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MagyarNvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super Founders Edition Review: 1440p 100 fps gaming for $100 markup over Radeon RX 7800 XT
Update 2/11: Review now complete with thermals, stress, and noise tests.
During CES 2024, Nvidia announced Super versions of some of its current GPUs including the GeForce RTX 4070 Super, RTX 4070 Ti Super, and the RTX 4080 Super. We now have with us the RTX 4070 Super Founders Edition (FE) for review.
The RTX 4070 Super technically supplants the current RTX 4070 lineup for the same MSRP of US$599. For the price, you get a ~21% increase in CUDA core counts over the regular RTX 4070 along with corresponding increases in Tensor and ray tracing (RT) cores. The regular RTX 4070 will continue to be available at a discounted US$549.
Nevertheless, it's noteworthy that the RTX 4070 Super utilizes only 56 shaders (7,168 CUDA cores) out of 60 (7,680 CUDA cores) in AD104. Therefore, the forthcoming RTX 4070 Ti Super is being moved to the AD103 GPU due to complete saturation of AD104 by the RTX 4070 Ti.
According to Nvidia, these improvements should result in 35.5 shader TFLOPs, 568 AI TOPS with the Tensor cores (with sparsity) and 82 RT TFLOPS.
While the increase in shader counts is welcome, the RTX 4070 Super essentially uses the same 192-bit 504 GB/s 12 GB GDDR6X VRAM as the RTX 4070. This shouldn't be much of a problem for 1080p Ultra and 1440p Ultra, but 4K Ultra gaming can potentially run into memory bottlenecks.
That being said, Nvidia has also augmented the L2 cache from 36 MB in the original RTX 4070 to 48 MB in the new RTX 4070 Super, which should provide some reprieve in VRAM-heavy situations.
The RTX 4070 Super FE retails for ₹63,000 in India, which is a marginal increase over the RTX 4070 launch price. The card is backed by a three-year manufacturer warranty.
In this review, we take the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Founders Edition for a spin and how well these improvements translate into real-world gains over the RTX 4070 and other competing GPUs.
Comparison of the GeForce RTX 4070 Super with other Nvidia GPUs
| Specification | RTX 4090 FE | RTX 4080 FE | Asus TUF RTX 4070 Ti | RTX 4070 Super FE | Zotac RTX 4070 AMP Airo | KFA2 RTX 4060 Ti EX | RTX 3090 Ti FE | RTX 3090 FE | RTX 3080 Ti FE | RTX 3070 FE | Titan RTX |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chip | AD102 | AD103 | AD104 | AD104 | AD104 | AD106 | GA102 | GA102 | GA102 | GA104 | TU102 |
| FinFET Process | Custom 4N | Custom 4N | Custom 4N | Custom 4N | Custom 4N | Custom 4N | 8 nm | 8 nm | 8 nm | 8 nm | 12 nm |
| CUDA Cores | 16,384 | 9,728 | 7,680 | 7,168 | 5,888 | 4,352 | 10,752 | 10,496 | 10,240 | 5,888 | 4,608 |
| Texture Units | 512 | 304 | 240 | 224 | 184 | 136 | 336 | 328 | 320 | 184 | 288 |
| Tensor Cores | 512 4th Gen. | 304 4th Gen. | 240 4th Gen. | 224 4th Gen. | 184 4th Gen. | 136 4th Gen. | 336 3rd Gen. | 328 3rd Gen. | 320 3rd Gen. | 184 3rd Gen. | 576 2nd Gen. |
| RT Cores | 128 3rd Gen. | 76 3rd Gen. | 60 3rd Gen. | 56 3rd Gen. | 46 3rd Gen. | 34 3rd Gen. | 84 2nd Gen. | 82 2nd Gen. | 80 2nd Gen. | 46 2nd Gen. | 72 |
| GPU Base Clock | 2,235 MHz | 2,205 MHz | 2,310 MHz | 1,980 MHz | 1,920 MHz | 2,310 MHz | 1,560 MHz | 1,395 MHz | 1,365 MHz | 1,500 MHz | 1,350 MHz |
| GPU Boost Clock | 2,520 MHz | 2,505 MHz | 2,760 MHz | 2,475 MHz | 2,535 MHz | 2,535 MHz | 1,860 MHz | 1,695 MHz | 1,665 MHz | 1,750 MHz | 1,770 MHz |
| Memory Bus | 384-bit | 256-bit | 192-bit | 192-bit | 192-bit | 128-bit | 384-bit | 384-bit | 384-bit | 256-bit | 384-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 1,008 GB/s | 716.8 GB/s | 504 GB/s | 504 GB/s | 504 GB/s | 288 GB/s | 1,008 GB/s | 936 GB/s | 912 GB/s | 448 GB/s | 672 GB/s |
| Video Memory | 24 GB GDDR6X | 16 GB GDDR6X | 12 GB GDDR6X | 12 GB GDDR6X | 12 GB GDDR6X | 8 GB GDDR6 | 24 GB GDDR6X | 24 GB GDDR6X | 12 GB GDDR6X | 8 GB GDDR6 | 24 GB GDDR6 |
| Power Consumption | 450 W | 320 W | 285 W | 220 W | 215 W | 160 W | 450 W | 350 W | 350 W | 220 W | 280 W |
Up close with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super Founders Edition
Like all Founders Edition cards, the RTX 4070 Super FE looks quite unassuming with no fancy bling. Nvidia has given a matte texture to the faceplate with an embossed "SUPER" logo, which lends it a premium, understated elegance.
At just about 24 cm width, the RTX 4070 Super FE is a compact dual-slot card that will find itself at home even in compact cases. The overall construction quality leaves no room for concern.
Nvidia employs the tried and tested thermal subsystem found in the other RTX 40 series FE cards. With one fan acting as intake and the other as exhaust, this particularly bodes well for cases with top-mounted radiator fans in a "pull" configuration.
The card offers the familiar connectors — 3x DisplayPort 1.4-out and 1x HDMI 2.1a-out. A 12VHPWR connector supplies power. While ATX 3.x power supplies are recommended, Nvidia includes a handy 2x 8-pin to 12VHPWR adapter in the box.
The RTX 4070 Super FE runs at a reference boost of 2,475 MHz. The card has a 220 W TGP, which is 20 W higher than the reference spec for the RTX 4070. The power target by can be increased by 9% to get a 240 W TGP.
Test bench: Intel Core i9-13900K gets paired with the RTX 4070 Super FE
Our test bench is based on the Intel Z790 platform and uses the Core i9-13900K as the processor of choice. Specifications include:
- Cooler MasterFrame 700 test bench
- Intel Core i9-13900K with PL1=PL2
- 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
- Gigabyte Aorus Waterforce X II 360 AiO cooler
- Cooler Master MVE Gold V2 1250 ATX 3.0 fully modular PSU
- A fresh installation of Windows 11 23H2 with latest patches together with provided test Game Ready driver version 546.52
We would like to thank Cooler Master for supplying the test bench and PSU, Gigabyte for the motherboard, CPU, SSD, AiO cooler, and monitor, and Kingston for the memory.
Synthetic benchmarks: Performance nearly scales with increased shader counts over the RTX 4070
In cumulative synthetic benchmarks, the RTX 4070 Super FE affords a decent 13% improvement over the Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 AMP Airo and ties with average RTX 3090 values while the RTX 4070 Ti average leads by 9%.
That being said, the leads over the RTX 4070 AMP Airo can be as high as 23% in individual tests such as Unigine Superposition 1080p Extreme.
The RTX 4070 Super FE also shows good leads over the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT (+26%) and the RX 7800 XT (+8%). The RTX 4060 Ti 8G average with its anemic memory and shader configuration trails by 33%.
Compared to the RTX 4090 FE, the RTX 4070 Super FE trails by 38% in overall synthetic tests.
3DMark 11: 1280x720 Performance GPU
3DMark: 1920x1080 Fire Strike Graphics | 3840x2160 Fire Strike Ultra Graphics | Fire Strike Extreme Graphics | 2560x1440 Time Spy Graphics
Unigine Heaven 4.0: Extreme Preset DX11 | Extreme Preset OpenGL
Unigine Valley 1.0: 1920x1080 Extreme HD DirectX AA:x8 | 1920x1080 Extreme HD Preset OpenGL AA:x8
Unigine Superposition: 1280x720 720p Low | 1920x1080 1080p High | 1920x1080 1080p Extreme | 3840x2160 4k Optimized | 7680x4320 8k Optimized
| Performance Rating | |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition | |
| AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX | |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition | |
| AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT | |
| Gigabyte Aorus GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Master | |
| Asus TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Ti | |
| Average NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti | |
| Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 Ti AMP Extreme Holo | |
| Sapphire AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT Nitro+ Pure | |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Super Founders Edition | |
| Average NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti | |
| Average NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 | |
| AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT | |
| AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT | |
| Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 AMP Airo | |
| AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT | |
| Average NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 | |
| Average of class Desktop | |
| Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7700 XT | |
| Average NVIDIA Titan RTX | |
| Average NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 | |
| Average NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8G | |
| KFA2 GeForce RTX 4060 Ti EX, 16GB GDDR6 | |
| XFX Speedster QICK 308 Radeon RX 7600 Black Edition | |
| KFA2 GeForce RTX 4060 1-Click-OC 2X | |
3DMark 11: 1280x720 Performance GPU
3DMark: 1920x1080 Fire Strike Graphics | 3840x2160 Fire Strike Ultra Graphics | Fire Strike Extreme Graphics | 2560x1440 Time Spy Graphics
Unigine Heaven 4.0: Extreme Preset DX11 | Extreme Preset OpenGL
Unigine Valley 1.0: 1920x1080 Extreme HD DirectX AA:x8 | 1920x1080 Extreme HD Preset OpenGL AA:x8
Unigine Superposition: 1280x720 720p Low | 1920x1080 1080p High | 1920x1080 1080p Extreme | 3840x2160 4k Optimized | 7680x4320 8k Optimized
| 3DMark 11 Performance | 51107 points | |
| 3DMark Ice Storm Standard Score | 282675 points | |
| 3DMark Cloud Gate Standard Score | 82291 points | |
| 3DMark Fire Strike Score | 39061 points | |
| 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme Score | 23823 points | |
| 3DMark Time Spy Score | 21080 points | |
Help | ||
Compute performance: Welcome improvements over RTX 4070 and Ampere flagships
We observe a 19% performance increase between the RTX 4070 AMP Airo and the RTX 4070 Super FE in V-Ray 5 CUDA, consistent with the increased CUDA core counts.
The RTX 4070 Super FE's performance is comparable to that of the RTX 3090 Ti in this test. AMD cards understandably lag behind owing to architecture differences.
That being said, the RTX 4070 Super FE manages an impressive 53% lead over the Radeon RX 7800 XT in the V-Ray 5 RTX benchmark. Nvidia's latest Super card takes 17% lesser time to complete a Blender CUDA render compared to the RTX 4070 AMP Airo and is comparable to the RTX 4080 FE and RTX 4090 FE in Optix rendering.
While LuxMark Room shows a huge 60% lead over even the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, AMD cards take centerstage in LuxMark Sala.
* ... smaller is better
Gaming performance: 100+ fps in most titles at 1440p Ultra
The gains in synthetics do not fully reflect in gaming tests. Overall gaming performance of the RTX 4070 Super at Ultra settings is only about 9% higher than the RTX 4070 AMP Airo while it can be up to 13% in individual titles, particularly at 1440p and 4K.
The RTX 4070 Super trails by 37% and 27% when compared to the RTX 4090 FE and RTX 4080 FE, respectively in cumulative gaming performance. The RTX 4070 Ti average is about 13% faster. Nevertheless, the RTX 4070 Super more or less closes the gap with the RTX 3090 average — a card that once retailed for US$1,499.
The increase in shader counts also helps the RTX 4070 Super to place itself comfortably ahead of the Radeon RX 6950 XT while being up to 8% faster than the RX 7800 XT.
Overall, the RTX 4070 Super breaks no sweat in achieving 100+ fps in native 1440p Ultra, save for particularly demanding titles such as Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Alan Wake 2, and F1 23.
The card is also quite capable of achieving 60 fps at native 4K Ultra in the vast majority of tested games. A helping hand from upscalers is in order, however, especially with ray tracing enabled.
Ray tracing performance
Ray tracing performance also gets some much-needed impetus over the RTX 4070 AMP Airo with up to 31% gains in Cyberpunk 2077 1.6 at 4K Ultra. The actual gameplay at these settings is barely better than a slideshow, though.
That being said, ray tracing performance at 1080p Ultra can show up to 19% benefits in Dying Light 2 and up to 17% in Watch Dogs: Legion. Interestingly, we see a 6% uptick in 1080p ray tracing in The Callisto Protocol vis-à-vis the RTX 4070 Ti average.
Overall, the RTX 4070 Super's ray tracing capabilities are comparable to those of the RX 7900 XT and, at times, even to that of the RX 7900 XTX as seen in the case of Ghostwire: Tokyo.
| low | med. | high | ultra | QHD | 4K DLSS | 4K | |
| GTA V (2015) | 187.7 | 187.6 | 186.9 | 160 | 148.2 | 164.6 | |
| The Witcher 3 (2015) | 566 | 406 | 191.9 | 148.9 | 129.4 | ||
| Dota 2 Reborn (2015) | 244 | 229 | 223 | 208 | 192.9 | ||
| Final Fantasy XV Benchmark (2018) | 244 | 234 | 194 | 148 | 84.8 | ||
| X-Plane 11.11 (2018) | 226 | 196.3 | 151.9 | 131.7 | |||
| Far Cry 5 (2018) | 203 | 199 | 188 | 181 | 101 | ||
| Strange Brigade (2018) | 570 | 469 | 418 | 376 | 260 | 130 | |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018) | 265 | 257 | 244 | 165.3 | 91.5 | ||
| Metro Exodus (2019) | 267 | 224 | 178.8 | 144.8 | 116.1 | 72.8 | |
| Control (2019) | 224 | 172.7 | 112.6 | 67.1 | 57.4 | ||
| Borderlands 3 (2019) | 193.6 | 179.3 | 163.4 | 125.4 | 66.2 | ||
| Mafia Definitive Edition (2020) | 233 | 216 | 156.8 | 80.5 | |||
| Watch Dogs Legion (2020) | 169.2 | 159.1 | 135.5 | 106 | 61.4 | ||
| Far Cry 6 (2021) | 206 | 181.8 | 160 | 139.4 | 79 | ||
| Dying Light 2 (2022) | 201 | 150.5 | 109.7 | 52.8 | |||
| Cyberpunk 2077 1.6 (2022) | 195.7 | 184.1 | 156.5 | 141 | 91.3 | 43.5 | |
| Ghostwire Tokyo (2022) | 285 | 279 | 278 | 189.6 | 87.5 | ||
| F1 22 (2022) | 363 | 386 | 321 | 128.7 | 83.1 | 41.9 | |
| The Callisto Protocol (2022) | 207.97 | 201.67 | 149.6 | 118.03 | 73.64 | ||
| F1 23 (2023) | 381 | 398 | 344 | 122.4 | 78 | 66.8 | 39 |
| Baldur's Gate 3 (2023) | 228 | 198.8 | 194.3 | 140.3 | 115.4 | 71.6 | |
| Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 Phantom Liberty (2023) | 186 | 181.8 | 156.3 | 136.2 | 83.8 | 38.4 | |
| Assassin's Creed Mirage (2023) | 205 | 193 | 157 | 121 | 99 | 72 | |
| Alan Wake 2 (2023) | 112.8 | 105.1 | 73.8 | 28.9 | 40 | ||
| Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 2023 (2023) | 226 | 179 | 166 | 118 | 99 | 71 | |
| Avatar Frontiers of Pandora (2023) | 137.4 | 122.1 | 96.2 | 61.5 | 56.6 | 33.9 |
Emissions: Excellent thermal and noise profiles under load
The RTX 4070 Super FE sports the same thermal design as the RTX 4090 FE and RTX 4080 FE cards, which translates to efficient thermals and a largely quiet operation. Unlike some of the add-in board (AiB) partner cards, the RTX 4070 Super FE does not allow for switching between BIOS operating modes.
Stress tests
While stressing the RTX 4070 Super FE with FurMark at 1280 x 720 with no AA, the core clocks achieve a maximum of 2,790 MHz at a 100% power target (PT). However, the card can only reach this frequency intermittently, failing to sustain it towards the end of the stress test.
Though the RTX 4070 Super FE has a reduced peak clock of 2,670 MHz at a 109% PT, its performance is significantly more stable. Operating the card in this mode involves trade-offs, including higher power consumption, a hot spot temperature average of 85.22°C, and slightly increased fan noise.
Power limits do not primarily matter for Ada cards in comparison to frequency and voltage, a fact demonstrated while stressing with The Witcher 3 at 1080p Ultra. Here, at both 100% PT and 109% PT, the RTX 4070 Super FE shows more or less the same clocks and hot spot temperature values. The card uses only up to ~209 W, even though it can have up to a 240 W headroom.
Therefore, gaming is unlikely to benefit from increased power targets alone, unless you experiment with core and memory overclocking in addition to increasing the PT.
The Witcher 3 FPS Chart
The cooling system is quite efficient and poses no throttling concerns. This is evident with the near-consistent frame rates in The Witcher 3 at both 1080p Ultra and 4K Ultra settings.
Surface temperatures
The RTX 4070 Super FE's efficient cooling also translates to tolerable surface temperatures under load. We measured up to 49 °C on the card's front during a FurMark load at 1280 x 720 with no AA and an ambient temperature of 22 °C. The area near to the power connector was slightly warmer at about 54 °C.
Noise levels
We measured fan noise at a distance of 15 cm from the test bench with all case fans turned off except for the Gigabyte WaterForce X II 360 AiO pump. The noises recorded at idle and ambient were 19.5 dB(A) and 24 dB(A), respectively.
The RTX 4070 Super FE, like most recent Nvidia Founders Edition cards, has a fairly subdued noise profile. The card maintains fan noise levels below 35 dB(A), even during periods of stress and when operating at its full power. Additionally, it features a complete fan stop when idle.
| Stress Test | Power Target | Max. Fan Speed (RPM) | Fan Noise dB(A) |
| FurMark 1280 x 720, no AA | 100% | 1,978 | 31.76 |
| FurMark 1280 x 720, no AA | 109% | 2,092 | 33.36 |
| The Witcher 3 1080p Ultra | 100% | 1,975 | 31.72 |
| The Witcher 3 1080p Ultra | 109% | 2,014 | 31.88 |
Energy Management: Close to RTX 4090 FE power efficiency
Compared to the RTX 4070 AMP Airo, the RTX 4070 FE only has a 7% higher power draw at a 100% power target (PT) while being 18% more economical than the RTX 4070 Ti in FurMark at 1280 x 720 resolution with no AA.
Similar to other Ada Lovelace cards, the RTX 4070 Super does not actually consume higher power while gaming even though it is set at a 109% PT.
In terms of power efficiency, the RTX 4070 Super FE is about 14% more efficient in The Witcher 3 at 1080p Ultra compared to the RX 7800 XT and about 8% better than the RTX 4070 AMP Airo while trailing the RTX 4090 FE by just 5%.
Power Consumption: External monitor
| 1280x720 FurMark 1.19 GPU Stress Test (external Monitor) | |
| 1920x1080 The Witcher 3 ultra (external Monitor) | |
* ... smaller is better
Pros
Cons
Verdict: Price premium over the RX 7800 XT isn't without benefits
The RTX 4070 Super Founders Edition offers about a 21% increase in shader counts over the original RTX 4070, resulting in a near-complete AD104 die. Nvidia has made some refinements to the overall feel and finish of the card to make it look more premium. The dual-slot design will appeal to those with space constraints in their cases.
The RTX 4070 Super FE affords 13% gains over the RTX 4070, which puts it on an equal footing as the RTX 3090 average in cumulative synthetic tests. The fact that you are able to get this performance today at a US$599 MSRP compared to the US$1,499 launch MSRP of the RTX 3090 back in the day shows how far we've come in terms of a good price-to-performance ratio.
4K is definitely possible, especially with some upscaling help, but the RTX 4070 Super FE is primarily aimed at 1440p Ultra gamers. Cumulatively, we see only about a 9% uplift in gaming over the RTX 4070 although this delta can widen further depending on the game.
While 12 GB of VRAM should suffice for the vast majority of current AAA games at 1440p, the 192-bit memory subsystem can pose a limitation in texture-heavy titles such as Alan Wake 2 or Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super Founders Edition makes for an excellent 1440p Ultra gaming GPU thanks to increased shader counts, support for the latest DLSS technologies, and highly tolerable emissions."
The RTX 4070 and the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT (U$499 MSRP) were generally on par with each other in raster gaming. But now Nvidia has managed to further increase the performance delta from the RX 7800 XT by about 8% along with improved power efficiency to make the RTX 4070 Super seem more lucrative.
The RTX 4070 Super FE's 8% gains for a 20% price increase over the RX 7800 XT does seem underwhelming, and it really is, but Nvidia currently has the edge when it comes to ray tracing, DLSS 3 frame generation, and DLSS 3.5 ray reconstruction, plus the ability to run AMD FSR 3 just fine.
The RX 7800 XT, therefore, currently only makes sense if you're looking at a better price-to-performance ratio in raster and are able to snag an enticing deal.
In hindsight, the RTX 4070 Super, with these specs and performance, ideally should have been among us for US$549 last year itself. Nvidia is still making available the original RTX 4070 for US$549, so that's some consolation.
Price and Availability
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super Founders Edition can be had for US$599 from Best Buy US.
In India, the RTX 4070 Super FE officially retails for ₹63,000, but Founders Edition cards are hard to find in the country.
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Transparency
The present review sample was made available to the author as a loan by the manufacturer or a shop for the purposes of review. The lender had no influence on this review, nor did the manufacturer receive a copy of this review before publication. There was no obligation to publish this review.
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