NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition Review

1. Introduction
2. Everything You Need to Know About Ampere
3. RTX 3070 Ti Tech Specs
4. Detailed Look
5. Test System Specs
6. Benchmarks - Synthetic
7. Benchmarks - 1080p
8. Benchmarks - 1440p
9. Benchmarks - 4K
10. Overclocking
11. Power Consumption & Temps
12. What's Hot, What's Not
13. Final Thoughts

TweakTown's Rating: 90%

The Bottom Line

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition is another great Ampere GPU release, but it can struggle to beat the Radeon RX 6800 across the board.

Introduction

I don't think any GPU reviewers are sleeping right now... as I have not even recovered from the launch of NVIDIA's just-released GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics cards... and here we are with the unleashing of the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti.

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The first card we have on the review table is NVIDIA's own GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition graphics card, which I'll be following up with custom designs in the form of the ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3070 Ti and MSI GeForce RTX 3070 Ti SUPRIM X graphics cards.

NVIDIA is aiming at two different markets and gamers with their new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti and GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, while the higher-end RTX 3080 Ti is for 1440p high refresh rate and 4K 60/120FPS+ gaming... the RTX 3070 Ti is ready for high refresh rate 1080p and 1440p gaming while handling 4K gaming without a problem.

• Read more: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition Review
• Read more: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition Review
• Read more: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition Review
• Read more: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition Review
• Read more: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition Review

NVIDIA has some great performance leaps and bounds over the Turing-based GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, with the company promising up to 1.5x more performance with the new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti... meanwhile, there's double the performance of the Pascal-based GeForce GTX 1070 Ti graphics card.

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If you've been waiting to upgrade from your GeForce GTX 1070 Ti graphics card, NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is a beast... if you can find it, and can spare one of your kidneys.

• Read more: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition Review
• Read more: ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Review
• Read more: MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ti SUPRIM X Review
• Read more: Inno3D GeForce RTX 3080 Ti X3 OC Dual Slot Review

Above, you'll find all of my reviews on NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics cards so far. I've included some overclocking results on NVIDIA's own GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition and the gaming flagship GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition.

I have been working on an article with the custom ASUS, MSI, and Inno3D GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics cards when it comes to overclocking. I've got some interesting results, comparing 3 of them -- at least for now, I'm trying to get more -- which I'll have a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Roundup article out next week.

Pricing

Ah, the pricing situation... and how I love to discuss this in reviews.

NVIDIA introduced its new flagship gaming GPU for $1199, with the new GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition starting from $1199 but being double that, if not more in reality. The new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition graphics card is cheaper, with a price for the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti FE of $599.

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The new Ampere-based GPUs are part of the new crypto-gimped LHR (Lite Hash Rate) family of cards, which make them virtually useless for ETH crypto miners. The GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 can do 80-115MH/s while the new RTX 3080 Ti is gimped down to 50-55MH/s and the RTX 3070 Ti even more so.

This won't help the pricing situation (even though most people seem to think crypto miners are the reason why graphics card prices are so high, yet with LHR-based GPUs now out from NVIDIA the pricing situation is no better... hell, it's worse than it's ever been).

At the end of the day, the price of NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition is starting from "$599" or so.

Everything You Need to Know About Ampere

• Ampere GPU architecture: NVIDIA has so much going on under the Ampere GPU hood, with the GA104 GPU packing 17.4 billion transistors (that's 17.400,000,000) on the Samsung 8nm node. We have 6144 CUDA cores on GA104, over double the 2560 CUDA cores on the GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER.
• RTX improvements: NVIDIA has effectively doubled everything when it comes to RTX, where it will rips and tears your games and delivers them to your eyeballs faster than ever before with Ampere. If you want to run any RTX-powered games, you'll want a new GeForce RTX 3080.
• GDDR6X memory: The new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti has 8GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit memory bus, with 608GB/sec of memory bandwidth.

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• PCIe 4.0 connectivity: NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards are now PCIe 4.0 compatible, so if you're building a new AMD Ryzen 3000 series system with an X570 motherboard -- you will be ready to rock and roll with PCIe 4.0 connectivity.
• HDMI 2.1: 4K 120Hz + 8K 60Hz = single cable: If you are buying a new TV in the coming months or years, HDMI 2.1 is going to be something you want. It opens up the bandwidth floodgates to 4K 120Hz and 8K 60Hz over the single HDMI 2.1 cable.
• RTX IO: NVIDIA's introduction of RTX IO with Ampere is very similar to the ultra-fast game load times on the next-gen Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 consoles. You can read all about RTX IO right here, which is something we'll see build more foundation in 2021 and beyond.

RTX 3070 Ti Tech Specs

NVIDIA has made some rather big improvements with Ampere over the previous-gen Turing GPU architecture, with the new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti rocking 6144 CUDA cores against the 2560 CUDA cores found inside of the GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER.

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We have the new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti packing 48 SMs, 192 Tensor Cores (3rd Gen) and 48 RT Cores (2nd Gen) against the 40 SMs, 320 Tensor Cores (2nd Gen), and 40 RT Cores (1st Gen) inside of the GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER.

GPU boost clocks are close to the same between the two GPUs, with the new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition with a base GPU clock of 1575MHz and boost GPU clock of 1770MHz -- the base clock on the RTX 2070 SUPER is slightly higher.

But the major improvement here with the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is the use of GDDR6X memory, with NVIDIA using the same 8GB framebuffer... the new GDDR6X clocked at 19Gbps (up from 14Gbps on GDDR6) on the same 256-bit memory bus results in 608GB/sec of memory bandwidth (up from 448GB/sec on the GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER).

Detailed Look

NVIDIA is using the same retail packaging for its GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition as it has with all other GeForce RTX 30 series FE cards. I'm a big fan of the sleek design, it doesn't need to be much and it serves its purpose before the card is ripped out of the box and slammed into your gaming PC.

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Inside, you've got the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition and the required 12-pin to dual 8-pin PCIe power adapter.

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The new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition in all its glory, rocking a second fan on the back with a design that is closer to the GeForce RTX 3080 FE than it is to the RTX 3070 FE. I'm a big fan of the fan on the back of the RTX 30 series GPUs so it's very welcomed here on the new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition.

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NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition has a very similar style to the GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition, except for a few tweaks to the cooler.

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I've got an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 series Founders Edition family photo above, where you can see the differences between the RTX 3070 Ti FE and RTX 3080 FE cooler designs.

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The new 12-pin connector on top of the card, just like the RTX 30 series FE cards -- except the RTX 3070 Ti has its 12-pin split out to 2 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors, unlike the RTX 3070 FE which was a single 12-pin to 8-pin connector.

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The same display connectivity as all of the GeForce RTX 30 series FE cards: 3 x DP 1.4 and 1 x HDMI 2.1 that is capable of up to 4K 120/144Hz.

Test System Specs

Latest upgrade:

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ASUS provided a rather large upgrade to my GPU testing lab -- or rather, I kept the ASUS ROG Swift PG43UQ gaming monitor after my review on it. The 43-inch 4K 144Hz panel is just glorious to look at -- it's huge, the DPI for Windows 10 when set perfect for your viewing distance is kiss-fingers-emoji good. It's just amazing -- for work, and gaming.

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Sabrent sent over their huge Rocket Q 8TB NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 SSD, which will be my new Games install SSD inside of my main test bed.

I'll be making some changes over the coming months to the GPU test bed here for TweakTown, to both the Ryzen 9 5900X and then Intel's new Core i9-11900K to do some proper PCIe 4.0 testing between the chipsets for GPUs + super-fast load times into games on these new super-fast Sabrent SSDs.

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Sabrent helped out with some new storage for my GPU test beds, sending over a slew of crazy-fast Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 SSDs. I've got this installed into my GPU test bed as the new Games Storage drive, since games are so damn big now. Thanks to Sabrent, I've got 2TB of super-fast M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD storage now.

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Anthony's GPU Test System Specifications

I've recently upgraded my GPU test bed -- at least for now, until AMD's new Ryzen 9 5950X processor is unleashed then the final update for 2020 will happen and we'll be all good for RDNA 2 and future Ampere GPU releases. You can read my article here: TweakTown GPU Test Bed Upgrade for 2021, But Then Zen 3 Was Announced.

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3800X (buy from Amazon)
• Motherboard: ASUS ROG X570 Crosshair VIII HERO (buy from Amazon)
• Cooler: CoolerMaster MasterLiquid ML360R RGB (buy from Amazon)
• RAM: G.SKILL Trident Z NEO RGB 32GB (4x8GB) (F4-3600C18Q-32GTZN) (buy from Amazon)
• SSD: Sabrent 2TB Rocket NVMe PCIe 4.0 M.2 2280 (buy from Amazon)
• PSU: be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 1200W (buy from Amazon)
• Case: InWin X-Frame 2.0
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Professional x64 (buy from Amazon)
• Monitor: ASUS ROG Swift PG43UQ (buy from Amazon)

Benchmarks - Synthetic

3DMark Fire Strike

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3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.

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3DMark TimeSpy

Heaven - 1080p

Heaven is an intensive GPU benchmark that really pushes your silicon to its limits. It's another favorite of ours as it has some great scaling for multi-GPU testing, and it's great for getting your GPU to 100% for power and noise testing.

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Benchmarks - 1080p

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Assassin's Creed: Valhalla is the latest game to be inserted into our benchmark suite, with Ubisoft Montreal using its AnvilNext engine to power the game. It scales really well across the cards, and has some surprising performance benefits with AMD's new Big Navi GPUs.

You can buy Assassins Creed: Valhalla at Amazon.

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Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

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Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.

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Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

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1080p Benchmark Performance Thoughts

1080p gaming is definitely something NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti dominates in, with 60FPS+ easily on AAA games with maxed out graphics for the most part. You should also be able to crank ray tracing in games like Cyberpunk 2077 and nail 60FPS average thanks to DLSS technology.

If you're playing esports games then you'll want 120-144FPS which is something the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti can easily do. Games like Overwatch, League of Legends, CS:GO, Rainbow Six: Siege and many others will enjoy those huge triple-digit frame rates.

Benchmarks - 1440p

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Assassin's Creed: Valhalla is the latest game to be inserted into our benchmark suite, with Ubisoft Montreal using its AnvilNext engine to power the game. It scales really well across the cards, and has some surprising performance benefits with AMD's new Big Navi GPUs.

You can buy Assassins Creed: Valhalla at Amazon.

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Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

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Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.

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Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

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1440p Benchmark Performance Thoughts

The super-fast GDDR6X memory and next-gen Ampere GPU architecture allow NVIDIA to continue kicking ass at 2560 x 1440, with 73FPS average in an AAA game like Assassin's Creed: Valhalla. At 1440p the RTX 3070 Ti when overclocked matches the RTX 3080 FE.

Shadow of War at 1440p has the overclocked RTX 3070 Ti FE just 1FPS behind the Radeon RX 6800, but it beats the RTX 3070 by 8FPS (when overclocked) and the RTX 2080 Ti by 11FPS (again, when overclocked).

Benchmarks - 4K

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Assassin's Creed: Valhalla is the latest game to be inserted into our benchmark suite, with Ubisoft Montreal using its AnvilNext engine to power the game. It scales really well across the cards, and has some surprising performance benefits with AMD's new Big Navi GPUs.

You can buy Assassins Creed: Valhalla at Amazon.

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Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

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Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.

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Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

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4K Benchmark Performance Thoughts

4K performance is still great on the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, with 47FPS average in Assassin's Creed: Valhalla -- equal to the Radeon RX 6800 when overclocked, too. Not bad for an AMD optimized game, the new RTX 3070 Ti is exactly what NVIDIA needs even at 4K.

We also have the same 4K prowess in Shadow of War, with the RTX 3070 Ti beating the RX 6800 even when its not overclocked -- and when overclocked it comes closer to the RX 6800 XT.

Overclocking

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Out of the box my GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition sample was reaching around 1830-1860MHz GPU boost.

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My sample was able to be pushed up to 2055-2070MHz GPU boost, with 2055MHz being rock solid for me through torture testing. I also pumped another 1000MHz+ into the 8GB of GDDR6X which was perfectly stable, I will be putting more time into overclocking the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti in the coming week and will write something separate once I have played more.

Power Consumption & Temps

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GPU temps are sitting at around 80-81C and the GPU hotspot at 90C, while the GDDR6X memory is running at around 83-84C -- cooler than the 75-77C temps on the 12GB of GDDR6X memory on the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition.

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With the fans on the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition cranked up to 100% and the maximum overclock that I could manage on my sample, we have GPU temps of just 56-57C, GPU hotspot is now at 65C, while the GDDR6X memory temps drop to 62% when the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti FE.

What's Hot, What's Not

What's Hot

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• It's so small: NVIDIA makes some of the thinnest, smallest GeForce RTX 30 series cards with the new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition is a dual-slot card. Much smaller than the custom RTX 3070 Ti cards that I have that are nearing 3-slot across the board.
• GDDR6X memory meets the mid-range GPU: NVIDIA has deployed the ultra-fast GDDR6X memory on its new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, a big upgrade over the GDDR6 used in the RTX 3070. We have some wicked memory bandwidth numbers from a "mid-range" GPU.
• Fantastic 1080p and 1440p performance: If you are wanting to play the latest games with Ultra graphics or with ray tracing enabled, or want to play with higher levels of detail and want higher frame rates thanks to DLSS, the new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is perfect.

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• Upgraded Founders Edition cooler: The upgraded dual-fan Founders Edition cooler on the RTX 3070 Ti FE is welcomed in both cooling results, and style. The new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti FE looks more like the higher-end RTX 3080 FE which also has a dual-fan cooler, versus the single-fan cooler on the RTX 3070 FE.
• RTX + DLSS: If you are upgrading from the likes of the GeForce GTX 980 Ti, then you're going to get stellar gaming performance out of the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti -- but then you've got to add in that RTX and DLSS magic and you've got a totally next-gen gaming experience on your hands.
• A great upgrade from the GeForce GTX 10 series GPU: If you've got an older-gen GeForce GTX 1060, GTX 1070, GTX 1070 Ti, GTX 1080, or GTX 1080 Ti... and you didn't already upgrade to the RTX 3070 or RTX 3080 and haven't been able to find one since and can somehow find the RTX 3070 Ti, then the new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is a fantastic upgrade.

What's Not

• Struggles to find a place: The new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti isn't that much faster than the RTX 3070, and it's not that much slower than the RTX 3080. It feels like a release of a card that needed to happen, fill a slot in the RTX 30 series, and is now here because of that reason.
• GDDR6X on a mid-range card: Don't get me wrong -- I'm a huge fan of giving consumers the fastest everything on a graphics card, including super-fast GDDR6X memory. But it feels out of place, but required in order to keep up with the 16GB (more) of slower GDDR6 memory that is boosted by AMD's own Infinity Cache technology.
• Dual 8-pin PCIe power connectors required: NVIDIA is requiring another 8-pin PCIe power connector with the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, which has the same super-small 12-pin connector that requires dual 8-pin PCIe power connectors. The regular RTX 3070 FE requires a single 8-pin (through the 12-pin connector).
• No stock/price insanity: Sigh, this needs no explanation and I don't even want to put time into it because it's a shit show.

Final Thoughts

NVIDIA had a much bigger card on its hands with the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, but the same can't exactly be said for the new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti -- although, it is a powerhouse in its own regard.

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We have an upgraded stack of GDDR6X memory here that elevates the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti to a slightly better position than the GDDR6-powered GeForce RTX 3070. The new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti better beats, even if it's just by a FPS, the previous-gen Turing-based GeForce RTX 2080 Ti.

NVIDIA is aiming directly at AMD and its third-best RDNA 2 card in the Radeon RX 6800, with the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti falling either side of the RX 6800 in most tests at 1080p and 1440p. If the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti FE is overclocked, it can help it edge out a stock Radeon RX 6800.

To get there NVIDIA has used super-fast GDDR6X memory but placed it on a smaller 256-bit memory bus, which directly competes against the regular GDDR6 memory (and double it, 16GB GDDR6 on the Radeon RX 6800 versus 8GB of GDDR6X on the RTX 3070 Ti) which is also joined by AMD's use of its Infinity Cache on the Radeon RX 6000 series cards.

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But with its kick-ass DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) technology and the right games: Call of Duty: Warzone, Death Stranding, Cyberpunk 2077, as well as upcoming games like DOOM Eternal, Rainbow Six: Siege, Red Dead Redemption 2, No Man's Sky, and others then NVIDIA really has some great reasons to be a GeForce gamer.

The new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition, and the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, in general, is a great card released at a bad time, at a price that would regularly be just OK -- compared to the launch price of the Radeon RX 6800 at $579 released back in November 2020.

Now for some custom GeForce RTX 3070 Ti reviews...