Review – MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER 16G Ventus 3X

It’s been a week since the RTX4070 SUPER was available in the market and there are mixed comments in the community. I’m more toward to idea of the RTX 4070 SUPER being a good card if you’re upgrading from something like the RTX 20 series or lower models. Our focus this time is the 2nd RTX 40 SUPER card to arrive in the market, the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER which shares the same price as the RTX 4070 Ti at launch.

Since there will be no Founders Edition model for the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, the model we have for this test is the MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER 16G Ventus 3X and we have tested it against both the RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 4080. spoiler alert, there’s an unexpected turn of events which somewhat affected the outcome of our tests this time.

Specifications

Overview

Design-wise, the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER 16G Ventus 3X is almost identical to the non-super variant at first glance but the GPU is based on the AD103, similar to what is being used on the RTX 4080.

The PSU requirement and TGP remain the same as the RTX 4070 Ti, which is a minimum of 700W for PSU and rated TGP of 285W. A 12vhpwr header is being used on the card but you’ll still find the 2x PCIe 8-pin to 12VHPWR adapter included in the package.

For the display output options, the usual single HDMI and 3 x DisplayPort, nothing is out of the ordinary.

Test System Setup

Okay, time for the exciting stuff. We used this list of hardware to benchmark the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER and we’re comparing it against 3 different cards – the RTX 4070, RTX 4070 SUPER, and RTX 4070 Ti so we can have a better idea of the positioning of the card. For our games benchmark test, we’ve selected a handful  of AAA titles to run at their highest possible settings using the following setup under an ambient temperature of 28°C:

Without any further ado, let’s take a look at the numbers we’ve gathered for now.

Games Benchmark – Raster Performance

For the raster performance, NVIDIA has positioned the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER for 1440p gaming just like the RTX 4070 SUPER but it proves to be powerful enough to handle a handful of AAA titles at 4k resolution with over 60fps, minus the more demanding titles like Alan Wake 2 and Cyberpunk 2077. However, they’re not what we expected as the performance isn’t too far off from the RTX 4070 Ti.

Scaling down to 1440p, although we can now see better performance on the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER that is only slightly lower than the 4080, it is only observed on titles like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Horizon Zero Dawn, F1 22, and Metro Exodus. On the rest of the titles, the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER can be seen performing almost like the RTX 4070 Ti or sometimes lower, which is not exactly what we expected to see.

Similar patterns are observed at 1080p, of course, but all the titles easily exceed 100fps+ at this resolution. However, I don’t think spending $799 on the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER and gaming only at 1080p resolution is the right thing to do.

Games Benchmark – Ray Tracing Performance

Shifting to ray tracing performance, DLSS3 is again excluded from this test so we can better evaluate the base ray tracing performance of the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER against the other cards without frame generation advantages.

At 4k resolution, while most tested titles achieve playable 60fps+ frame rates, the RTX4070 Ti SUPER struggles with demanding titles like Alan Wake 2, Cyberpunk 2077, and Metro Exodus. At the same time, the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER performs more like an RTX 4070 Ti instead of the ‘close to an RTX 4080’ performance that many expect to see.

The situation did improve slightly as we scaled down to 1440p and 1080P resolution but almost half of the titles tested still show that the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER performs almost like an RTX 4070 Ti. Things are pretty much the same even after we scale down to 1080p resolution, which then leads to the question – what is going on with this RTX 4070 Ti SUPER?

Addressing the performance issue of the MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER 16G Ventus 3X

Turns out that we’re not the only one that is facing this issue as we have just received this a day before we can finally wrap up the test data gathered:

“We have discovered an issue with the MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER 16G Ventus 3X GPUs where performance was approximately 5% below expected figures on other RTX 4070 Ti SUPER SKUs. An updated VBIOS from MSI is available here.

We expect your current testing will show performance with this updated VBIOS is now approximately 3% below expected figures. MSI is continuing to work on updates so please note this in your upcoming reviews.”

Turns out that the performance is caused by the pre-release VBIOS and this explains the weird behavior observed throughout our tests. Since NVIDIA stated that MSI is already working on the solution for this, I’m sure that stocks that have already been sent out will be affected and MSI will have to sort things out with the distributors and resellers who already got their hands on the early stocks.

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Judging by the performance metrics, I’d say that the current RTX 4070 Ti SUPER 16G Ventus 3X is not in good shape our test results show that it can only perform like the RTX 4070 Ti most of the time and sometimes lower. The VBIOS update will somehow fix the low performance issue but since the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER 16G Ventus 3X has already been shipped out with the bad VBIOS, MSI will have to work with the distributors and resellers to get things sorted out.

As for the other RTX 4070 Ti SUPER models, our advice for this is to check the official product page of the 4070 Ti SUPER you’re planning on getting and look for any VBIOS updates available for that particular model since we’re not sure what other models are affected.

Now for our side, we have done another set of tests with the new VBIOS, and here are the new results:

Games Benchmark – Raster Performance (Updated)

Games Benchmark – Ray Tracing Performance (Updated)

With the new VBIOS updated, the results we’re getting look way better than our initial results, though it’s roughly at about 8-10% better than the RTX 4070 Ti on average.

Thermals & Power Draw

Now addressing the power draw and thermals, the GPU load temperature is somewhat reasonable, peaking at 73°C during heavy loads. Memory junction and GPU hotspot, however, are on the higher side, peaking at 92°C and 88°C respectively.

The peak power draw for both RTX 4070 Ti SUPER and RTX 4070 Ti are very similar, which is at about 283W+-. This, of course, is only observed when we’re doing synthetic benchmarks and it usually doesn’t draw more than 260W when we’re doing running games.

We did notice something rather interesting while testing this, as the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER does seem to be drawing more power when we’re using a 12VHPWR connector that can deliver up to 450W. Drawing about 329W at peak, we didn’t notice any significant performance improvement after doing another series of tests.

Final Thoughts

The RTX 4070 Ti SUPER is approximately 8-10% better than the RTX 4070 Ti in terms of gaming performance but still not as impressive compared to the 13-18% gain that we have observed on the RTX 4070 SUPER. The power efficiency is just as impressive as other RTX 40 series cards we’ve tested so far, as the power draw during gaming sessions hovers at around 230-260W while being able to deliver performance that easily exceeds the previous-gen flagship RTX 3090 while using 20% less power.

With the performance issue ‘fixed’ through the VBIOS update, I’d say the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER 16G Ventus 3X is still a reasonable upgrade option for those who are coming from older-gen cards like RTX 20 series or lower at the price of $799. RTX 4070 Ti users can stick to what they have but if you’re currently using an RTX 3070 Ti or lower models, that extra CUDA & tensor cores, and also more VRAM, it’s still somewhat justifiable – especially if you’re working on AI-related tasks.

If you only plan to use it for 1440p gaming, I would advise you to consider the RTX 4070 SUPER, which is also a card targeted at the 1440p gaming segment as it is a much better value at the price of $599.