104fps) and Cyberpunk 2077 (93fps) while playing in 4K with maxed out graphics and ray tracing settings. The 4080 Super’s results were similarly muted: It hit 289 more points than the 4080 in TimeSpy Extreme, and it was 10fps higher in Cyberpunk (103fps) while playing in 4K with ray tracing.

Content creators will also appreciate the additional horsepower. The 4070 Ti Super scored 87,707 points in the Luxmark HDR benchmark and 7,424 points in Blender’s test, compared to 75,997 and 7,247 on the 4070 Ti super. The 4080 Super hit 99,515 points in Luxmark HDR compared to 94,832 points from before.

These are the results you’d expect by simply throwing more CUDA cores into these cards, so I’m not exactly disappointed. But after benchmarking both GPUs and comparing their results to the 4070 Super, I’m more underwhelmed by the 4070 Ti Super. I can understand NVIDIA not wanting to make it much faster, but it seriously needs to be cheaper than the original 4070 Ti. Otherwise, like I said, the 4070 Super is far more compelling, and I wouldn’t be surprised if cheaper 4070 Ti cards pop up.

We reviewed the ASUS TUF Gaming 4070 Ti Super (which is currently selling for $850), as well as NVIDIA’s Founders Edition 4080 Super. The ASUS GPU sports three fans and a typical heatsink design, whereas NVIDIA’s card once again uses its unique (and very effective) vapor chamber cooling setup. Both cards hovered around 75 Celsius under load, but the ASUS GPU was noticeably louder thanks to those three large fans. I could still hear the 4080 Super spin up under pressure, but it wasn’t nearly as loud.

If you can’t tell by now, the biggest selling point of the 4080 Super is that it’s $200 less than the original. Not only is it a better deal on its own, but its lower price should (hopefully) help to reduce the cost of older 4080 cards eventually too. And if you’re not ready to shell out $999 for a video card, then the $599 4070 Super is no slouch either.