Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti Review

The RTX 3070 Ti has finally arrived, a week after its beefier, and much pricier cousin the RTX 3080 Ti.

This latest in the 30 series of Nvidia GPUs is positioned directly in between 2020’s RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 graphics cards in terms of price at an MSRP of $599 (though you’ll be very fortunate to find one at this price in today’s market), so we would expect performance to be of a similar mid-point between these two.

Let’s see if this is the case and whether or not the card turns out to be worth your money, or another needless entry in an already crowded high-end GPU market.

If you’re eager to pick this GPU up, be sure to bookmark and refresh our Where To Buy The RTX 3070 Ti page for links to all major global stockists and retailers.

 

RTX 3070 Ti Specifications And Price

In all the main areas the RTX 3070 Ti comes with slight improvements over the RTX 3070, but they’re nothing really to write home about.

The RTX 3070 Ti comes with the same 8GB of VRAM as the RTX 3070, however, it’s of the faster GDDR6X type like the RTX 3080 and the other more advanced cards, rather than just plain old GDDR6 like the 3070 has. This contributes to a small improved memory clock speed of 11,880 MHz (compared to the 11,750 MHz of the RTX 3070). The memory bus size remains the same 256-bit of the cheaper card, which is unfortunate for those of us expecting to see a higher VRAM, larger bus version of the GPU for more budget orientated workflow users (though perhaps Nvidia will announce this in the future).

Similarly, the number of CUDA cores has been increased by an additional 256 on top of the 5,888 that the RTX 3070 came with. This 4.3% increase in the number of cores doesn’t necessarily translate into that many more FPS, but even if it did this would obviously not be a significant uplift.

Finally, the RTX 3070 Ti has a boost clock of 1770 Mhz, which is 50Hz higher than the clock speed of the RTX 3070.

The TDP of the RTX 3070 Ti is 290W, which is considerably larger than the 220W of the RTX 3070, a jump that may be surprising given the relatively small difference between the two cards.

RTX 3070 Ti Aesthetics

The Founders Edition of the RTX 3070 Ti looks about halfway between the RTX 3070 and RTX 3080. It is more or less the same as the RTX 3070 but slightly larger – being around halfway between the 3070 and 3080 in terms of size, but retaining the single diagonal line across the middle of the card like the 3070, rather than the ‘Tie-Fighter’ pattern of the RTX 3080.

Unlike the RTX 3070, only one of the cooling fans is visible as the RTX 3070 Ti adopts the ‘blow through’ style of the RTX 3080 with the cooling grills on the outside of much of the card, with one of the two fans hidden beneath.

We’re generally quite big fans of the 30-series in terms of looks, and think their black and gun-metal color and styling is superior to most of the AIB versions of the card from 3rd parties.

Unlike AIBs you don’t get any RGB effects on the card if that’s what you’re looking for, however, the Founders Edition of the graphics card will be smaller than any 3rd-party version with their bulkier cooling.

RTX 3070 Ti Cooling

Like the RTX 3070 the RTX 3070 Ti has a dual cooling solution, though as mentioned it differs in that it has the blow-through design of the RTX 3080, with one of the fans covered by the exhaust grill.  We assume Nvidia found this to be preferable of the two designs in terms of performance.

As with virtually all Founders Edition graphics cards, the cooling solution is going to be less potent than what you will find on 3rd party AIB variations of the card. This has an impact on fan volume (more strain on the fans means they must rotate faster and more frequently to cool the card) and also the longevity of the card. If history serves as a guide you can expect the efficiency of this card to deteriorate somewhat over the years as a result of the relatively limited cooling, though the extent of this we obviously won’t know until those years have passed! Obviously the smaller cooling solution does mean the Founders Edition is a more compact card overall though.

RTX 3070 Ti Performance

Below you can see all the benchmarking results we have so far on the RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition.

As you would expect the RTX 3070 Ti lies between both the RTX 3080 and the RTX 3070 in performance, however, unfortunately, it leans a lot closer to the RTX 3070 in most cases than the more expensive card. The general uplift in FPS performance from the RTX 3070 was about 5-9% on most games, typically showing less improvement at 1080p and 1440p resolution, but leaning towards the higher variance at 4K. We’re not sure if this is due to the impact of the improved GDDR6X VRAM or another factor, but either way, it’s not much of a difference.

Although the performance is by no means bad, we can’t help but feel slightly disappointed that it’s not more evenly placed between the other two cards, given this is how it is priced.

All figures indicate average FPS

CS:GO (Max Settings, DX12)
1080p
RTX 3080 : 336
RTX 3070 Ti : 312
RTX 3070 : 295
1440p
RTX 3080 : 334
RTX 3070 Ti : 311
RTX 3070 : 292
4K
RTX 3080 : 296
RTX 3070 Ti :280
RTX 3070 : 263

Red Dead Redemption 2 (Ultra Settings, DX12)
1080p
RTX 3080 : 150
RTX 3070 Ti : 134
RTX 3070 : 127
1440p
RTX 3080 : 129
RTX 3070 Ti :110
RTX 3070 : 102
4K
RTX 3080 : 86
RTX 3070 Ti : 70
RTX 3070 : 65

Far Cry 5 (Ultra Settings, DX12)
1080p
RTX 3080 : 160
RTX 3070 Ti :156
RTX 3070 : 156
1440p
RTX 3080 : 152
RTX 3070 Ti :143
RTX 3070 : 134
4K
RTX 3080 : 99
RTX 3070 Ti :84
RTX 3070 : 77

Shadow Of The Tomb Raider (Ray-Tracing On, Ultra Settings, DX12)
1080p
RTX 3080 : 137
RTX 3070 Ti : 120
RTX 3070 : 114
1440p
RTX 3080 : 104
RTX 3070 Ti : 89
RTX 3070 : 75
4K
RTX 3080 : 60
RTX 3070 Ti :45
RTX 3070 : 40

Shadow Of The Tomb Raider (Ray-Tracing Off, Ultra Settings, DX12)
1080p
RTX 3080 : 169
RTX 3070 Ti : 162
RTX 3070 : 162
1440p
RTX 3080 : 150
RTX 3070 Ti :129
RTX 3070 : 114
4K
RTX 3080 : 86
RTX 3070 Ti :72
RTX 3070 : 63

Final Word

All-in-all the Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti is a solid card, though we think both the RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 are better options in terms of price to performance. The relatively meager 5-9% increase in FPS we found between the RTX 3070 and the RTX 3070 Ti isn’t worth the extra $100 in our opinion, never mind whatever price you might actually end up paying for it in today’s market. The RTX 3080 also offers substantially better performance than this entry in the 30-series.

If the RTX 3070 Ti was priced at $549 instead of $599 we would consider this to be more reflective of the performance and therefore worth your money – as it is we would advise just going with an RTX 3070 if you can get your hands on one, or alternatively going with AMD’s Radeon RX 6800 for comparable and often superior FPS performance, if you don’t mind the loss of Ray-Tracing and DLSS.

However, all of this is arguably a moot point in today’s market, as the supply of all 30-series cards is so scarce that if you are lucky enough to be able to get hold of an RTX 3070 Ti for near to its MSRP, you should definitely buy one, as the value it will offer relative to the inflated market prices on any of the other comparative GPUs will make it definitely worth your money.

Keep refreshing our Where To Buy The RTX 3070 Ti page to ensure you have the best chance of getting yourself one of these GPUs. Also, do let us know what you think of this new Nvidia entry in the comments section below and see the other recommended articles on this page for further graphics card-related content.