The start of a new year means updating our graphics with the latest drivers and adding new games to our test protocol. As you can imagine, this takes time, and the graphics will continue to expand over the coming weeks, with older-generation cards being added as we go along. Today, we’re going to focus on NVIDIA’s new Founders Edition RTX 4070 SUPER, announced last week for the CES 2024 launch. Other “SUPER” models will be arriving in the course of January, and we’ll of course be there to test the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER and the RTX 4080 SUPER.
This new card, even if it’s more accurate to call it a ” refresh “, will take its place in our test table in 1440p definition. NVIDIA will also be keeping the RTX 4070 model even with the arrival of this RTX 4070 SUPER, but it’s the RTX 4070 Ti that will see its production come to an end. It’s at the price level that there will be a change. The RTX 4070 SUPER has an MSRP of $599 (659 euros), the former price of the RTX 4070, which is now priced at $549. So there are bound to be some bargains to be had in the days ahead.
Reviews of partner graphics cards priced above NVIDIA’s MSRP and/or overclocked will appear tomorrow. So don’t forget to come back tomorrow to discover the test of two partner cards. Many thanks to NVIDIAÂ for making this RTX 4070 SUPER 12 GB Founders Edition sample available.
[nextpage title=”The NVIDIA RTX 4070 SUPER FE:”]
Architecture :
As a reminder, the cards in the “Founders Edition” series are unique models offered by NVIDIA. The main advantage of these boards is that they are offered at a “locked-in” price, which will not change in the coming weeks or months unless the price is lowered. This NVIDIA RTX 4070 SUPER Founders Edition is announced at $599. NVIDIA partners will also be offering their own models. Visually, NVIDIA has kept a similar design to previous boards, with a 2-slot width and very interesting proportions, as it will easily fit into any case.
This RTX 4070 features 7168 CUDA cores, 20% more than the RTX 4070, and a TSMC 4nm manufacturing process with a TGP of 220 watts. In terms of memory, it features 12 GB of 192-bit GDDR6X memory, which translates into a bandwidth of 504 GB/s.
The Founders Edition bundle:
So what do we find in this imposing box? As usual, NVIDIA has taken great care with the packaging, offering a cardboard box in which to conceal the RTX 4070 SUPER Founders Edition. It’s always exciting to discover the new packaging offered by NVIDIA when a new generation arrives. To mark the difference between the “SUPER” models, the lettering changes from light to dark gray.
The box is simply huge, measuring 395 x 195 x 192 mm.
The box opens from the front to reveal the RTX 4070 SUPER Founders Edition. Once this is removed, a small box is revealed, containing the adapter for the card’s power supply.
The bundle includes a 16-pin (12 4) to two 8-pin 150 w adapters (300 w total). This adapter is necessary for those who don’t have a power supply with a 12VHPWR port or their own power supply adapter. Please note that NVIDIA is the sole supplier of the adapter, and therefore provides it to its partners.
Cooling :
NVIDIA has retained the proven cooling principle of the previous generation. The fans are 92 mm models, responsible for keeping the radiator in contact with the graphics chip and the various PCB components cool. The black fans have 7 blades and will remain at rest when the board is not in use and the temperature remains below 35°C. Personally, this is a very interesting, all-purpose format, while the board’s finish has nothing to envy NVIDIA’s partner brands.
As with any cooling system, the aim is to keep the GPU cool while producing the least perceptible noise pollution. NVIDIA therefore came up with the idea of using two fans, placed on either side of the graphics card. The one on the left draws in air from inside the case and then expels it through the back of the card.
The other fan, located on the right, also draws air from your case to dissipate the heat of the steam chamber, before being expelled in the upper position, still within your case. Needless to say, you’ll need to opt for good air circulation inside your case if you want to keep your components at cool temperatures. Aesthetically, this is an ultra-sober model, with black and dark gray hues. We think it’s truly superb.
Connections :
The new 12VHPWR (12 4-pin) mini-connectors are used to power the board. As mentioned above, NVIDIA’s bundle also includes an adapter to connect two 8-pin connectors for those who don’t have a compatible power supply.
Finally, the board’s video outputs include three DisplayPort 1.4 and one HDMI 2.1 port. See you in the coming weeks for a review of NVIDIA’s RTX 4070 SUPER Founders Edition. As for pricing, NVIDIA has announced an MSRP of 659 euros in Europe.
[nextpage title=”Specifications and PCB:”]
Technical specifications :
In terms of frequency, the base frequency is announced at 1980 MHz, while the Boost peaks at 2475 MHz. The 12 GB of G-DDR6X memory run at 1313 MHz (504 GB/s) on a 192-bit bus. Since this is the reference card offered by NVIDIA, the frequencies are also reference frequencies. This means we can compare them with our partners’ cards to see if they benefit from factory overclocking.
Let’s go to GPU-Z to check that the information read is correct. The GPU frequency is indeed 1940 MHz, and the Boost frequency is 2475 MHz. Don’t forget that the latter will be higher in benchmarks, depending on the quality of your chip and determined by GPU Boost 4.0. Memory has a frequency of 1313 MHz.
Let’s unpack the PCB:
As we hinted, we haven’t disassembled our RTX 4070 SUPER yet. The procedure is fairly lengthy, and the timing of the test publication didn’t allow us to do it in good conditions, especially with the update of our entire graphics and the test of a partner card scheduled for publication tomorrow.
[nextpage title=”Test configuration: “]
As we said in the introduction, we’re (once again) busy updating all our graphics using the latest drivers from NVIDIA, AMD and, of course, INTEL. We’ve also taken the opportunity to slightly modify our test configuration and add new games to our protocol. So here we go again, with a new series of tests and graphics on this slightly modified configuration:
- Motherboard: ROG Maximus Z690 APEX
- Processor: Intel Alder Lake i9-12900K
- Memory : 32 GB Corsair Vengeance 7200 CL38 DDR5
- Graphics card: NVIDIA RTX 4070 SUPER FE
- Cooling system: ROG Ryujin II 360
- SSD: Western Digital Black SN750 2 TB radiator EKWB
- Power supply: Corsair AX1600i adapter 12VHPWR 600W
- Operating system: Windows 11 64-bit (23H2)
For this test, we used a high-end configuration featuring an i9-12900K processor and DDR5. The use of a 144 Hz 4K display is also a sine qua non. For our tests, we’re using the ROG PG27UQ.
Our test protocol :
All cards are tested at stock frequencies and without any optimization. For the various benchmarks, whether synthetics or games, we’ll opt for 1080p, 1440p and 2160p resolutions, depending on the card’s performance. Here, with this model, we’ll be using 1440p definitions for rasterization and ray tracing , as we feel this is the most appropriate.
Some cards may straddle the line between two definitions. That’s why we’ve also added the Intel A770 ARC 16GB and the NVIDIA RTX 4060 Ti 8GB/16 GB to the 1440p definition, even if this will remain very complicated for the Intel model. Our current reference card in definition is the NVIDIA RTX 3070 Ti 12GB. For a long time, we hesitated to choose a card with more memory, but in the end, the RTX 3070 Ti 12GB still delivers 1440p definition without difficulty.
As you can see, we’re now running Windows 11 and have activated the ” ReSize BAR ” in the BIOS, which can be seen in GPU-Z. As a reminder, our tests are still underway on the previous generation, and other cards will be added to the various definitions. Now that you know everything about our test configuration, it’s time to get started!
[nextpage title=”Synthetic and application benchmarks: “]
Our first series of tests will be dedicated to synthetic benchmarks. These are often used for overclocking competitions, but are also very interesting for comparing different GPUs. We’ll be focusing on benchmarks from the 3DMark series. Our scores may sometimes appear slightly lower, but that’s because we’re testing them with a native definition of 2160p on our ROG PG27UQ screen. If we change our screen definition to 1080p for the 3DMark tests, the GPU score is better.
As we said in the introduction, we’re busy re-screening all our graphics cards, and our table should be complete again for the release of the other SUPER models. In the meantime, you can find our latest chart with our graphics card panel here.
We’ll be testing the following benchmarks:
- Fire Strike (1080p)
- Fire Strike Ultra (2160p)
- Time Spy (1440p)
- Time Spy Extreme (2160p)
- 3DMark Speed Way
- 3DMark Port Royal
3DMark Fire Strike and Fire Strike Ultra :
Let’s start with 3DMark Fire Strike, one of today’s most widely used benchmarks. It consists of two graphics tests, a CPU test and a fourth test that combines GPU and CPU. Don’t forget to deactivate the demo, which makes no contribution to the final score and prolongs the benchmark’s duration (unnecessarily). The version used for these tests is, of course, the latest available.
This is our first benchmark with the NVIDIA RTX 4070 SUPER Founders Edition, and the least we can say is that it’s right where we expected it to be, behind the RTX 4070 Ti and ahead of the RTX 4070. We can already see that it’s much closer to the “Ti” model, with a score of 41312 points.
Under Fire Strike Ultra, the results are identical, but let’s not forget that the Fire Strike series of benchmarks is well in favor of AMD cards.
3DMark Time Spy and Time Spy Extreme:
The second test is 3DMark Time Spy. Although this one is performed in 1440p, its main feature is that it uses DirectX 12. It consists of two graphics tests and a CPU test. As with Fire Strike, don’t forget to disable the demo. These first two benchmarks are provided by UL Benchmark.
The performance obtained in Time Spy is often representative of what we’ll get in games. Here, our sample of the day scores 20791 points, still ahead of the RTX 4070. This represents a gain of 2802 points, or an increase of 15.6%. We’ll see if we get the same differences in rasterization and 1440p definition.
Under 3DMark Time Spy Extreme, we achieved a good score of 9890 points, representing a 16% performance gain over NVIDIA’s RTX 4070. On the other hand, it lags behind the RTX 4070 Ti by 851 points.
3DMark Speed Way :
Ulbenchmark’s latest benchmark, and it’s nice to be able to say we’re going to benchmark this Speed Way. It uses DirectX 12 and defaults to 1440p. We haven’t modified anything, so we’re using the original benchmark.
Here, too, our NVIDIA RTX 4070 SUPER Founders Edition scores 5229 points and is therefore still in second place. In this benchmark, NVIDIA cards come out on top.
3DMark Port Royal :
Here’s a benchmark we left out last year, but which you may have wanted to see again in our tests. It’s still widely used, especially in the overclocking community. So we’ve decided to add it to our tests.
There were no surprises in this latest benchmark in the 3DMark series, with a score of 13130 points and second place in our graph. Next month sees the arrival of a new benchmark, Steel Nomad, which we will of course be adding to our tests.
Blender” application test:
We’re planning to add a few new application benchmarks, starting today with Blender version 4.0. Don’t hesitate to leave us a comment to let us know which benchmarks you’d like to see in this section.
We’ve used the three tests of Blender version 4.0.0, which in the end produce virtually identical graphics. As a result, the performance of our RTX 4070 SUPER is almost identical to that of the RTX 4070 Ti, and far superior to that of the RTX 4070. Don’t hesitate to recommend any application tests you’d like to see included in our tests.
[nextpage title=”Gaming performance 1440p rasterized: “]
We’ve decided to select eight games, as they seem to us to be sufficiently representative. We opted for DirectX12 and Vulkan, with the following games:
- Borderlands 3
- Red Dead Redemption II
- Far Cry 6
- Watch Dogs: Legion
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
- Call Of Duty Modern Warefare 3
- Assassin’s Creed Mirage
- Forspoken
We’ve chosen to use the built-in benchmarks for these games.
Why do you ask? Quite simply to enable you to compare your results with ours if you also own a copy of one of these games. It’s a thought-provoking approach that will enable you to compare your results with ours.
As we mentioned on page 4 of this article, we have activated the Resizable Bar in the BIOS, which is now supported by all (recent) GPUs. Finally, we’ve opted for 1440p definition only, which is what you’d expect from this NVIDIA RTX 4070 SUPER Founders Edition.
Borderlands 3:
Let’s start with Borderlands. The graphics options are set to ” Brutal “. It’s worth noting that Borderlands 3 is quite greedy, and that this choice of settings has quite a strong impact on FPS. It’s a game that’s often praised in announcements of new graphics cards, and precisely in this Brutal mode.
Performance here is excellent, with our NVIDIA RTX 4070 SUPER Founders Edition exceeding 120 FPS at 1440p. In fact, it just manages to take the lead over AMD’s RX 7800 XT.
Red Dead Redemption 2:
Second and by no means least, the sublime Red Dead Redemption II. The advantage of this opus is the possibility of testing the integrated Vulkan benchmark. We opt for the ” ultra ” graphics options.
Secondly, and by no means least, RDR2 offers the possibility of testing the integrated Vulkan benchmark. Performance is once again identical to what we’ve already encountered, with our RTX 4070 SUPER neck-and-neck with the RX 7800 XT. As for the RTX 4070, it lags behind by almost 12%.
Far Cry 6:
Far Cry 6 supports DXR and SFR from AMD. You’ll find it on the next page. For our benchmarks, we opted for ” ultra ” graphics quality.
Even though our report on this game showed an advantage for the RX 6000 cards, our RTX 4070 SUPER once again performed perfectly, just a few FPS behind the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER version.
Watch Dogs Legion:
Let’s move on to Watch Dogs Legion, which will also be used for our Ray Tracing tests. For our benchmarks, we have opted for a graphics quality of ” very high
“. Even though this game is not very recent, it’s quite interesting, since it requires a lot of memory.
The situation remains the same, with a second-place finish as our sample of the day is placed between the RTX 4070 Ti and the RX 7800 XT. Even though we’re still in the early stages of our tests, this trend seems to be confirmed.
Cyberpunk 2077:
Here’s a game we’ve been wanting to add for a while, and now we have, with an integrated benchmark. We’ll also be using this game for our Ray Tracing tests. For our benchmarks, we’ve opted for ” ultra ” graphics quality.
At 1440p, we obtained an average of 89.8 FPS, which means we still have room to push a few graphics options if we want to be even more greedy, bearing in mind that DLSS 3 and frame generation await us on the next page.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora:
One of the three new games we’ve just included in our rasterization tests. It’s a recent game from 2023 that tends to put a strain on our graphics cards. For our benchmarks, we’ve opted for ” ultra ” graphics quality. This game will also feature in our DLSS/FSR/Xess tests, as it supports FSR3.
The graphics speak for themselves. Our graphics cards are suffering, and few of them manage to break the symbolic 60 FPS barrier. In fact, there are only two, including our NVIDIA RTX 4070 SUPER Founders Edition.
Call Of Duty Modern Warefare 3:
We couldn’t do without adding Call Of Duty Modern Warefare 3 to our graphics card tests. For our benchmarks, we have opted for ” extreme ” graphics quality. This game will also feature in our DLSS/FSR/Xess tests, since it supports frame generation.
A little surprise, since Call Of Duty Modern Warefare 3 seems to give pride of place to AMD cards. Although our ranking has changed slightly, the order of our RTX 4000s is identical to what we’ve seen so far.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage:
With a fairly recent integrated benchmark, we decided to add Assassin’s Creed Mirage to our tests.
The findings are still the same, although here our RTX 4070 SUPER outdistanced the RX 7800 XT more significantly.
Forspoken:
This is the last game we’re adding, as it will also be used on the next page, with the presence of FSR 3. It’s also a fairly recent game, and it, too, puts a strain on our graphics cards.
We’re not going to change anything on this last test, with our RTX 4070 SUPER nearly 15% ahead of the 4070 and 9% behind the RTX 4070 Ti. Let’s see how our 9 games average out in rasterization.
Game average :
For the gaming average, the RTX 3070 Ti is still our reference card in 1440p definition. Other cards score either higher or lower, depending on their performance against this model.
These are excellent results for the NVIDIA RTX 4070 SUPER, which is right where we expected it to be in 1440p definition in rasterization, i.e. without enabling ray tracing or DLSS/FSR in our games. This is what we’ll be assessing on the next page. If we weigh up prices at this point in the article, the reference RTX 4070 SUPER will be sold at 659 euros, which represents an excellent choice, even if the reference RX 7800 XT is priced at 555 euros. It will be interesting to see how each of these cards performs with the technologies offered by NVIDIA and AMD.
[nextpage title=”Ray tracing and DLSS/FSR 1440p performance:”]
Let’s take a look at the eight games we’ve selected that support ray tracing, DLSS, AMD’s FSR and Intel’s XeSS technology. As we’ve already reminded you, while DLSS remains the property of NVIDIA, FSR and XeSS can be used with any card from AMD, Intel or even NVIDIA. We’ve chosen to remove Watch Dogs: Legion since it’s the only game that supports only one technology, DLSS.
The eight DirectX 12 games we’ll be testing with ray tracing, if available, as well as DLSS, FSR or XeSS are :
- Shadow of the Tomb Raider (RT – DLSS – XeSS)
- Far Cry 6 (DXR – FSR)
- Cyberpunk 2077 (RT – DLSS 3 – FSR – XeSS)
- Hitman 3 (RT – DLSS 3 – XeSS – FSR)
- Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (DLSS – XeSS – FSR 3)
- Call Of Duty Modern Warefare 3 (DLSS 3 – XeSS – FSR)
- Assassin’s Creed Mirage (DLSS – Xess – FSR)
- Forspoken (DLSS – XeSS – FSR 3)
No change for this new series of games, as we’re staying with 1440p definition. Depending on the card, we’ll be using either DLSS for NVIDIA or FSR or XeSS for AMD and Intel models. If FSR is not available in a game, then we’ll give our AMD card the benefit of XeSS technology.
DLSS 3: watch out for our results!
As you know, NVIDIA unveiled DLSS 3 with the arrival of the RTX 4000 graphics cards, and in particular with the launch of the RTX 4090 version. So why the warning? Because NVIDIA now offers DLSS 3 support on many games, but this is only supported by RTX 4000s. To put it simply, if we test a game that benefits from DLSS 3, our RTX 4060 Ti will take advantage of it, but an RTX 30xx will make do with DLSS 2, resulting in even greater discrepancies, especially thanks to frame generation. We currently have three games that support DLSS 3, and we’ll be increasing this number over the coming weeks.
But AMD has also reacted by offering its FSR 3, also combined with frame generation technology, which significantly increases the number of FPS. But now it’s time for the graphics, which will speak volumes in terms of performance.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider:
First, which we’re adding to this comparison and which supports Ray Tracing and DLSS 2.0. Three levels of Ray Tracing are offered in the game (medium – high – ultra) and the four levels of DLSS (performance – quality – balanced – ultra performance).
For our benchmarks, we opted for ” very high ” graphics quality, ” ultra ” Ray Tracing and ” balanced ” DLSS.
With Ray Tracing set to ultra, an average of 138 FPS is achieved. The performance achieved with DLSS 2 in this game is much better than that achieved with FSR 1.
Far Cry 6:
Far Cry 6 supports DXR and AMD’s FSR, but not DLSS.
For our benchmarks, we opted for Ultra graphics quality, activated both DRX options and FSR in ” balanced ” mode.
In Far Cry 6, FSR is the only choice available to boost FPS after activating Ray Tracing. All our cards can benefit from it, regardless of manufacturer. Our RTX 4070 SUPER benefits slightly, but in the end it’s the lower-ranked cards that benefit from this FPS boost.
Cyberpunk 2077:
Cyberpunk 2077 features DLSS and FSR activation in its settings. Note that this was the first game to enable DLSS3 for RTX 40xx graphics cards, as well as frame generation. For our benchmarks, we opted for “ultra” graphics quality, “ultra” Ray Tracing and ” balanced ” DLSS/FSR.
This is one of our most demanding games, where our cards have great difficulty keeping up. Here, an average of 45.2 FPS is achieved. While the RTX 4070 SUPER fares better with ray tracing, the addition of the new DLSS 3 and frame generation boosts FPS numbers by an astonishing amount.
Hitman 3:
Hitman 3 now supports DLSS, FSR and XeSS technology. Depending on the model of card tested, we opt for one of these three technologies.
For our benchmarks, we opted for “high” graphics quality, ” enabled ” Ray Tracing and ” balanced ” DLSS/Xess.
We find ourselves in a familiar situation with our RTX 4070 SUPER in second place. Hitman 3, which also benefits from DLSS 3 and frame generation, achieves an FPS gain of almost 133%.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora:
One of the three new games we’ve just included in our rasterization tests. It’s a recent game from 2023 that tends to put a strain on our graphics cards. For our benchmarks, we’ve opted for ” ultra ” graphics quality. This game will also feature in our DLSS/FSR/Xess tests, as it supports FSR 3. The idea is to balance games that benefit from DLSS 3 and FSR 3.
There’s no ray tracing here, so we’ve taken the performance of rasterization and activated the technologies that enable FPS gains. DLSS 2 does the job perfectly, but we can also see that AMD’s FSR 3 could start to rival DLSS 3.
Call Of Duty Modern Warefare 3:
We couldn’t do without adding Call Of Duty Modern Warefare 3 to our graphics card tests. For our benchmarks, we have opted for ” extreme ” graphics quality. This game will also feature in our DLSS/FSR/Xess tests, since it supports frame generation.
As with Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, there’s no ray tracing here, so we’ll be activating each manufacturer’s own technology. And in this little game, NVIDIA comes out on top with DLSS 3 combined with frame generation. With over 200 FPS, we’re perfectly at ease.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage:
With a fairly recent integrated benchmark, we decided to add Assassin’s Creed Mirage to our tests.
Here, even if our RTX 4070 SUPER maintains the advantage in rasterization and also when DLSS 2 is activated, AMD cards are not to be outdone.
Forspoken:
This is the last game we’re adding, as it will also be used on the next page, with the presence of FSR 3. It’s also a fairly recent game, and it, too, puts a strain on our graphics cards.
It’s FSR 3 and frame generation that are the most brutal here. Now, that’s nothing to disturb our RTX 4070 SUPER, which goes from 79 to 123 FPS with DLSS.
So, what about ray tracing with the NVIDIA RTX 4070 SUPER Founders Edition?
In the 8 games we tested, our NVIDIA RTX 4070 SUPER performed perfectly. When ray tracing is enabled, it’s no problem at all, since DLSS is always present behind it. In fact, it was NVIDIA who dominated the exchanges, thanks in particular to the arrival of DLSS 3 and frame generation, but now AMD is fighting back. The reds also came out in force with FRS 3 and frame generation, which also brought an increase in FPS. But it’s NVIDIA that still has the upper hand, as the number of games supported is far greater on the green side. FRS 3 is doing very well, but previous revisions are struggling against DLSS 2, for example. DLSS therefore remains the most interesting technology when available.
[nextpage title=”Temperature and consumption: “]
Temperature :
To record temperatures, we opted for the Superposition stress test in Extreme mode. We opted for three 5-minute runs with 10-minute intervals between each test. We took advantage of this benchmark to record the graphics card’s power consumption for the table above.
To find out the Idle temperature, after completing the three stress test loops, we let the card rest for 20 minutes before taking the temperature reading. Bear in mind that most boards benefit from “0 dBa” technology, so the fans cut out below a certain temperature, often between 50 and 55°C. It therefore takes longer to dissipate heat after a period of stress testing or gaming. A card that does not benefit from this technology will be noisier than others at rest. A quick reminder: our temperature readings are taken in Open-Air. In a closed case, the cards will inevitably be warmer.
Not surprisingly, the “small”, and in the good sense of the word, Founders Edition, tend to run hot. Nothing catastrophic, and we know that this type of card performs better inside a case than on a benchmark table. You can always increase the fan speed slightly to improve heat dissipation.
Power consumption (full configuration) :
We use a wattmeter to measure power consumption at the output of our power supply. Our modular power supply is a CORSAIR AX1600i. The result is the average total power consumption of our configuration. Only the graphics card changes between each reading. So it’s easy to calculate the difference between each graphics card.
But the good news is that we should (finally) be properly equipped to isolate power consumption solely from the graphics card, as we have pre-ordered the BENCHLAB from Elmorlabs.
Power consumption is unsurprisingly higher than that of the RTX 4070, rising from 284 to 331 watts for our complete configuration. Based on a similar architecture, this 16.5% increase in power consumption almost matches the performance increase we noted.
[nextpage title=”Overclocking: “]
Overclocking via GPU Tweak III:
No doubt this will be very limited by NVIDIA in order to avoid reaching the performance of the RTX 4070 Ti, even if it will disappear from production. Direction to the latest version of ASUS’ GPU Tweak III software. This is overclocking software designed by ASUS, but which will prove compatible with other GPU brands. The software is really well designed, but you’ll need to go through the advanced mode to access all the settings.
To test our overclocking, we’re going to concentrate first on the Time Spy benchmark. We’re off! We leave the fans in AUTO mode, raise the power limit to the maximum, i.e. 109%, and off we go! Initially, we only push the GPU frequency in 50 MHz steps until the benchmark stops running. Once the GPU frequency is stable, we move on to increasing the memory frequency.
By default, at stock frequencies, our NVIDIA RTX 4070 SUPER Founders Edition achieves an overall score of 21,154 points and 21,418 points for the GPU score. The boost frequency reaches a maximum of 2790 MHz MHz, with the GPU temperature rising to 65.8 °C.
In the end, we were able to push the boost frequency to 3030 MHz and the memory to 1450 MHz. This enabled me to achieve some excellent scores, which enabled me to pick up even more points. The overall score rose to 22,321 points and the GPU score to 22,875 points (6.8%). Temperature remains contained at 67°C. This overclocking allows us, in rasterization mode, to go from 126 to 134 FPS on Call Of Duty Modern Warefare III and from 89.8 to 94.9 FPS on Cyberpunk 2077.
[nextpage title=”The last word:”]
The price?
NVIDIA seems to have initiated a slight change of direction by not raising the price of this RTX 4070 SUPER, but by placing it at the MSRP price of €659, the former price of the RTX 4070, which will see its MRSP price fall to under €600. This is very good news, and will be repeated throughout the SUPER range, but we’ll come back to this in future tests. Remember that the RX 7800 XT benefits from an aggressive MSRP of €555.
Performance?
Rasterization to 1440p definition gives our RTX 4070 a narrow lead over the RX 7800 XT. This means it can take back the crown of the best-performing card in QHD. We’ll come back to this in our next article, but the new RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, with its 16 GB, also seems to have plenty of power to titillate 2160p definition. With a €100 difference between the MSRP prices of the 4070 SUPER and the RX 7800 XT, is it worth the risk? We think it is. DLSS and, more recently, version 3, combined with frame generation, keep NVIDIA well ahead of the game, especially when you consider how many games are compatible with NVIDIA technology. Of course, AMD’s FRS 3 and frame generation also perform well, but the number of games supported is too low. If we consider DLSS generation 2 vs. FSR, there’s no contest either, with a clear advantage for NVIDIA with much higher performance.
The war between the RTX 4070 SUPER and the RX 7800 XT could once again come down to custom cards from our partners. Let’s hope that RTX 4070 SUPER prices don’t skyrocket, as this could tip the balance in favor of the reds in some cases.
Which card?
It’s hard to hide it, but we’ve always been partial to Founders Edition models. This new black RTX 4070 SUPER is simply superb. The cooling system implemented by NVIDIA works perfectly and will prove even more effective in a case. The overclocking potential, although limited by NVIDIA, will still allow you to get some FPS.
What’s next?
As you know, NVIDIA isn’t stopping there, and will be launching the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER on January 24, and the RTX 4080 SUPER on January 31. We can already tell you that we’re looking forward to the “Ti SUPER” version, which, behind its long name, could well be the most interesting model in the SUPER range. In the meantime, we’ll be back tomorrow to test our RTX 4070 SUPER partners, with a model from ASUS and Gigabyte.
NVIDIA RTX 4070 SUPER Founders Edition
NVIDIA’s new RTX 4070 SUPER Founders Edition won us over with its performance and NVIDIA’s decision to keep the MSRP of the RTX 4070. Rasterization performance for 1440p is excellent, and DLSS support in many games keeps NVIDIA ahead of AMD.
Tomorrow we’ll see how our partner models stack up in terms of pricing, and keep an eye out for any bargains on the RTX 4070, whose price is set to fall in the coming weeks.