NVIDIA RTX 3070 Ti Evaluation: A reliable alternative to 2070 Super

But this is not a huge leap forward for the RTX 3070. In terms of price, NVIDIA's RTX 3070 is definitely in demand. When we evaluated the GPU in October, the Founder Edition should be priced at US$499, and it was as fast as NVIDIA’s previous flagship product, the RTX 2080 Ti at US$999. But in fact, the global shortage of chips and the proliferation of scalpers have made the price of 3070 on eBay as high as $1,500. In rare cases, you can find it in stores, and it usually sells for around US$800.

Gallery: NVIDIA RTX 3070 Ti8 Photos

Pros

Cons

Under the hood, the RTX 3070 Tisports 6,144 NVIDIA CUDA cores, compared to 5,888 on the 3070 and 2,560 on the RTX 2070 Super. (That latter card is effectively what the 3070 Ti is replacing.) The new GPU also features slightly faster base and boost clock speeds than the RTX 3070, but it's such a small jump you'd barely notice it. The 3070 Ti also comes with 8GB of DDR6X RAM, instead of just DDR6, which lifts memory bandwidth to 608 GB/s from 448 GB/s. Thanks to those additional CUDA cores, the 3070 Ti uses 290W of power instead of 220W. Consequently, it now requires at least a 750W power supply, a 100-watt jump from the 3070.

Card

RTX 3070

RTX 3070 Ti

RTX 3080

RTX 3080 Ti

SM count

46

48

68

80

CUDA cores

5,888

6,144

8,704

10,240

RT cores

46

48

68

80

Tensor cores

184

192

272

320

Boost clock

1,750MHz

1,770MHz

1,710MHz

1,665MHz

Memory

8GB GDDR6

8GB GDDR6X

10GB GDDR6X

12GB GDDR6X

Memory bandwidth

448 GB/s

608 GB/s

760 GB/s

912 GB/s

TDP

220W

290W

320W

350W

Price

$499

$599

$699

$1,199

Given the minimal spec bump over the 3070, I didn't expect a huge performance jump from the Ti model. The benchmarks just proved my hunch: The 3070 Ti hit 6,842 points in 3DMark's TimeSpy Extreme test, compared to 6,226 on the previous card. Similarly, I saw close to a 10 percent improvement in the Port Royal raytracing benchmark. That's nice to see, but it's not enough to make 3070 owners regret their purchase. Unfortunately, I didn't have a RTX 2070 Super to compare on my current rig — which is powered by a Ryzen 5800X and 32GB of DDR4 RAM — but it scored 4,474 in TimeSpy Extreme with my last system. NVIDIA claims the 3070 Ti should deliver up to 50 percent faster speeds than the 2070 Super.

None

3DMark TimeSpy Extreme

Destiny 2

Hitman 3

Port Royal (ray tracing)

NVIDIA RTX 3070 Ti

6,842

145-155fps

155fps

8,745/49fps

NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti

8,683

175-195fps

170fps

12,948/59.95fps

NVIDIA RTX 3080

8,009

150-165fps

161fps

11,623/53.81fps

NVIDIA RTX 3070

6,226

140-150fps

151fps

8,032/37fps

AMD Radeon RX 6800

6,742

80-100fps

185fps

7669/35.51fps

All benchmarks run in 1440p at the highest graphical settings on a PC powered by a Ryzen 7 5800X and 32GB of RAM.

In my tests, the 3070 Ti consolidated its position as an excellent 1440p GPU, but again, it is only slightly better than the 3070. 145 to 155fps in Destiny 2 has the maximum graphics setting, while 3070 is 140 to 150fps. With Control, my current stress test on most GPUs, I reached 75fps when playing locally at 1440p, with high graphics settings (but no ray tracing) on ​​the 3070 Ti. At the same time, 3070 can hardly exceed 60fps.