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Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti
More Affordable
Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is part of the RTX 40 series of cards based on Ada Lovelace. It’s also the most affordable RTX 40 GPU to date, which doesn’t mean much with the current state of graphics card pricing.
Pros
- “Better” price
- Still an excellent 4K GPU
Cons
- Weaker than the RTX 4080
- Not great value
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Source: MSI
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080
Best Performance
Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4080 is an impressive piece of kit. It’s a graphics card that’s capable of butter-smooth 4K gaming with ray tracing enabled. It’s expensive and likely not the best value GPU for your PC build, but it’s still an incredible card for gaming.
Pros
- Better performance
- Impressive 4K gaming
Cons
- More expensive
- Higher power draw
Nvidia introduced the GeForce RTX 4080 as part of its 40 series launch and for 2023, the company outed the RTX 4070 Ti to sit just below the GPU and offer a “more affordable” entry point. In this guide, we’ll take a closer look at the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti vs. RTX 4080 to see which would be the best graphics card for you to buy.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti vs. RTX 4080: Price, availability, and specs
It’s difficult to discuss GPU pricing without having a giggle. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 launched for $1,199, which is a lot of money to pay for a graphics card that isn’t even the flagship model. To put this into perspective, its predecessor, the RTX 3080, originally launched for $699. Sure, Nvidia made some serious improvements with the latest Ada Lovelace architecture, but does it warrant an additional $500? The newer Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti launched with an MSRP of $799. That’s still more than what the previous gen RTX 3080 launched for. Now, the RTX 4070 Ti is technically the better card over the RTX 3080 and so that may make some sense, but the older RTX cards were substantial upgrades without such a steep price hike. Gamers are struggling to fund PC gaming and new card releases such as this don’t help.
Both the RTX 4080 and RTX 4070 Ti aren’t great deals at all, which makes recommending either GPU difficult. It’s also worth noting that Nvidia will not be releasing its own Founder’s Edition of the RTX 4070 Ti, meaning you can expect to pay more than $799 for AIB partner cards. When shopping around for a new GPU, value really should be of no concern, as it doesn’t really matter which new graphics card you end up buying, you’re likely getting a subpar deal. Even the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX could be viewed as overpriced. For better outright performance, the RTX 4080 is the way to go. If you’d rather not spend too much, the RTX 4070 Ti is your card.
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Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Architecture Ada Lovelace Ada Lovelace Process 4 nm 4 nm Transistors 35.8 billion 45.9 billion Ray Accelerators/Cores 60 76 Stream Processors 60 9,728 Base Clock Speed 2,310 MHz 2,205 MHz Boost Clock Speed 2,610 MHz 2,505 MHz Memory Capacity 12 GB GDDR6X 16 GB GDDR6X Memory Bus 192-bit 256-bit Memory Bandwidth 504.2 GB/s 716.8 GB/s Power Draw 285 W 320 W
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti vs. RTX 4080: Battle of Ada Lovelace
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is actually a relaunch of sorts. Originally announced as a 12GB RTX 4080, the card was met with much-deserved criticism from just about everyone. The company is back with the RTX 4070 Ti, and it’s based on the very same platform and architecture as its RTX 4080 sibling. With the RTX 4070 Ti, Nvidia cut down the RAM by 4GB and it’s on a slower 192-bit bus, compared to the 256-bit bus with the RTX 4080.
This is a substantial step down and adds to the performance deficit of the RTX 4070 Ti, which is largely what caused all the fuss about it originally being listed as an RTX 4080. To go alongside the reduction in memory bandwidth are fewer CUDA cores, fewer ray tracing cores, and slower clock speeds. But the Ada Lovelace architecture is really efficient and you won’t see the RTX 4070 Ti or RTX 4080 hit draws anywhere close to the ridiculous numbers of the RTX 4090.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti vs. RTX 4080: Great gaming performance
We haven’t gotten our paws on the RTX 4070 Ti to compare against the figures we have for the RTX 4080, but it’s easy to picture where the card should stand thanks to the specifications. The 4070 Ti should sit comfortably behind the two AMD Radeon RX 7900 cards, which is largely reflected in the price, though the similarly priced RX 7900 XT wins here. There are also fewer ray tracing cores, so you can expect to see an even worse showing for the RTX 4070 Ti compared to the RTX 4080 when the feature is enabled in games. The table below has all our figures for the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080.
| Game | Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 |
|---|---|
| Cyberpunk 2077 |
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| DOOM Eternal |
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| Fay Cry 6 |
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| Metro Exodus |
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| Red Dead Redemption 2 |
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If the RTX 4070 Ti performs behind the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT, we’d subtract upwards of 20% from these numbers to reach an estimation for the 4070 Ti.
Which GPU is best?
This is a difficult one to answer because both GPUs don’t offer great value. If you want the best performance, go with the RTX 4080 if you absolutely must buy a 40-series GPU from Nvidia. If you want to save money and get a “better” deal, the RTX 4070 Ti is the choice for you. There’s also AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 XTX, which may be overpriced but is a far better value proposition than both Nvidia cards here. The GPU landscape looks set to continue offering terrible value for PC gamers in the coming months, and holding out may not provide a golden opportunity to bag a GPU deal.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti
More Affordable
Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is part of the RTX 40 series of cards based on Ada Lovelace. It’s also the most affordable RTX 40 GPU to date, which doesn’t mean much with the current state of graphics card pricing.
The RTX 4080 is a better GPU, but that’s only in performance metrics. It’s still a bad deal for price-to-performance. The selection of Nvidia graphics cards is limited for RTX 40, so we’ll have to wait and see how the company will position the lower-end cards. It’s a shame as the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 is an incredibly powerful GPU.
Source: MSI
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080
Best Performance
Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4080 is an impressive piece of kit. It’s a graphics card that’s capable of butter-smooth 4K gaming with ray tracing enabled. It’s expensive and likely not the best value GPU for your PC build, but it’s still an incredible card for gaming.