Synthetic benchmarks:
Our first series of tests will be dedicated to synthetic benchmarks. These are often used for overclocking competitions but are also very interesting to compare different GPUs. So we will focus on the 3DMark benchmarks.
We will test the following benchmarks:
- Fire Strike (1080p)
- Fire Strike Ultra (2160p)
- Time Spy (1440p)
- Time Spy Extreme (2160p)
- 3DMark Speed Way
- DirectX Raytracing
- Intel XeSS
- Mesh Shader
- 3DMark DLSS Feature Test (2160p)
3DMark Fire Strike and Fire Strike Ultra:
Let’s start with 3DMark Fire Strike, which is one of the most used benchmarks today. 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 doesn’t bring anything in the final score and prolongs the benchmark duration (unnecessarily). The version used for these tests is of course the latest one.
The first benchmark we run with this NVIDIA RTX 4070 Founders Edition and the least we can say is that it is indeed where we expected it to be, behind the RTX 3080 Ti. It gets a score of 37790 points here.
The same observation under Fire Strike Ultra, but with a more pronounced difference with the RTX 3080 Ti. Remember that this benchmark is done in a 2160p definition where our RTX 4070 might show its limits.
3DMark Time Spy and Time Spy Extreme:
The second test is 3DMark Time Spy. Although this one is done in 1440p, it has the particularity of using DirectX 12. It consists of two graphical tests and a CPU test. As for Fire Strike, don’t forget to disable the demo. These two first benchmarks are proposed by UL Benchmark.
The performance obtained in Time Spy is often representative of what we will have in games. Here, our sample of the day stands out against the RTX 3070 Ti, which should give us a comfortable lead in 1440p for the gaming part.
Under 3DMark Time Spy Extreme, it is an excellent score that we obtain since it reaches 8592 points. We can also see that the difference between these first four benchmarks and the RTX 4070 Ti version is significant.
3DMark Speed Way
The latest benchmark from Ulbenchmark and it’s nice to be able to say that we’re going to have a good time on this Speed Way. It uses DirectX 12 and is by default in a 1440p definition. We have not modified anything and we use the original benchmark.
Here too, our RTX 4070 FE scores 4485 points and takes the lead over the AMD cards of the RX 6000 generation.
3DMark DirectX Raytracing:
UL Benchmarks has added a new test to its series of benchmarks to measure Ray Tracing performance. The idea will be to use the 3DMark DirectX Ray Tracing test to compare the performance of Ray Tracing hardware dedicated to AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards but now also to Intel!
The 3DMark DirectX Ray Tracing test is designed to make Ray Tracing the limiting factor. Instead of relying on traditional rendering, the entire scene is traced and drawn in one pass. The test result will depend entirely on the performance of the Ray Tracing. It will be easy to measure and compare the performance of the different cards between them.
This benchmark has always been dominated by NVIDIA cards and our sample of the day is no exception to the rule as we get a score of 51.4 FPS. It is the addition of the CUDA cores and the increase in frequency that has a huge impact on the performance gain.
3DMark Intel XeSS
UL Benchmarks in collaboration with Intel will add this new benchmark to the 3DMark suite. We had early access to this new test for our testing. This Intel XeSS test is designed to evaluate and compare the performance and image quality of XeSS (Xe Super Sampling). There are four XeSS modes to choose from: Ultra Quality, Quality, Balanced and Performance. The 3DMark inspection tool helps you compare image quality with a side-by-side view of XeSS rendering and native resolution rendering. You need a graphics card that supports Intel XeSS to run this test.
So we’ll have two scores, a FPS number with XeSS disabled and then on the right with XeSS enabled. The mode chosen is “Ultra Quality” which is actually the default mode for the benchmark.
In this new benchmark, all graphics cards without exception take advantage of XeSS, but it is Intel that has the best gain. ARC models see a gain of 50% while NVIDIA and AMD models see a gain of more or less 30 to 35%.
3DMark DLSS Feature Test:
We had not kept this benchmark since it only concerns DLSS compatible cards and was therefore not useful for our comparative tests. Here, we have retested it since it officially supports DLSS 3 since the end of the NDA on the RTX 4090.
So we’re going to run a 2160p benchmark with DLSS disabled first, then with DLSS 2 performance and finally with DLSS 3 performance.
Our NVIDIA RTX 4070 Founders Edition scores 23 FPS without DLSS, then 64 FPS (+178%) with DLSS 2 enabled. DLSS 3 still provides a 367% gain over DLSS 2, so we can see how much of an improvement DLSS 3 brings to the gaming experience.
Well, as we conclude this first series of synthetic tests, we are right in the expected performance. We are behind the RTX 3080 Ti but with performance well above the RTX 3070 Ti. We should have excellent performance in 1440p. There is also a big performance gap between the RTX 4070 and the RTX 4070 Ti.
