The new RTX generation is not exactly happy. Sure, there's absolutely nothing to complain about in terms of performance, but the prices are immensely high, even compared to the already quite expensive RTX 30 generation. The RTX 4070 Ti is now the first model on the market that is available for less than 1,000 euros, depending on the version. We took the slightly more expensive ZOTAC GeForce RTX 4070 Ti AMP Extreme AIRO, which can be found online from 1,049 euros factory overclocked.
Actually, the RTX 4070 Ti was supposed to be launched as a 12 GB model of the RTX 4080. But after the community went on the barricades about this, NVIDIA quickly changed its mind and has now launched the card under the new name. With an RRP of 899 euros, the RTX 4070 Ti is the cheapest of the new RTX cards so far, but it should still weigh more than the performance of an RTX 3090. Most models from the board partners are available for around 1,000 euros, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.
This also applies to the ZOTAC GeForce RTX 4070 Ti AMP Extreme Airo, which was kindly made available to us for our test. At 1,049 euros, it is one of the more expensive models, but it also comes with factory overclocking. Also not to be scoffed at: The ZOTAC model offers a standard guarantee of three years, which can even be extended by a further two years by registering the purchase. Pretty impressive.
From a purely visual point of view, the RTX 4070 Ti from ZOTAC does not differ from the RTX 4080 and 4090 from the same series. The massive 355.5 x 149.6 x 72.1 mm come into play again, as does the 3.5 slot design with three screws and an enclosed support so that the PCIe slot is not damaged by the sheer weight of the bolide. An adapter is also included, because the RTX 4080 uses the new 12VHPWR connection, which has to be powered by the power supply with three 8-pin plugs.
As usual, the obligatory ports are found on the back - 3x DisplayPort 1.4a and 1x HDMI 2.1. Three fans and a massive conglomerate of heat pipes, heat sinks and vapor chambers, known as IceStorm 3.0 cooling for short, take care of the cooling. As with the RTX 4080 and 4090, the cooling does an excellent job. Just over 70 degrees at maximum load and only around 85 degrees on the hotspot - you can't complain about that.
The SPECTRA 2.0 5 zone RGB lighting is also back on board, as is the chic and stable die-cast metal backplate. The dual bios already used in the RTX 4080 and 4090 is also used again in the RTX 4070 Ti. All in all, the card is extremely bulky, but excellently processed, pleasantly moderate in terms of volume and quite chic in terms of design.
The third of the RTX 40 chips is used under the hood, namely the AD104. The card features 7,680 CUDA cores, 60 RT cores for ray tracing, and 250 Tensor cores for AI-powered operations like DLSS. The clock is 2,310 MHz in the base clock and 2,670 MHz in the boost, which is slightly overclocked compared to the factory reference clock of 2,610 MHz. A power consumption of 285W TDP is specified and that's okay, in our test the card swallowed 289W under full load.
A potential weak point of the card is the memory configuration. The only 12 GB GDDR6X make a somewhat meager impression compared to the 16 GB of the RTX 4080 and the even 20 GB of the Radeon RX 7900 XT. There are currently no problems with 12 GB, but the configuration is not necessarily future-proof. The memory is connected with a 192-bit interface and pushes a bandwidth of 504.2 GB/s around.
Of course, the question of where the RTX 4070 Ti ranks in terms of performance was interesting. Unfortunately, we have to ignore the new Radeon cards for the time being, as we haven't received any samples from them yet. But as a house number: The RTX 4070 Ti is somewhere between the RTX 3090 Ti and the RTX 4080, which was basically to be expected.
Accordingly, the benchmarks do not deliver any big surprises. The RTX 4070 Ti is also quite capable of running modern games in 4K60 and without restrictions. Only more extreme hardware eaters like Cyberpunk 2077 present the card with an unsolvable task in terms of 4K60, at least when all settings are set to maximum.
The RTX 4070 Ti was not disturbed by most titles. The Division 2 ran in 4K on maximum settings with a fluffy 85 fps, Borderlands 3 also hit 80 fps, Assassin's Creed: Valhalla racked up 76 fps and even The Witcher 3 in its most recent version ran easily along on RT Ultra with DLSS 3 enabled 80 fps. Only Cyberpunk didn't get more than 42 fps (RT Ultra, DLSS Auto). With the settings, only an RTX 4080 reaches the magical 60 fps, the RTX 4090 achieves 84 fps.
If you don't necessarily want to spend (far) more than 1,000 euros, the RTX 4070 Ti turns out to be a competent 4K graphics card. It remains to be seen how future-proof this is for upcoming graphics hits. More and more games also support DLSS 3, which brings juicy performance boosts, but the difference in frame rates to the magical 60 is not that crazy high and then there's the matter of the 12 GB VRAM.
We would therefore tend to use the RTX 4070 Ti as a high-end card for QHD resolutions, such as 2560x1440 or the 21:9 format 3440x1440. For this area, you should still be well positioned with the RTX 4070 Ti in the coming years if you want to gamble without making any compromises in the graphics settings. If ray tracing is not that important to you, the cheaper cards of the RTX 30 generation are a good alternative, which will probably not make it that easy for the RTX 4070 Ti.
CONCLUSION
Can be done, does not have to be
Here it is, the third of the new NVIDIA cards. As expected, the RTX 4070 Ti places itself somewhere between the RTX 3090 and RTX 4080 and packs a lot of performance for around 1,000 euros. Most games even run at 4K60 with the weakest RTX 40 card to date. Only extreme hardware eaters like Cyberpunk 2077 let the heavyweight go to its knees and only if all settings are turned up to the stop. That, along with the high price and the fact that 12GB of VRAM doesn't sound all that future-proof, doesn't necessarily make it the card of choice for the brave new 4K world, though. After all, such an expensive chunk should last for a few years.
From our point of view, the RTX 4070 Ti is particularly interesting if you want to work with QHD or Ultrawide QHD resolutions in the long term, i.e. anything with a height of 1,440 pixels. So far, the card has been able to handle everything in this area without any problems at maximum settings, including ray tracing. The 12 GB should still be enough for the next few years and with the growing implementation of DLSS 3 it is unlikely that the card will be tight any time soon. However, you have to ask yourself a question of conscience as to whether the weaker but significantly cheaper RTX 3070 Ti, 3080 and 3080 Ti are not also sufficient for these resolutions.
As far as the ZOTAC model is concerned, you can't do much wrong if the worst comes to the worst, unless you forget to use the ruler to gauge the space in your case beforehand. The RTX 4070 Ti from ZOTAC also scores with powerful, relatively quiet cooling, a chic design and, above all, the long warranty period of three years plus an additional two years upon registration.
Pros
- strong gaming performance with QHD incl. Ultrawide
- good gaming performance at 4K
- very long warranty period
- good workmanship
- chic design
- strong cooling performance
Cons
- very voluminous
- expensive
- little VRAM
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