Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti Review: Will It Deliver What Was Promised?

On June 3, Nvidia released the RTX 3080 Ti, followed by the RTX 3070 Ti on June 10. But why to bother reviewing these graphic cards if they aren’t available in stocks, you might wonder. But we want you to be informed and ready once they are available. The RTX 3070 Ti has all the specifications, including HDMI 2.1 connection, that you’ll need to experience next-gen video games, with features like DLSS, & Ray tracing up to 4k 120Hz if you have a high-end, supported gaming display. So let’s find out if this card is for you in our Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti review.

Also as a bonus, Nvidia added the cryptocurrency mining hash rate restriction on both GPUs. By reducing its potential to create the cryptocurrency Ethereum, Nvidia hoped to deter cryptocurrency miners from acquiring the device. This means you, the gamers, will have much higher chances of getting a card for themselves than before. Taking into consideration the two shortages we experienced, the first owing to component shortages and the second due to tariffs on Chinese imports to the United States. The easiest method to ensure there is enough for the gaming community was to use a cryptocurrency mining hash rate restriction. Now RTX cards can be more about gaming and less about mining.

Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti Review

Nvidia’s Titanium Cooling & Design Choice

We got the Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti founder’s edition, which means you get the same proprietary 12 pin connector as seen on the RTX 3070 reference design. But the box already includes the new dual PCIe 8-pin power connector adapter, so there’s nothing to worry about the new card not being compatible with your existing PSU. But compared to the old design choice in 3070, we get a new angled position. This makes unplugging the card or via versa pretty easy to do. This shift might be to accommodate the new thinner PCB and a larger heatsink to divert heat away more efficiently.

The heatsink is also designed to provide the closest contact with the high-temperature components possible. The reference design, which includes fans on opposite corners at the top and bottom of the GPU, focuses on enhancing thermals by increasing airflow and cooling. Hot air reaches the direction of airflow passing the CPU and is snatched out of the cabinet when the chassis fans are positioned appropriately. As a consequence of this design, the card operates cooler and quieter than prior designs, while providing superior efficiency than before. NVIDIA executed excellent work with these design upgrades.

Performance & Specs

The RTX 3070 Ti costs $600, which is 20% more than the 3070 with the same amount of RAM. It’s a bummer we don’t get a greater amount of memory here. However, instead of GDDR6, you get GDDR6X with the same 8 GB size. This means you receive significantly more bandwidth, 608 GB/s instead of 448 GB/s, which is a 36 percent improvement when compared to all other cards between RTX 2070 & RTX 3070.

With that said, the proposition of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is intriguing. For gamers looking for a card that can operate with their 1440p displays or even mid 4k experiences, it’s a decent compromise between the RTX 3070 and the RTX 3080. The Memory Frequency has also been increased by 2.5 GHz to 9.5 GHz from 7 GHz. Now you’re in the same league as the RTX 3080, with the same GDDR6X RAM. So, how do these figures translate into a 1440p gaming experience? Let’s have a look.

Here are the specs of RTX 3070 Ti compared with RTX 3080 & RTX 3070, below:

Standard Gaming Performance on GeForce RTX 3070 Ti

With the difference in the above stats, you might wonder how 3070 Ti stacks up in gaming. So here we will give you a look into the specs of gaming FPS you can expect with your new card. We will be giving benchmarks with both DLSS & Ray Tracing off, so you can compare an apples-to-apples raw performance of RTX 3070 Ti with any other competition out there. So let’s take a look at the top 25 games we feel are able to make use of 3080 Ti’s GDDR6X memory and push out really amazing frame numbers.

With the RTX 3070 Ti, there is nothing to complain about in terms of performance. On the performance front, you might even notice a 20% decrease from 3080, but 3070 Ti also manages to push out a almost 15% increase in performance from 3070. At 1080p and 1440p, it works excellently, enabling you to turn up the visual options to their maximum without impacting much performance. And this is exactly the sweet spot Nvidia is aiming for. These performance ratios are also affected by games, depending on how much they are optimized to make use of the increased memory bandwidth. And these numbers speak out in a 1440p display.

Nvidia’s Ampere architecture brings groundbreaking improvements in both DLSS & Ray Tracing than ever before. A significant improvement over previous Turing GPUs. Ray tracing is a fabulous new technique that allows GPUs to produce near-photorealistic visuals, such as real-time reflections and shadows. While this doesn’t seem particularly interesting when stated in words, but after you’ve used ray tracing, you’ll find it difficult to go back to old rasterized shadows in games. Reflections now will be generated in real-time instead of the older way of pre-fixed shadow maps or reflection maps, which don’t hold up in every angle possible.

DLSS is a supplementary technique from Nvidia that employs artificial intelligence to upgrade lower-resolution pictures for these displays. It is possible thanks to both industry-leading 2nd Gen Ray Tracing Cores, & 3rd Gen Tensor Cores. From 1440p to even in 4k, we have seen anywhere from 100 to 200% increase in frame rates while using DLSS instead of other technologies out there. We will be posting a video on YouTube soon with Ray Tracing (including benchmarks) for you to check out the superior visuals. Here’s a sample from Watch Dogs: Legion showing off the breathtaking Ultra RTX reflections with DLSS in max Quality settings:

Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti Review Verdict

I’d suggest the RTX 3070 Ti in a jiffy if we weren’t now experiencing a severe graphics card scarcity. If you can acquire one for around MSRP, we strongly advise you to do so. However, you are undoubtedly aware that the current costs of these GPUs are outrageous. Even though Nvidia kept the RTX 3070 Ti cost at $600, cards are on sale for $1,200 to $1,400 at the time of writing this review. We hope the prices go down eventually as the situation surrounding the pandemic is being settled slowly. The main issue here is the cost.

The Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti is a fantastic graphics card with the latest-gen specs and solid performance in 1440p and 1080p, as well as a sensible pick for 4K gaming with Ray Tracing in medium presets. However, if you have the means, I believe the RTX 3080 would be the better GPU for 4K enthusiasts that would like to experience ray tracing visuals in extreme settings.