Last week Nvidia announced their new RTX 3080 Ti gaming flagship but at the same time, they also announced a second card, the RTX 3070 Ti. The RTX 3070 Ti is set to fit in between the RTX 3070 and the RTX 3080 with the same GA104 GPU as the original 3070 but with a few more SMs and a few other big upgrades as well. Today we can finally talk about how it performs, so I’m going to run through what Nvidia has changed to make the Ti then put it through our benchmark suite to see if it's worth the extra money they are asking. The GPU market is still extremely tough, but we still want to keep everyone informed of what to expect to help you figure out what cards you want to try to seek out.
Product Name: Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition
Review Sample Provided by: Nvidia
Written by: Wes Compton
Amazon Affiliate Link: HERE
What's the RTX 3070 Ti all about
Before getting into our testing I did want to run through the changes that Nvidia made to the RTX 3070 Ti compared to the RTX 3070. I’ve also included the specifications for the 3080, 3080 Ti, and the 2070 as well just to give a little reference to how it fits in the current product stack and against the previous xx70 card. So while it does have the same base GPU, the 3070 Ti has gained two SMs which have expanded its capabilities over the 3070. Each SM has its own set of CUDA cores, RT cores, and Tensor cores. Even with just the addition of two, the 3070 Ti ends up with 3144 CUDA cores over the 5888 of the 3070 which is still a far cry from the 10240 of the new 3080 Ti but does get it closer to the original 3080 which has 8704. The RT or ray tracing core count matches the SMs so there are now 48 and for the AI or tensor cores it is now up to 192 from 184.
The boost clock speed was improved up to 1770 MHz from 1725 MHz which is higher than the 3080 and 3080 Ti as well. But one of the big changes was the memory. The 8GB VRAM is still the same, but it is now GDDR6X and it runs at 19 Gbps from the previous 14 Gbps. The 3070 Ti still has the same 256-bit memory controller but the faster memory increases the memory bandwidth from 448 GB/s on the 3070 to 608 GB/s on the 3070 Ti which is a big improvement. Looking at some of the other details, the 3070 and 3070 still have the same die size and transistor count. But to handle the new memory, high clock speed, and the two additional SMs the RTX 3070 Ti does have a higher TGP which is now 290 watts from 220 of the RTX 3070. Nvidia announced the price of the RTX 3070 Ti as well as being $599. We all know that currently with how the market is that MSRPs are out the window. But for reference when things settle back down to normal this is $100 more than the RTX 3070 and $100 below the RTX 3080 and not nearly as big of a jump as they did with the 3080 Ti.
Specifications |
RTX 2070 FE |
RTX 3070 FE |
RTX 3070 Ti FE |
RTX 3080 FE |
RTX 3080 Ti FE |
SMs |
36 |
46 |
48 |
68 |
80 |
CUDA Cores |
2304 |
5888 |
6144 |
8704 |
10240 |
Tensor Cores |
288 (2nd Gen) |
184 (3rd Gen) |
192 (3rd Gen) |
272 (3rd Gen) |
320 (3rd Gen) |
RT Cores |
36 (1st Gen) |
46 (2nd Gen) |
48 (2nd Gen) |
68 (2nd Gen) |
80 (2nd Gen) |
Texture Units |
144 |
184 |
192 |
272 |
320 |
ROPs |
64 |
96 |
96 |
96 |
112 |
GPU Boost Clock |
1710 MHz |
1725 MHz |
1770 MHz |
1710 MHz |
1665 MHz |
Memory Clock |
14 Gbps |
14 Gbps |
19 Gbps |
19 Gbps |
19 Gbps |
Total Video Memory |
8192 MB GDDR6 |
8192 MB GDDR6 |
8192 MB GDDR6X |
10240 MB GDDR6X |
12288 MB GDDR6X |
Memory Interface |
256-bit |
256-bit |
256-bit |
320-bit |
384-bit |
Memory Bandwidth |
448 GB/s |
448 GB/s |
608 GB/s |
760 GB/s |
912 GB/s |
TGP |
185 Watts |
220 Watts |
290 Watts |
320 Watts |
350 Watts |
Transistor Count |
10.8 Billion |
17.4 Billion |
17.4 Billion |
28.3 Billion |
28.3 Billion |
Die Size |
445 mm² |
392 mm² |
392 mm² |
628.4 mm² |
628.4 mm² |
GPU Codename |
TU106 |
GA104-300 |
GA104-400 |
GA102 |
GA102-225 |
Launch MSRP |
$599 (FE) |
$499 |
$599 |
$699 |
$1199 |
Before diving into everything I do always take a look with GPUz to double-check that the listed specifications match up with what I am getting in my testing. GPUz does have the 3070 Ti boost clock at 1770 Mhz so we are good there. It also documents our vBIOS version and the driver I tested on which was 466.61, the prerelease press driver.