Gigabyte Aorus GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Master 12G Review: RTX 3090 Ti challenger with added bling for US$1,000
Nvidia released the AD104-based RTX 4070 Ti in early January with boisterous performance claims at a US$799 MSRP. Unlike the RTX 4080 FE and the RTX 4090 FE, there are no Founders Edition cards this time around, but a bevy of add-in board (AiB) partner cards are in the offing.
We've previously reviewed the Asus TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Ti OC Edition and now we have with us the Gigabyte Aorus GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Master 12G, which is the company's premium offering in the Aorus sub-brand for the RTX 4070 Ti.
The Gigabyte Aorus RTX 4070 Ti Master 12G retails in India for ₹94,127 and is available in the US for US$1,000. The card comes with a three-year warranty with an additional year offered on registering the product with Gigabyte.
In this review, we will look into what differentiates the flagship Aorus RTX 4070 Ti card from the competition and compare its performance to reviewed GPUs so far.
Comparison of the Aorus RTX 4070 Ti Master with other Nvidia GPUs
| Specification | RTX 4090 FE | RTX 4080 FE | Aorus RTX 4070 Ti Master | RTX 3090 Ti FE | RTX 3090 FE | RTX 3080 Ti FE | RTX 3080 FE | RTX 3070 FE | Titan RTX | Titan X Pascal |
| Chip | AD102 | AD103 | AD104 | GA102 | GA102 | GA102 | GA102 | GA104 | TU102 | GP102 |
| FinFET Process | Custom 4N | Custom 4N | Custom 4N | 8 nm | 8 nm | 8 nm | 8 nm | 8 nm | 12 nm | 16 nm |
| CUDA Cores | 16,384 | 9,728 | 7,680 | 10,752 | 10,496 | 10,240 | 8,704 | 5,888 | 4,608 | 3,584 |
| Texture Units | 512 | 304 | 240 | 336 | 328 | 320 | 272 | 184 | 288 | 224 |
| Tensor Cores | 512 4th Gen. | 304 4th Gen. | 240 4th Gen. | 336 3rd Gen. | 328 3rd Gen. | 320 3rd Gen. | 272 3rd Gen. | 184 3rd Gen. | 576 2nd Gen. | — |
| RT Cores | 128 3rd Gen. | 76 3rd Gen. | 60 3rd Gen. | 84 2nd Gen. | 82 2nd Gen. | 80 2nd Gen. | 68 2nd Gen. | 46 2nd Gen. | 72 | — |
| GPU Base Clock | 2,235 MHz | 2,205 MHz | 2,310 MHz | 1,560 MHz | 1,395 MHz | 1,365 MHz | 1,440 MHz | 1,500 MHz | 1,350 MHz | 1,417 MHz |
| GPU Boost Clock | 2,520 MHz | 2,505 MHz | 2,670 MHz | 1,860 MHz | 1,695 MHz | 1,665 MHz | 1,710 MHz | 1,750 MHz | 1,770 MHz | 1,531 MHz |
| Memory Bus | 384-bit | 256-bit | 192-bit | 384-bit | 384-bit | 384-bit | 320-bit | 256-bit | 384-bit | 384-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 1,008 GB/s | 716.8 GB/s | 504 GB/s | 1,008 GB/s | 936 GB/s | 912 GB/s | 760 GB/s | 448 GB/s | 672 GB/s | 480.4 GB/s |
| Video Memory | 24 GB GDDR6X | 16 GB GDDR6X | 12 GB GDDR6X | 24 GB GDDR6X | 24 GB GDDR6X | 12 GB GDDR6X | 10 GB GDDR6X | 8 GB GDDR6 | 24 GB GDDR6 | 12 GB GDDR5X |
| Power Consumption | 450 W | 320 W | 285 W | 450 W | 350 W | 350 W | 320 W | 220 W | 280 W | 250 W |
The Aorus GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Master up close
The Aorus GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Master looks pretty similar to the Aorus GeForce RTX 4080 Master at first glance but has comparatively smaller dimensions at 342 x 153 x 70.6 mm.
The length should pose no problems fitting inside a typical ATX case.
In the box, we find the following:
- Quick start guide
- Warranty info
- Anti-sag bracket, screws, and installation guide
- 12VHPWR to 3x 8-pin power cable
- Aorus metal sticker
The GPU uses a plastic shroud but comes with a metal backplate with a large cutout for the ventilation fins. The metal backplate together with the provided anti-sag bracket help reinforce the 1.6 kg card firmly on the PCIe slot while preventing any sag.
Unlike the Asus TUF Gaming RTX 4070 Ti, the Aorus RTX 4070 Ti Master does not shy from showing off its RGB bling.
Gigabyte takes a unique approach in this aspect. Instead of an RGB ring around the fans, each fan has a single LED on one of its fins that only lights up when the fans are active. This gives a sort of a broken halo ring lighting, which may or may not appeal to all — the ring appears contiguous when the fans spin at full speed, though.
There is RGB lighting on the Aorus logo at the front and on the back, but there's no RGB on the top logos. Gigabyte, in fact, recommends installing the card on a PCIe riser cable for the best light show.
The Aorus RTX 4070 Ti Master also comes with an LCD View monitor on the top.
Users can customize the functionality of this panel via Gigabyte Control Center to display all kinds of system stats, GIFs, and custom texts.
As is the case with most modern GPUs, the Aorus GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Master also offers three DisplayPort 1.4 ports and one HDMI 2.1-out. The convenience of an additional HDMI 2.1-out as seen in the TUF Gaming RTX 4070 Ti is missing here.
Similar to most AiB cards, the Aorus GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Master comes with a dual BIOS switch that can be toggled between BIOS OC and Silent modes.
The card uses the new 12VHPWR connector with three 8-pin outs. An LED near the power connector serves to indicate the power supply status. The light comes on if the power supply is disconnected and goes off when the supply is stable. A blinking LED indicates an abnormal power supply or a wrongly seated cable.
The Aorus GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Master can boost up to 2,670 MHz at a 285 W TGP, which is slightly higher than the reference 2,610 MHz boost.
However, the Aorus card is clocked 90 MHz lower than the TUF Gaming OC's 2,760 MHz. It is possible to increase the TGP by 28% to up to 366 W.
Gigabyte Control Center needs a lot of work
Gigabyte traditionally offers a smorgasbord of motherboard, SSD, and GPU utilities, but all of them are now consolidated under a unified interface called Gigabyte Control Center (GCC).
The idea is great, but the execution seems rather poor at the moment. The app is extremely buggy, hangs often, and can take ages to apply a setting. This seems to be the case even with the latest version of the app at the time of testing.
While third-party utilities such as MSI Afterburner and EVGA Precision X1 continue to work with Ada cards, their development status is currently in a limbo. We hope Gigabyte makes the app usable with ensuing updates, so users can have a proper first-party GPU tweaking solution.
The screens below depict GCC with an Aorus RTX 4080 Master, but the functionality is the same with the RTX 4070 Ti Master as well.
The test bench: Aorus GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Master gets paired with the Intel Core i9-13900K
Our test bench remains similar to the one we have used previously for the TUF Gaming RTX 4070 Ti OC and several other GPUs. The build is comprised of the following components:
- Cooler MasterFrame 700 test bench
- Intel Core i9-13900K
- Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master motherboard
- Gigabyte Aorus Gen 4 2 TB NVMe SSD for benchmarks and games
- 2x 16 GB Kingston Fury Renegade DDR5-6400 RAM with timings 32-39-39-80 at 1.40 V
- Gigabyte M28U 4K 144 Hz monitor
- Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML360L V2 ARGB AIO cooler
- Thermaltake ToughPower Grand RGB 850 W
We used a fresh installation of Windows 11 22H2 with the latest patches together with Game Ready driver version 527.62.
We would like to thank Cooler Master for supplying the test bench and AIO, Gigabyte for the Core i9-13900K, Z790 motherboard, M28U monitor, and NVMe SSD, and Kingston for the DDR5 memory kit.
Synthetic benchmarks: Faster than the RTX 3090 Ti, ties in well with other RTX 4070 Ti cards
The Aorus GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Master does not throw any surprises and ties up exactly with the TUF Gaming RTX 4070 Ti OC in overall synthetic benchmark performance. The differences with its Asus competition are extremely minor and can be considered to be within the margin or error.
That being said, benchmarks like Unigine Valley 1.0 DirectX show the TUF Gaming OC card to have a 11% lead, but we see a reversal of roles with the Aorus RTX 4070 Ti Master leading by 12% in the OpenGL version of the test.
The KFA2 GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SG also ties with the other two RTX 4070 Tis in 3DMark and Unigine tests for the most part and is only about 3% behind the Aorus and the Asus.
Both the Asus and Aorus have a slight advantage in Unigine Superposition 720p low compared to the KFA2, possibly due to the Intel Core i9-13900K being more favorable at lower resolutions compared to the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X.
Overall, the Aorus GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Master is perceivable faster than the RTX 3090 while edging out the RTX 3090 Ti and is within striking distance of the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT in cumulative synthetic performance.
| 3DMark 11 Performance | 56489 points | |
| 3DMark Ice Storm Standard Score | 274632 points | |
| 3DMark Cloud Gate Standard Score | 82725 points | |
| 3DMark Fire Strike Score | 41391 points | |
| 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme Score | 26501 points | |
| 3DMark Time Spy Score | 22611 points | |
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Compute benchmarks: Matches Ampere flagships for the most part
A similar performance is seen in compute tests as well. All tested RTX 4070 Ti cards are more or less vying for the same leads. The Aorus GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Master has a miniscule advantage in V-Ray 5 tests while it's the turn of Asus and KFA2 in V-Ray 4.0 benchmark.
LuxMark Room GPU sees the Aorus and Asus cards calling it a draw while the KFA2 is 8% behind. AMD cards are known to perform well in LuxMark Sala GPU, and we see that here once again. The Radeon RX 6900 XT and RX 6800 XT are 55% and 38% faster than the Aorus RTX 4070 Ti, respectively.
Overall ComputeMark scores are tied between these three RTX 4070 Ti cards, with the Aorus being a smidgen of a second faster in Blender 3.3 Classroom Optix.
| V-Ray Benchmark Next 4.10 - GPU | |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition (v4.10.07 ) | |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition (v4.10.07 ) | |
| KFA2 GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SG (v4.10.07 ) | |
| Asus TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Ti (v4.10.07 ) | |
| Aorus GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Master (v4.10.07 ) | |
| Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 Ti AMP Extreme Holo (v4.10.07 ) | |
| Intel Core i9-13900K (v4.10.07 ) | |
| Average NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (781 - 877, n=17) | |
| Average NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti (854 - 855, n=3) | |
| Average NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 (636 - 643, n=2) | |
| Average NVIDIA Titan RTX (386 - 439, n=16) | |
| Average of class (2 - 2921, n=1439) | |
| AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT (v4.10.07 ) | |
| Sapphire AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT Nitro+ Pure (v4.10.07 ) | |
| Blender - v3.3 Classroom OPTIX/RTX | |
| Average of class (7 - 269, n=416) | |
| Average NVIDIA Titan RTX () | |
| Average NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti (14 - 15, n=2) | |
| Average NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (13 - 14, n=12) | |
| Intel Core i9-13900K (3.3.0) | |
| Asus TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Ti (3.3.2) | |
| KFA2 GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SG (3.3.2) | |
| Aorus GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Master (3.3.2) | |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition (3.3.0) | |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition (3.3.0) | |
* ... smaller is better
Gaming performance: Easy 60 fps in 4K Ultra but QHD is the sweet spot
The Aorus GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Master comes across a very capable 4K gaming GPU for the price. Most modern titles can easily hit 60 fps+ in 4K Ultra settings. Cumulative performance in tested games is the same as that of the Asus TUF Gaming 4070 Ti. The KFA2 only loses out by an ever-so-slight margin cumulatively.
The Aorus RTX 4070 Ti Master is capable of utilizing DLSS 3.0, so it is possible to get significant fps boosts at 4K in supported titles. That being said, QHD is the sweet spot for AD104 cards.
The Aorus 4070 Ti card is about 11% faster than the RTX 3090 overall and more or less ties with the RTX 3090 Ti. The Radeon RX 7900 XT only gets a 4% advantage compared to the Aorus.
While 4K gaming shouldn't be a hassle with the RTX 4070 Ti, the lower memory and bandwidth might pose a bottleneck while playing texture-heavy titles.