Nvidia RTX 4070 Super Founders Edition Review

As part of their CES 2024 presentation, Nvidia announced its upcoming lineup of 40-series Super GPUs: the RTX 4070 Super, RTX 4070 Ti Super, and the RTX 4080 Super. The first of these, the RTX 4070 Super sits at the bottom of the stack, taking the place of the RTX 4070, which launched last year. 

With more CUDA cores than its predecessor, as well as a larger pool of L2 cache than its predecessor, sitting closer to big brother the RTX 4070 Ti, does the RTX 4070 Super provide enough uplift over the original to make it worth the price tag? Also, how does Nvidia’s claim of the card being faster than the RTX 3090, last generation’s flagship card, stack up? Here’s our review.

Specifications:

• Graphics Processing Clusters: 5
• Texture Processing Clusters: 28
• Streaming Multiprocessors: 56
• CUDA Cores: 7168
• Shader FLOPS: 35.5
• Tensor Cores: 224 (4th Generation)
• AI TOPS: 568
• RT Cores: 56 (3rd Generation)
• RT FLOPS: 82.1
• Texture Units: 224
• ROP Units: 80
• Base Clock: 1980 MHz
• Boost Clock: 2475 MHz
• Memory Clock: 10500 MHz
• Memory Data: 21 Gbps
• L1 Data Cache/Shared Memory: 7168 K
• L2 Cache Size: 49152 K
• Total Video Memory: 12 GB GDDR6X
• Memory Interface: 192-bit
• Total Memory Bandwidth: 504 GB/s
• Texture Rate (Billinear): 56.1 GigaTexels/second
• Max Display Resolution: 4K at 240Hz or 8K at 60 Hz with DSC
• Fabrication process: 4N Nvidia Custom Process
• Transistor Count: 35.8 Billion
• I/O:
  • 3 x DisplayPort
  • 1 x HDMI
• Power Connector:
  • 2x PCIe 8-pin cables (with adapter) OR
  • 300 W or Greater PCIe Gen 5 Cable
• Required PSU: 650 W
• Total Graphics Power: 220 W
• Price: $599 MSRP For Founders Edition
• Launches January 17th, 2024

First Thoughts

One of the biggest differences I noticed when opening the RTX 4070 Super Founders Edition sample Nvidia sent us is the color. While the non-Super version has a two-tone color scheme with a silver Mobius strip banding over the card in stark contrast to its softer, gunmetal finish, the RTX 4070 Super is just straight jet black. Everything, from the diamond strip wrapping