With the next generation of Nvidia’s GeForce graphics cards still out of sight, the company has instead opted for a new mid-cycle refresh under the Super umbrella – and the Nvidia RTX 4070 Super may well be the best value option of the lot.
But how does the Nvidia RTX 4070 Super differ from the standard RTX 4070 card that it’s based on? And does the bump in specs really justify the added cost?
We’ve reviewed both the Nvidia RTX 4070 Super and the Nvidia RTX 4070, so we’re in an excellent position to make a judgement. Here’s everything you need to know.
Price and availability
The Nvidia RTX 4070 Super launched on 17th January 2024, with a RRP of $600. That’s the same price as what the original Nvidia RTX 4070 launched with, although that card has now seen a significant price cut.
It’s not possible to find the RTX 4070 for $50 less, and sometimes even cheaper at select retailers. Nvidia says it wants the two graphics cards to co-exist at different prices, so we’re not expecting the RTX 4070 to be phased out of stores just yet. The RTX 4070 first launched on 13th April 2023.
Specs
Nvidia claims that the RTX 4070 Super card offers around a 15% performance increase compared to the regular RTX 4070. Perhaps more impressively, it reckons the GPU will deliver RTX 3090 capabilities but using less power. Compared with the regular 4070 though, the power demands remain the same.
So, where’s all that extra power coming from? The new RTX 4070 Super offers a 20% increase on CUDA cores, up to 7168 from the 5888 of the RTX 4070, while the base clock speed gets a slight nudge up to 1.98GHz from 1.92GHz. There’s no change for the boosted clock speed of 2.61GHz.
You won’t find a boost to video memory with the new Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super either. Instead, it sticks with the same 12GB GDDR6X as its predecessor. Expectedly, nothing is changing on the architecture front either, so you’ll be getting the same support for the likes of DLSS 3.5 and ray tracing.
Performance
Thanks to the aforementioned boost to the CUDA Core count and base clock speed, the Nvidia RTX 4070 Super sees a clear performance boost compared to the vanilla RTX 4070.
This performance boost was noticeable across all of our synthetic benchmark results during our testing process. In fact, it seems that there’s a bigger performance gap here than there is between the Nvidia RTX 4080 Super and RTX 4080.
How does that translate to actual gaming performance? Well, we made sure to test that too, and the Nvidia RTX 4070 Super once again came out on top. When rendering games in 4K, the RTX 4070 Super saw an 8fps advantage in Horizon Zero Dawn, 6fps boost in Borderlands 3 and 13fps jump in Red Dead Redemption 2.
The performance jump was even greater for 1080p: 11fps in Horizon, 20fps in Borderlands 3 and 17fps in Red Dead Redemption 2.
With those benchmarks considered, the Nvidia RTX 4070 Super clearly offers a performance boost over its predecessor, although it’s not a major upgrade like you’d get with a generational leap.
Power draw
With the Nvidia RTX 4070 Super seeing a performance boost compared to its predecessor, you may expect it to also require more power, and yet that’s not the case.
When measuring the power consumption of our test PC when fitted with each processor, the power draw figure results were almost identical – both when our PC was idle and under stress.
This means the processors use up the exact same amount of power, so you won’t need to upgrade to a new PSU or put up with greater energy bills when purchasing the newer CPU.
Verdict
The Nvidia RTX 4070 Super is a great proposition for those looking for their next graphics card. Compared to the standard RTX 4070, the Super model offers a greater gaming performance without seeing an increase to the power consumption. The performance gains aren’t huge, but they’re very much welcome given the small difference in price.
The standard Nvidia RTX 4070 is still worth a buy if you can find it fairly cheap online, although pricing has so far been erratic. For most people, the Nvidia RTX 4070 Super represents the better value.
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We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
