For years Nvidia’s GeForce 70 class GPUs have been the sort of ‘go-to’ cards for
high-end gamers looking to not sell their souls for a high-end card. With the launch
of the RTX 4070 I wanted to look at the evolution of the 70 class to see
how those cards have evolved over the years, starting with the GTX 1070. Is the 70 series
still the sweet spot for 1440p? Can the RTX 4070 series comfortably hit 4k now? How has
pricing evolved? All of that and more will be answered in this video, so let’s get to it.
Nvidia’s 70 Class has historically done very well in delivering a top-tier experience for
1440p and high refresh rate 1080p gaming. But it hasn’t exactly been
a ‘cheap’ line since the introduction of the GTX 970 way back in 2014. Since then
the hardware demand from games has risen exponentially in many cases,
especially within the past year. But demand on the hardware isn’t the only thing that has
gone up - so have the prices - especially during the dark days of the pandemic and mining boom.
In order to look back at a historical trend, I fired up four generations of 70 class cards,
starting with the GTX 1070 which launched 7 years ago. All of the cards I tested were
Founders Edition models, except for the new RTX 4070. The version I had on hand for this launch
was a Zotac model, so unfortunately it doesn’t exactly match the others,
but it’s what I had available to me and performance isn’t too far off from the
Founders Edition. If you want a full written review of the Founders Edition RTX 4070 then
head over to PCWorld and check out what Brad Chacos had to say about it. But before you
do that, please attack that subscribe button on YouTube to see more PC hardware testing videos.
Before we get to the results I want to take a quick look at the ZOTAC Gaming GeForce RTX 4070
AMP AIRO I’m using for testing. It features 5888 CUDA cores running at just over 2700 MHz and 12
gigs of DDR6X VRAM at an effective rate of 21 Gbps. This beefy model of RTX 4070 features a
massive 2.5-slot Ice Storm 2.0 cooler that absolutely delivers on cooling and noise.
I’d love to tell you how quiet this GPU is but I couldn’t get a good reading on it since the Arctic
Cooling 420mm AIO on my test bench made more noise than the card itself. As expected with such a
massive cooler thermals were pretty good, topping out at 65c after an hour of looping Time Spy.
Of course the RTX 40 Series also brings a few cool features to the table,
like DLSS 3 and AV1 encoding. Keep in mind though that the RTX 4070 is the
first 40 series card to only feature one AV1 encoder though. And I’ll touch
on DLSS 3 performance and how it’s needed in Cyberpunk 2077’s new RT Overdrive mode,
but most of my testing was done without it. With the limited time I had I chose to focus
on 1440p and 4k performance to see just how far the 40 series has come at pushing more pixels.
Okay, so onto gaming performance. As we go through the titles I selected here you’ll notice I tested
more than just the latest games. I wanted to showcase a game or two from each card's heyday,
which I thought would be a fun way to look at things, and I’m starting with GTA V.
Not only was this a big title when the GTX 1070 came out, it’s STILL a most played title
according to Steam. We can see healthy gains across generations but diminishing returns on
the latest card in average FPS. The same story can be told at 4K, but truthfully these cards
are tuned and geared towards more modern APIs so seeing any kind of uplift here was nice.
Hitman 2016 is another title from the GTX 1070 era, and it was the early days of DX12. Despite
that we can see a pretty clear performance uplift from generation to generation, with 1% lows almost
matching the next older cards average performance. Solid 4k performance with these settings is really
only obtainable starting with the RTX 2070, which was about half the performance of the new 4070.
Horizon Zero Dawn showcases a similar performance delta between each generation,
but 4K just isn’t where any of these cards shine. At 1440p the
RTX 2070 does break that 60 FPS barrier though, and the 4070 hits double that.
It’s one of the rare examples in my testing where the RTX 4070 is double the performance
of the 2070, and an interesting sight to see as that card is 5 years old now.
Forza Horizon 4 was and still is a fan favorite, and it launched around the same time as the RTX
2070. This game was also a real showcase for next-gen graphics and there is a nice
scaling in performance from card to card. Driving games benefit from smooth gameplay,
which is represented by tight 1% lows, and each card does pretty well here.
While Far Cry 5 is optimized for Radeon, it was still a showcase game for all PC gamers when it
came out. First person shooters are perfect use cases for high refresh rate 1440p gaming,
but 120 FPS isn’t achieved on cards older than the RTX 3070. Either way we are continuing
to see a similar performance curve when comparing generations across all metrics.
The RTX 3070 came out a bit before Cyberpunk 2077, which was a huge showcase around that
launch. With these settings none of the 70 series cards can achieve solid 4k performance without
some sort of upscaling tech. The RTX 4070 and 3070 can hit 60 FPS or more at 1440p though,
but I will be covering DLSS performance later to see just how high the 4070 can reach.
The next two games are recent releases, and Modern Warfare 2 is still extremely competitive,
with many people playing daily. The 1% lows for each card are some of the worst
we’ve seen and even the RTX 4070 struggles at both resolutions. Also interesting is that the
performance jump from generation to generation isn’t as linear as past games have been.
Returnal is the newest game on this list and a tough one to run, not just because of high
VRAM requirements. Case in point, the RTX 4070 is the only card to hit over a 60 FPS average at
4k but the 3070 can hit that at 1440p. Either way we are seeing similar performance curves
from gen to gen despite the lower performance numbers. At these settings we’re not seeing a
clear problem with VRAM when comparing card to card, it’s scaling seemingly appropriate.
Last but not least is CS:GO. It’s the oldest title on this list and it presents an interesting
picture. At both resolutions I’m hitting the limits of my test bench here, which features
a Ryzen 9 5900X at the heart of it. With this hardware we are not seeing any performance
improvements from the RTX 3070 to 4070 across both resolutions. I wanted to show this CPU bottleneck
because it’s a good reminder that you can’t always brute force performance with a new GPU.
Raster performance is one thing, but Nvidia’s move from the GTX to RTX line saw new features
introduced like ray tracing support and DLSS. In order to test those features I’m using Cyberpunk
2077, which brings most GPUs to its knees with ray tracing turned on. Here I’m using the Ultra
preset and setting DLSS to the Quality Setting. We can see a clear improvement going from the
RTX 2070 to the 3070, but it’s the 4070 that finally hits 60 FPS on average. Sorry GTX 1070,
even though you were given the ability to output ray tracing, the developers kinda
locked you out of this one. Speaking of locked, DLSS 3 Frame Generation is only available for
the RTX 4070 and enabling that doubles what the 3070 could output but without any drop in latency.
Hybrid ray tracing like this is one thing, but the new Cyberpunk 2077 RT Overdrive mode
that just came out cranks things to 11 by adding path tracing to the entire game.
Right here we see a very clear 50% performance boost generationally when using these settings,
which includes DLSS. The game goes from unplayable on the RTX 2070 to a smooooooth console 30 on the
3070, but the 4070 still can’t crack an average 60 FPS unless you use DLSS 3. Even before that
there is still an easy to follow 50% boost each gen, but more than double if you’re good with
using DLSS 3. Honestly, all of the talk from CD Projekt Red and Nvidia before the launch of
this mode got us worried that only the RTX 4090 could hit anywhere near playable frame rates, so
the fact that the 4070 can technically get there is surprising.
So overall the generational performance uplift is pretty solid between these four GPUs. But it’s
time to talk about the elephant in the room: the price. While this specific Zotac RTX 4070
model clocks in at $670, overall performance isn’t going to be much different than what
the Founders Edition provides. But since the GTX 1070, the 70 class cards pricing has had
a roller coaster of a ride and is often remembered through rose-tinted glasses.
The GTX 1070 Founders Edition was released in 2016 with an MSRP of $440. Admittedly you COULD get AIB
models for as low as $380, but we all remember how that went don’t we? The RTX 2070 Founders Edition
released in 2018, ushered in the RTX branding, and came with an unwelcome price hike to $600. It’s
understandable why people were angry about this, as it was an example of price increasing almost
1 to 1 with the traditional rasterization performance increase. Nvidia’s argument at
the time was that it was adding in all of the extras that made it an RTX rather than a GTX,
but that didn’t quite convince the people who didn’t care about those features to begin with.
In 2020 we were greeted with the RTX 3070 Founders Edition, which had a price reduction
in addition to a performance increase. The price got closer to the GTX 1070, on paper at least,
coming in at $500. But of course we were in the midst of many global problems and that price was
mainly a pipe dream. And here we are with the RTX 4070 coming to market at a starting point of $600,
back to where it was with the 2070. Admittedly it’s more than most would have wanted, but at
least this time we’re finally seeing Nvidia give customers more than 8GB of VRAM at the 70 class.
To sum it up, the RTX 4070 in raw numbers delivers about 20% or better performance over last
generation, and it’s costing…well, about 20% more. It is giving more VRAM as well as delivering new
features like DLSS 3 and AV1 encoding. So there are benefits to the RTX 4070, but there isn’t much
to get excited about either, especially if you are looking for huge raster uplift. While this launch
is unlikely to genuinely spark excitement in most people, it is a solid offering and the price is
somewhat reasonable for the performance that is delivered. At the end of day, if you aren’t
happy or excited about the RTX 4070 vote with your wallets people and look at other options.
Either way I’d love to hear what you have to say about the RTX 4070,
and more specifically this Zotac Gaming RTX 4070 Amp Airo model down in the comments
section. And while you’re down there make sure you hit the subscribe and
bell notification so you don’t miss out on even more hardware and software goodness.