GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4070 Ti GAMING OC 12G Graphics Card

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The GeForce RTX 4070 Ti has arrived, and I’ve finally spent some time getting acquainted with the GPU that was originally supposed to be the 12GB RTX 4080. This little tidbit of its’ “unlaunching” meant a couple things for this rereleased GPU: this card comes with a $100 MSRP discount to better align in the model hierarchy, and for unknown reasons—NVIDIA themselves skipped out on making a Founders Edition variant.

As a result, partner brands are left to bridge the gap between next-gen PC graphics and pricing with the Ada Lovelace architecture, in the face of AMD’s recent RDNA3-based Radeon RX 7900 XT/7900 XTX options. For this review I tested GIGABYTE’s GeForce RTX 4070 Ti GAMING OC 12G, a card intended for gamers eager to dip their toes into the enthusiast category.

This puts it right on the heels of its RTX 4080 counterpart, and a definitive upgrade from the Turing-derived RTX 2080 Ti and TITAN RTX. Without a doubt, it’s certainly a more palatable option in the face of current price markups.

A Pragmatic Gaming GPU

Upon unboxing this GIGABYTE model, I couldn’t help but notice that this card is quite bulky and completely threw me off even by non-FE standards. I thought my mind was playing tricks on me until I compared my current RTX 3070 and this GAMING OC 12G side-by-side – and yes, the GIGABYTE variant is noticeably larger at 13.2 inches/336mm even dwarfing the OEM RTX 3090/3090 Ti (at 12.3in/313mm).

The GAMING OC 12G is deliberate with its industrial-like heft with its triple slot fan design, huge radiator heatsink, and LED lighting. All of it is functional with the WINDFORCE active fans, featuring alternate spin patterns for increased airflow and semi passive cooling for added efficiency, even the fan edges are ribbed and curved to reduce audible turbulence. The LED accents also brings practicality to the table as they serve as a temperature indicator changing from turquoise to deep orange whenever the GPU is under full load. However, with a observed power consumption draw of 285W and a safe 63- 69°C sustained load range, this card remains whisper-quiet most of the time.

For customization, GIGABYTE recommends you download their CONTROL CENTER software which provides an intuitive interface that allows users to adjust clock speed, voltage, fan mode and power target in real-time. This is also meant to unify all your other GIGABYTE supported products without the complication of using multiple apps or hassle of updating separate utilities. It is an extra suite similar to what ASUS and MSi does, but power users will benefit the most if they plan on bringing out the most incremental advantages that this GAMING OC card has to offer.

GPU Specifications

In terms of specs, the RTX 4070 Ti fits in line with 7680 CUDA cores, 192-bit memory bus, 2640MHz core clock, 12GB GDDR6X VRAM – along with third-gen Ray Tracing cores and fourth-gen Tensor cores. What we have is a mixed blend of both old and new figures when comparing this against previous Ampere GPUs. The 4070 Ti enjoys the same amount of VRAM like the RTX 3080 Ti but with just half of its 384-bit memory interface width, and only gets two-thirds of CUDA cores. As a result, it’s a rough equivalent of something between the RTX 3080 10GB or RTX 3080 Ti economically.

All standardized RTX 4070 Ti models are equipped with one HDMI 2.1a and three DisplayPort 1.4a ports with HDCP 2.3, which are theoretically capable of achieving maximum pixel resolutions of 4K@240Hz (4096 x 2160) and 8K@60Hz with DSC enabled (7860 x 4320) respectively. Based on your PC build and compatible display your results may vary, but it is futureproofed enough to hit the 120Hz sweet spot of high-end gaming.

DLSS 3 is another feature utilizing real-time deep learning image enhancement and upscaling technologies. Super sampling is augmented through an algorithmic optical frame-generation and doubling framerate count—effectively allowing graphical pipelines to run at a lower resolution, and then delivering a higher resolution with the same level of detail rendering. Unlike prior GPUs where DLSS 2.0 is available on all RTX card, DLSS 3.0 isn’t backwards-compatible and exclusive to the RTX 40 family and beyond.

1440p Performance

I tested the card using a Ryzen 9 7900X CPU on a GIGABYTE B650I AORUS ULTRA Mini-ITX motherboard, with a 32GB (2x16GB) Kingston Fury Renegade DDR5-6400 dual memory kit. For cooling and efficiency choices I opted for the Noctua NH-D15 CPU cooler mentioned earlier and a Cooler Master XG850 Plus Platinum power supply. On the storage side, a 1TB Samsung 980 Pro MVMe (PCIe 4×4) SSD were also used during testing.

Let’s talk about how the RTX 4070 Ti runs in the real world. We’re familiar with NVIDIA hyping up their GPU family as the Next Big Thing, or other lofty marketing platitudes—this time announcing their card will easily ‘max out’ any 1440p configuration you can throw at it. At the very least, the RTX 4070 Ti will be an excellent and supremely long-term GPU for non-4K gaming, even before enabling NVIDIA’s latest-gen DLSS 3 enhancements.

However, when pitted against the Radeon RX 7900 XT it falls a few frames short in some titles, though not enough to make any real difference. If you ignore insane price markups, the RTX 4070 Ti holds up quite well in nearly every game we threw at it, offering fantastic performance. For example, favorites like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Far Cry 6 and Final Fantasy XV performed especially well and were far from slow.

4K/DLSS 3 Performance

Although the RTX 4070 Ti feels right at home for great 1440p gaming, its real claim to fame is that it’s billed as a technical successor and surpasses prior GeForce juggernaut: the RTX 3090. That’s an incredibly bold claim to the point of disbelief, sometimes even squaring off the more higher-end RTX 3090 Ti considering how lavishly priced those GPUs were at launch. 4K performance is commendable, but the catch to achieve this is that the RTX 4070 Ti must be augmented with the suite of NVIDIA features to reach that coveted threshold.

Of course, this will be dependent on whether games are developed to take advantage of Ray Tracing, or more importantly DLSS 3 AI upscaling. Again, the basic results were impressive with DLSS since you get a “free” framerate boost without completely sacrificing visuals, and most games I tested ran well above 60fps at 4K. All of this comes before the revelation of diminishing returns against competing and/or much more expensive GPUs, along with marginal benchmark gains most users probably couldn’t perceive anyway. These factors make the RTX 4070 Ti look like a golden goose of sorts.

You’ll still have to compensate for graphic settings if you want to enjoy all of these features at once. However, NVIDIA has a greater affinity for Ray Tracing when matched against something like the RX 7900 XT, which remains superior in terms of pure (i.e. traditional) rasterized performance. AMD also falls behind the feature curve with their RDNA3 architecture, and its own FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) technology still has a way to go before it’s a significant alternative for serious utilization.

But this GPU isn’t perfect either, as the RTX 4070 Ti doesn’t fully benefit from DLSS 3 in a complete sense. Upscaling with modest presets look great for the most part, but the caveat with AI-generated frames is that you don’t ‘feel’ them outright—unlike a performance rise in traditionally rendered frames. The result is that DLSS 3 may not effectively contribute to a greater sense of smoothness or improved responsiveness in extreme moments.

Apparently, there’s no replacement for displacement as its bigger RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 brothers are more graphically proficient through hardware alone.

Conclusion: “New Normal”

When NVIDIA pivoted their RTX 4080 12GB GPU into becoming the RTX 4070 Ti, the sudden brand retooling threw their partners for a loop. However,  consumers may gain the advantage with the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4070 Ti GAMING OC 12G by not overcrowding the lineup, and still looking like an decent value—possibly avoiding any perceived notion of price gouging. It’s packed with features and users can expect phenomenal performance in this “new normal” premium market, as far as attainability is concerned.

Much of the technical execution has finally caught up to what NVIDIA promised a few generations back. Now I’m more curious than ever to know what was left on the table for upper-tier GPUs and my interest has piqued for the RTX 4080 since I haven’t played with that card. Maybe I’ll get the chance later if NVIDIA is willing to oblige, and hopefully I’ll be able to find out in the near future.