We've just finished watching Nvidia's big presentation at CES 2023, and we're pleased to report that a new GPU is in the works from Team Green – one that won't burn a hole in your pocket (or your PC case) like the RTX 4090.
Yes, the hotly-anticipated RTX 4070 Ti is here, ready to provide powerful 4K gaming performance with a comparatively svelte (but still fairly steep) $799 price tag. It'll release in just two days' time, on January 5.
Predictably, this GPU appears to have the same specs as the canceled RTX 4080 12GB, which is hardly a surprise given that Nvidia publicly admitted that the card bore the wrong name.
This lines up with leaked specs for the 4070 Ti: the card will use the AD104 GPU die, which has 7,680 CUDA cores, 240 tensor cores, and 60 ray tracing cores. It'll pack the same 12GB of GDDR6X VRAM that the original RTX 4080 12GB would have used, and the GPU will have a boost clock of 2,610MHz. This puts it far beyond the previous-gen flagship card, the RTX 3090 Ti.
When it comes to power requirements, the RTX 4070 Ti comes with a relatively conservative TDP of 285W, meaning that many gamers will likely get away without needing to upgrade their PSU in order to use this card. Nvidia's existing Lovelace cards demonstrated good energy efficiency at less intensive loads, something that will hopefully also be the case here.
Analysis: A much-needed entry into the current generation of GPUs – but we can go further
Since it's one of Nvidia's Lovelace GPUs, the RTX 4070 Ti will come with all the awesome goodies the new generation of graphics cards boast. The biggest draw here is DLSS 3, the upgraded form of Nvidia's AI-powered upscaling technology, which can now use full frame generation to boost frame rates by up to double. Nvidia was keen to showcase its new capabilities during the CES livestream event.
Upgraded ray tracing and deep-learning capabilities are par for the course, and existing software such as the latency-lowering Nvidia Reflex will perform even better on the new hardware. Lowering the barrier to entry with more mid-range cards is good to see, but Team Green needs to go further: we need the RTX 4060, guys!
Let's face it: $799 is barely 'midrange' in the current economic climate. For reference, that's $200 more expensive than the previous-gen RTX 3070 Ti. The most powerful GPU in the top 10 most-used cards in Steam's December 2022 hardware survey was the RTX 3070, which even then only accounted for 2.72% of users – something that demonstrates how most gamers are still using affordable hardware.
Still, it's good to see that Nvidia isn't committing to the overpriced $899 list price of the RTX 4080 12GB that would eventually become this GPU. It's a start – and we can naturally expect lower prices for the RTX 4070 and 4060 cards once they eventually arrive.
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