Nvidia RTX 4070 Super review – the mid-range champion

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Pros
  • 20% more CUDA cores
  • Leading 1440p performance
  • Largely achieves 4K60
Cons
  • Still not exactly cheap

The Nvidia RTX 4070 Super is the latest mid-range graphics card from Team Green which keeps the price the same while adding a lot under the hood. Getting straight to the point, it can be considered one of the best GPUs on the market today, and while not exactly one of the best budget graphics cards, this new iteration justifies its MSRP considerably more than its predecessor from over a year ago. Let’s get into why.

Nvidia RTX 4070 Super price and availability

The Nvidia RTX 4070 Super was first announced at CES 2024 in early January and was released around two weeks later. It’s now available to buy in countries such as the US and the UK with an MSRP close to the original model starting from $599 / £579 for the Founders Edition model and beyond. Our review unit is the ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 4070 Super OC Edition which is considerably more expensive at $689.99 / £729.99.

I’ll be the first to admit that the pricing for the RTX 4070 was a bitter pill to swallow back at the end of 2022. The mid-range Ada was frankly over-priced for what it could do, so having a vastly more powerful graphics card available at the same rate is a welcome addition. What’s more, it also drives the pricing of the base RTX 4070 down, as we’ve seen since the new GPU debuted, meaning it’s better for everyone’s wallets, and that’s a plus in our book. We’re also showing you where to buy RTX 4070 Super graphics cards.

ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 4070 Super OC Edition

ASUS TUF RTX 4070 Super

Graphics processor

AD104

VRAM

12GB GDDR6X

CUDA cores

7,168

Base clock

1980 MHz

Boost clock

2595 MHz (OC)

MSRP

$689.99 / £729.99

Nvidia RTX 4070 Super design and features

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Ti GTX 1080- more for less.
ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 4070 Super OC Edition (Image by VideoGamer)

Where the Nvidia RTX 4070 Super differs from the base RTX 4070 from 2022 is in the CUDA core bump up. This new variant is once again built on the AD104 die with the same 12GB GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit memory bus, but you’re getting a full 20% more cores here. The RTX 4070 Super ships with 7,168 cores over the original’s 5,888 cores which should give you a fair amount more overhead for pushing today’s demanding software. Find out all the differences in our dedicated RTX 4070 vs RTX 4070 Super feature.

What’s more, the RTX 4070 Super runs a touch faster out of the box than its predecessor with a base clock speed of 1980 MHz and a boost clock of 2475 MHz in contrast to the original’s 1920 MHz base and identical boost clock. That’s a performance bump of around 3% which could be the difference of a couple of frames depending on the game.

While the Founders Edition model comes in as a two-slot card, our ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 4070 Super OC Edition review unit is actually a three-slot GPU with a considerably larger heatsink than what you’ll typically find on a mid-range card. This is good considering the overclocking potential as you can push this particular variant up to 2595 MHz in its “OC mode” which is a full 4% higher. Whether this is worth it to you to splash the extra money depends on just how much performance you want to drip out of each and every title, however.

Nvidia RTX 4070 Super performance

Nvidia RTX 4070 Super - more for less review.
The backplate of the RTX 4070 Super showing the die (Image by VideoGamer)

In the testing conducted by WePC’s Sebastian Kozlowski, the RTX 4070 Super did well in our suite of benchmarking games in not only 1080p and 1440p, but also 4K as well. It’s a testament to the vastly improved CUDA core count, adding some much needed muscle onto the entry-level 70-class GPU. Starting with Cyberpunk 2077, Team Green’s new card exceled in all three resolutions with average framerates of 136fps, 81fps, and 37fps respectively. While the figures in 2160p may not sound too exciting, 4K30 natively is better than what the original card could do – and that’s without DLSS.

Moving onto Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Ubisoft’s latest open-world stabbing simulator was no match for the grunt of the RTX 4070 Super as the game averaged framerates of 150fps in 1080p, 119fps in 1440p, and 74fps in 4K. It’s a similar story with Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora with the first person shooter achieving averages of 117fps, 80fps, and 60fps in 1080p, 1440p, and 4K respectively. The new card really gets to flex here, showing it’s more than up to the task of 4K60 in more well-optimized titles.

Speaking of optimization, the RTX 4070 Super absolutely rips and tears through Doom Eternal without breaking a sweat. With ID Software’s hellish shooter dialled all the way up to “Ultra Nightmare” we saw leading framerates of 397fps in 1080p, 288fps in 1440p, and 144fps in 4K. You don’t lose much momentum when enabling ray tracing, either. With RT enabled you get figures of 295fps, 202fps, and 122fps respectively.

If you enjoy playing competitive games then you’ll want to consider the RTX 4070 Super for your setup. The testing shows that this card chews straight through CS2 with lighting fast framerate averages of 349fps in 1080p, 260fps in 1440p, and 125fps in 4K. The same can be said of The Finals and Rainbow Six Siege as well. The former averaged 256fps in 1080p, 150fps in 1440p, and 73fps in 4K, and the latter achieved leading averages of 438fps in 1080p, 281fps in 1440p, and 122fps in 4K.

Should you buy the Nvidia RTX 4070 Super?

Asus RTX 2080 GTX 1080 - Nvidia RTX 4070 Super review.
ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 4070 Super OC Edition and its packaging (Image by VideoGamer)

Considering the aggressive price-to-performance of the RTX 4070 Super, we’re confident in recommending this latest model for anyone that wants the best of both worlds. Team Green has created a card that’s a beast in both 1080p and 1440p that can also produce playable framerates in 4K considerably cheaper than the 80-class or RTX 4090. This is the graphics card for most people who want to experience ray tracing and bump up their performance through DLSS 3 Frame Generation.

Copy by Aleksha McLoughlin ; Testing by Sebastian Kozlowski

About the Author

Aleksha McLoughlin

Aleksha McLoughlin is VideoGamer's Hardware and Affiliates Editor and she looks after all hardware and Ecommerce performance for the site as well as manages the hardware team.

RTX 4070 Super

verdict

The RTX 4070 Super is finally the 70-class graphics card that we deserved at Ada's launch over a year ago. Armed with more power under the hood to best make use of the 12GB VRAM, it excels in 1080p and 1440p, and does valiantly in 4K, too.
8 20% more CUDA cores Leading 1440p performance Largely achieves 4K60 Still not exactly cheap