So it’s about 3 weeks ago, one day after I published my RTX 4070 vs 3070 Ti comparison when
I find out that there might be a problem with my 4070 laptop, meaning the results could be wrong.
I get this message from XMG, who sent the 4070 laptop I used, showing that at the factory their
4070 laptop hits 185 FPS in Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 1080p highest settings, which is 18%
higher than what I originally got! A fairly big difference. I only got this 185 FPS number after
I’d already tested a few games on this laptop and they’d told me I was good to proceed.
Unfortunately their first batch of early mass production samples had two issues,
which were high unit-to-unit variance in CPU cooling,
and higher than expected GPU memory temperatures on air cooling.
I actually discovered performance problems on both the 4080 and 4090 configurations, which is why we
haven’t tested them yet. We went through days of troubleshooting and eventually were told that the
4060 and 4070 laptops should be good to go. So we started the testing. But as it turns out, there
was a problem with both the 4060 and 4070 laptops. It just wasn’t quite as obvious. I just want to
make it super clear that this only applies to the early samples that were sent to reviewers like me,
any customers that pre-ordered these laptops have been kept up to date and the laptops were
delayed while they fixed the problems. So just to be clear, no customers were affected by this.
Being able to provide you with accurate results and be a trusted
source for benchmark data is one of my top priorities. So after hearing that the 4070
laptop GPU might be 18% faster than what I originally showed in the first video,
my first panicked thought was that I need to delete the video and redo days of testing as
soon as possible. Except it would take a couple of weeks for the root cause to be fixed and it
would take time to send me a replacement laptop, which is what we’ve got here.
But hang on, after 4070 reviews went live, others like Hardware Unboxed said that the
RTX 4070 was so boring that they’re not even going to make a video about it,
so the 4070 can’t be that much better than what I had in my video, right? I actually spoke to
Tim before the 4070 embargo ended, because I thought my results were suspiciously close.
There was no real difference between the 3070 Ti and 4070, which I thought was a bit strange. But
we had similar results, and at that time I thought great, someone else has confirmed what I’ve seen.
But then a few days later it hit me. Hardware Unboxed were also using an early 4070 laptop
sample provided by XMG. So if my RTX 4070 laptop wasn’t performing properly
then it’s possible that theirs wasn’t either. It could have the same problem.
I also remember a conversation I had with someone from one of the bigger
laptop brands. I asked them what they thought about the 4070 performance and they kind of
laughed and said something along the lines of “yeah I guess there’s a reason that Nvidia are
launching the 4080 and 4090 first”. So this big laptop brand also didn’t think that the
4070 was anything too special, so again I thought that my results were correct.
After thinking about it, I decided to keep the original video up until I could get the new 4070
laptop replacement to retest everything. It seemed kind of silly to take down the video
based on one game test that was provided to me. Especially as their testing was done with
different memory. They used DDR5-4800 while I used DDR5-5600 but with slower timings,
and Shadow of the Tomb Raider is known to be memory sensitive, so it’s possible
that some of that 18% performance gain they showed me was due to the memory difference.
Anyway, we've got the new 4070 replacement laptop here which has been rigorously tested at
the factory, so it will provide us with accurate results. We could have just retested a few games,
but I decided to spend the extra time and re-test all 25 games at
1080p and 1440p resolutions, as this will let us fairly compare against the last comparison.
Alright these are the 1080p results from the original RTX 4070 vs RTX 3070 Ti comparison
video. In 25 games, the 4070 appeared to be 3% faster. Basically the way to read this graph,
is these games were this percent faster on the 4070, while these ones ran slower on the 4070.
Now here are the new results after retesting the RTX 4070 in the same games. The 4070
is now 7% faster compared to the 3070 Ti on average, with just 3 of the 25 games running
slower on the 4070. So a better result for the 4070, but it’s not really a major difference,
at least when averaging the results from all 25 games, and pretty much all the games towards the
top are CPU heavy. Which makes sense considering the major limitation before was on the processor.
Now these are the old results for the higher 1440p resolution. In the original video,
the data showed that the RTX 4070 was almost a percent slower compared to the
RTX 3070 Ti. Basically no real difference once you average a bunch of games together.
After the retesting, the RTX 4070 was now about 2% faster compared to the RTX 3070 Ti, however 9
of the games were still performing better on the 3070 Ti laptop. So the 4070 is better than before,
but there’s definitely less of a difference at 1440p compared to 1080p. Even at this
higher resolution, many of the games that were doing better on the 4070 laptop are CPU heavier
titles. And based on my conversations with XMG, it seemed like the 4070 in the old laptop was
working perfectly fine. The problem was that the CPU could hold it back in some workloads.
You can see all the results with actual FPS numbers from the 25 games with the link below the
video. I’ve uploaded them for free to my Patreon page, you do not have to pay to see them, but if
you’d like to join our discord community and get behind the scenes details like this before the
video, then consider supporting our independent testing. Or in this case, our re-testing.
So was I wrong about the RTX 4070 laptop? No, I don’t think so.
The data collected from the first 4070 laptop certainly wasn’t perfect,
as we’ve seen there was a clear improvement retesting with the fixed 4070 laptop,
but the difference really wasn’t big enough to affect any of the conclusions
or anything else I said in the original video, especially at the higher 1440p
resolution where the GPU change makes less of a difference, and this is a GPU comparison.
So after completing this re-testing, I don’t think that it’s worth deleting the original video,
but I will update it and leave a link to this video with the new results. The 4070 still isn’t
really that much better compared to the 3070 Ti, at least without features like frame generation.
I really love the idea of getting next gen hardware like this before it’s available so
I can thoroughly test it out to let you know how it performs, but after this experience
maybe it’s not worth the hassle. I’d rather be accurate from the start and not have to
redo everything. Even if it means waiting a month or two. Fortunately, it wasn’t that big
of a deal this time around, but regardless I am glad to have that correct data out there.
I also want to say that I don’t blame XMG for any of this,
I really appreciate that they were willing to send me the same laptop with a 4060,
4070, 4080 and 4090. We’re going to have some really awesome comparisons coming! We’re still
waiting to get the 4080 and 4090 replaced, but I’ve already got the 4070 and 4060,
so I’m hoping next week we’ll have that 4060 vs 4070 comparison, make sure you’re subscribed!
Although there wasn’t really much difference between the 4070 and 3070 Ti,
there actually is a much bigger difference between the 4080 and 3080 Ti. You can
check that comparison over here next. I’ve compared them in 25 games at 1080p and 1440p,
but also the higher 4K resolution as those GPUs are more powerful, so I’ll see you in that one!