Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 review: our full review –

Difficult for many months now to recommend the purchase of a gaming PC or a graphics card. Prices exploded during the shortage and the Covid without ever really coming down. It is not the GeForce RTX 4000 generation that could contradict us so far with prices often above 1000 euros.

Nvidia now comes with a much more attractive proposition. The GeForce RTX 4070 is announced with a price of 659 euros which makes it fit into a greater number of budgets.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070Technical characteristics

The GeForce RTX 4070 uses the same AD104 chip as the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti with several concessions to achieve a lower price. The card includes fewer calculation units than its big sister, but also one less encoding engine. We will come back to it.

According to Nvidia, the GeForce RTX 4070 should allow modern games to run in 1440p at more than 100 frames per second, in particular thanks to DLSS 3.

Our test copy was lent to us by Nvidia.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070Design: return to a normal format

To be accessible, a graphics card must both cost little, but also be easy to integrate into a PC. Far from the very large cards offered until then by Nvidia, the GeForce RTX 4070 returns to a double slot format which appears to us in 2023 as a small card. The manufacturer has simply taken over the general design of its GeForce RTX 3080.

Source: Nvidia

Source: Nvidia

Installation is very easy and the power supply again goes through a 12VHPWR connector. The adapter to two 8-pin PCI-E ports is provided in the box.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070Configuration used for the test

• Motherboard : ROG Strix Z790-E GAMING Wi-Fi
• Processor : Intel Core i9-13900KF (5.8 GHz, 24 cores, 32 threads)
• Cooling : NZXT Kraken Z73 RGB (360mm)
• Memory : 32GB DDR5 5200MHz RAM (Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB)
• SSD: Seagate FireCuda 520 1TB NVMe PCIe 4.0
• Feed : Corsair HX1500i
• Case: NZXT H7 Flow
• Software : Windows 11 2022 (with Nvidia GeForce Game Ready Drivers 531.42)

We used an ASUS ROG XG27UQR 27-inch monitor with 4K UHD 3840 x 2160 pixel resolution capable of going up to 144 Hz.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070Synthetic benchmarks

3DMark Time Spy Extreme

3DMark’s Time Spy Extreme test evaluates the performance of graphics cards with DirectX 12 without taking into account the ray tracing.

We can already see here a first trend that the rest of the test will confirm: the GeForce RTX 4070 has a performance profile in rasterization modeled on that of the RTX 3080. The difference between the results of the two cards is very small. We also find the way Nvidia usually manages its generation changes: the 70 range card takes up the performance of the 80 range card of the previous generation.

3DMark Ray Tracing

With Ada Lovelace, Nvidia promises performance gains on applications using the ray tracing. 3DMark offers a benchmark dedicated to this function.

The difference with the GeForce RTX 3080 is rather significant, going from 46.55 to 50.75 frames per second. This test also confirms Nvidia’s lead over its direct competitor. The GeForce RTX 4070 outperforms the Radeon RX 7900 XTX in this test, while AMD’s graphics card costs twice as much.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070Performance in video games

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 continues to be the technical spearhead of gaming. CDProjekt Red’s game combines a very gourmet urban open world and ray tracing.

In 1440p with detail and ray tracing in ultra, without the overdrive mode, we arrive at 38 frames per second on average without the DLSS. The activation of DLSS 3 is life-saving and allows you to go to 118 images per second on average with a minimum of 70 images per second. The game therefore remains fluid at all times.

It is interesting to see that DLSS 3 implies an increase in latency compared to DLSS 2 with Nvidia Reflex. However, it remains lower than the benchmark of the game without DLSS.

flight simulator

The Flight Simulator game was a technical slap when it was released in 2020. Not only is it very graphically accomplished, it offers a very advanced and realistic flight simulation. This is what gives this title a particularity in the video game, it is both greedy for the processor and for the graphics card of the PC.

On this game, the activation of DLSS 3 makes sense. Indeed, it will allow the graphics card to no longer be limited by the processor, since the additional images are entirely generated by AI. What to expect 137 frames per second on average with this GeForce RTX 4070 in 2560 x 1440 pixels with all settings at maximum and DLSS 3 activated. The measured latency is 45ms, which is a bit high, but is quite acceptable on this game. Flight Simulator is not a competitive FPS. The fluidity rarely falls below 85 frames per second, so the game remains fluid at all times.

Overwatch 2

While waiting for the release of Diablo IV, Blizzard fans can still keep busy with Overwatch 2. The competitive FPS is very well optimized, but it’s interesting to see how far the GeForce RTX 4070 can push the game.

At 1440p with high details, the game runs at an average of 254 frames per second with an extremely low latency of 11 ms. We noted a minimum 1% at 109 frames per second.

Fortnite

Fortnite continues to be the benchmark for multiplayer video games. The popularity of the title does not decrease and it continues to chain events to mix diverse and varied universes. With its graphic overhaul, Epic Games’ game has become quite greedy when you go up the settings.

In 2560 x 1440 pixels with the settings at maximum and the DLSS 2 in quality mode, we obtain an average of 76 frames per second with a minimum rarely reached of 39 frames per second. To play on a high frequency screen, it will therefore be necessary to make some concessions on the graphic options on this title.

Other games

• A Plague Tale Requiem (1440p, Ultra, DLSS 3): 111fps;
• Resident Evil 4 (1440p, max, no DLSS): 94fps;
• Spider-Man Remastered (1440p, Extreme, DLSS 3): 157 fps;
• Red Dead Redemption 2 (1440p, presets maxed out, no DLSS): 93fps;
• Doom Eternal (1440p, RT, Balanced DLSS): 217fps;
• Metro Exodus (1440p, Extreme, RT Ultra, no DLSS): 79 fps;
• Forza Horizon 5 (1440p, Extreme, RT Extreme, no DLSS): 167 fps;
• Watch Dogs Legion (1440p, Ultra, DLSS Balanced): 74fps.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070Video editing: a small concession

With Ada Lovelace, Nvidia previously offered two AV1 encoding engines on its graphics cards. This allowed twice as fast encoding on such an easily parallelizable task. This is one of the concessions made on the GeForce RTX 4070: only one encoding engine is activated.

It is common to see manufacturers like AMD, Intel or Nvidia deactivate certain functions of their chips when going downmarket. This makes it possible to increase the yield of production lines by marketing chips which would not have passed all the criteria with all of their functions activated.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070Consumption

The other strong point of this GeForce RTX 4070 is the control of its consumption.

In our tests, we noted a maximum consumption of 190W similar to the RTX 3070 despite much more impressive performance. This is an important choice on the part of Nvidia, because controlled consumption will make it easier to buy such a graphics card without having to invest in power.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070Price and availability

One of the strengths of the GeForce RTX 4070 is to finally offer a softer price for an Ada Lovelace card. With a recommended price of 659 euros, this obviously still represents an investment, but the price seems more reasonable to us for anyone who wants to invest in a new graphics card. The GeForce RTX 4070 will be available from Thursday, April 13 at 3 p.m.

There are no offers at the moment

In this price range, we find in particular the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT card, which consumes more energy and is a little less efficient.