MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X 16 GB review – Desired upgrade with contemporary memory expansion and price pressure from AMD

Today sees the second round of the green Super League and NVIDIA officially launches the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super in the form of the so-called MSRP cards with the help of its board partners (AIC). However, with a starting price of 889 euros (799 USD) as the MSRP, it is miles above the street price of the RTX 4070 Ti Non-Super, which starts at just under 799 euros. Today’s test will have to prove whether you will really notice the targeted 99 euro surcharge. What still looked good with the RTX 4070 Super will probably be a little tighter here, at least in terms of the price/performance ratio. AMD is already becoming a party crasher.

Update

NVIDIA had added two more BIOS versions at short notice, which I also tested. Since I have another MSRP card with the same specifications, I compared the results both with the other card (which is coming tomorrow, all benchmarks) and the new BIOS (random samples). The deviation here was less than 1 percent, i.e. always within the measurement inaccuracies. Since the results are also within the range of what colleagues have measured with other MSRP cards and apparently not all users of the Ventus had performance problems, I will refrain from a retest and instead bring a second MSRP card tomorrow morning. However, its few MHz higher clock rate results from a larger cooler and therefore slightly lower temperatures. Nevertheless, this is marginal and almost within the scope of measurement inaccuracies. So, at least with my card, there is no sensation to report. MSI has also issued an official statement in this regard:

“MSI discovered there were further areas where the performance of the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER VENTUS 3X graphics cards could be improved. We have introduced a new BIOS designed to elevate the overall performance of the graphics card to be in line with our expectations. We encourage you to update your sample with the attached BIOS. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and express our gratitude for your understanding and support.”

Let’s look back: at the time, NVIDIA released the RTX 4070 Ti Non-Super as an upper mid-range card for an RRP of 899 euros, hoping to secure ground in this important segment. I don’t even want to start the discussion about the two versions of the RTX 4080 that have been circulated. The final opponent of the new GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super is AMD’s Radeon RX 7900XT, which is currently available from 759 euros, sometimes even a little less. And this is precisely what makes today’s launch so difficult from a customer perspective. With a difference of at least 130 euros, you are already clearly in the no man’s land of the evergreen price jungle. But I will go into this again on the last page.

For technical reasons, the comparison to the RTX 3000 series is therefore missing again today, but it was more important to me, as I already wrote, to first test all new cards from NVIDIA and AMD with a new system, more suitable games and new drivers completely from scratch. The now second mainboard of the old system had unfortunately also given up the ghost after the first new benchmarks (certainly not unexpected after over 100 graphics card and CPU changes), but unfortunately a replacement could not be found so quickly. That’s why I switched to a private Core i9-13900K, which I could easily raise to KS level and thus also to the level of an i9-14900K. Sometimes binning pays off after all.

Today, I am testing the MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X 16 GB in its delivery state as a representative of the MSRP cards, whereby it is representative of the entire 285-watt class of so-called MSRP cards, as the performance is identical. OC is therefore not an issue today, as the power limit cannot be raised.

Important foreword

Of course, as usual, there are many benchmarks, the comprehensive teardown, a very elaborate board, cooler and material analysis with some reverse engineering, as well as the analysis of power consumption and load peaks, including a suitable power supply recommendation. As I know that many colleagues will also repeat all the technical details and theory, which have already been presented in various snippets, I’ll save myself the trouble today and just briefly refer to the data already known. After all, you want to see real figures today and not PR fireworks. The specs will follow shortly, of course.

The card tested today carries a chip from calendar week 45 of 2023 in the form of the AD103-275-A1.

The AD 103-275 and the new Ada architecture

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER is primarily delivered with the AD103-275 SKU, but the rumored AD102-175 GPU (different board, PG141 SKU 323) is also possible. However, both variants are equipped with a total of 8,448 cores and 48 MB L2 cache. The graphics card will have 16 GB GDDR6X memory, which corresponds to a VRAM upgrade of 4 GB compared to the RTX 4070 Ti Non-SUPER and thus support a 256-bit bus interface. The graphics card has a TBP of 285 watts, which in turn corresponds to the value of the non-SUPER variant.

On paper, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER 16 GB GPU offers an average performance increase of 10% over the non-SUPER variant and is expected to compete well with the Radeon RX 7900 XT and yes, AMD is not only picking up the gauntlet but has drastically reduced the price of the RX 7900XT to do so. However, as with the non-SUPER cards, there will be no NVIDIA’s own Founders Edition (FE), only AIC cards, the representative of which I am testing today.

The 66 (instead of 60) 3rd generation RT cores offer up to twice the ray tracing performance, while Shader Execution Reordering (SER) also improves ray tracing operations by a factor of two. In addition, there are a total of 264 texture units (TU) and 96 ROPs. The L2 cache is 48 MB in size and, like the GeForce RTX 4070 Non-Super, the card uses the familiar 16 GB GDDR6X with 10500 MHz clock, but this time on a suitable 256-bit interface, which corresponds to a data rate of 21 Gbps and a bandwidth of 627 GB/s. The card also offers only one NVDEC (decoder) instead of four, but at least two NVENC (encoders). The AV1 encoder is said to work up to 40% more efficiently than H.264.

The card still relies on a PCIe Gen. 4 interface and only for the external power connection with the 12VHPWR connector (12 4 pin) on an element of the PCIe Gen. 5 specification. The TDP is 285 watts and can be increased even further depending on the board partner.

The MSI RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X 16 GB in detail

The card weighs just 1082 grams, which is only 80 grams more than the very compact RTX 4070 Super FE. However, the length of 31.5 cm is generous and the height of 12.5 cm is also higher than the standard 10 cm. In addition, the height means that you have to use the great 12VHPWR adapter, which, however, manages with 2x 6 2-pin PCIe outputs. The installation depth is a rather moderate 4.5 cm plus the 5 mm for the backplate attachment on the rear. This makes it a 2.5 slot card.

The silver-colored look is familiar and the design language of the fan, cover and slot bracket is not new either. MSI uses a single BIOS and if you want to overclock a little, you have to use a suitable tool for the clock, even if the power limit is fixed. The feel is due to the material and is rather mediocre, but at least it looks pleasantly timeless. Incidentally, there is also an exciting material analysis waiting for you.

You can not only plug power into the card, but also video connections. There are four of them, to be precise: three DisplayPort 1.4a and one HDMI 2.1a. This is a shame, especially for DisplayPort, when it comes to the new specifications. A missed opportunity, unfortunately. And with HDMI, you have to play around with the compression from 4K onwards if you want to go above 120 Hz.

That’s this first page done and we’re slowly getting ready for the test.