The Nvidia RTX 4070 won’t be the best graphics card in terms of specs, but if you’re looking to balance price and performance, it could be a winning solution. Just like the GeForce RTX 3070, the green team’s next-gen GPU should pair nicely with mid-range gaming PCs, and it might even transform your rig into a ray tracing powerhouse without costing as much as the RTX 4080.
The prospect of grabbing an Nvidia RTX 4070 on release may feel daunting, but component shortages that hampered the cost and availability of the current-gen RTX 3070 might finally be a thing of the past. However, Nvidia has reportedly invested $10 billion in securing RTX 4000 components to help tackle the stock scarcity situation, and ended up lumped with lots of chips it might not even need. The computing giant is also looking into refining its manufacturing processes, as the green team’s next-gen GPUs will be fabricated by TSMC instead of Samsung.
If your rig is still rocking a GeForce GTX graphics card, or you’ve been waiting around for an RTX refresh, you’re probably considering jumping straight to Nvidia’s next-gen contender. To help you make your next gaming machine move, we’ve compiled everything we know about RTX 4070 release date rumours, potential specs, and what we think it’ll benchmark at before the GPU arrives, with information courtesy of Moore’s Law Is Dead and Digitimes.
Here’s everything we know about the Nvidia RTX 4070 GPU:
Nvidia RTX 4070 price speculation
The RTX 4070 hasn’t got a price tag yet, but it should cost less than Nvidia’s RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 graphics cards. It’s not particularly easy to predict next-gen RTX prices, especially following two years of increased production costs and inflation. That said, GPUs are starting to get cheaper again, so the RTX 4070 could cost $499 USD, matching the MSRP of the RTX 3070 and RTX 2070.
Nvidia RTX 4070 release date rumours
As usual, Nvidia is keeping its RTX 4000 release date hush, but a few rumours point towards an October, 2022 launch. We’d be so lucky not to see a delay, however, as Moore’s Law Is Dead reports that Nvidia might hold back the RTX 4070 until December, 2022 to focus on getting rid of its RTX 3000 GPU stock.
While you should take any next-gen GPU arrival guestimates with a hearty grain of salt, the company tends to unveil a new graphics card every two years. The RTX 3000 series made its debut back in 2020, which means we might see a successor pop up soon if the company is still marching to its own release date rhythm.
Looking back at the previous estimated release date of “mid-July”, hardware leaker Kopite7kimi‘s sources might’ve been a bit ambitious. That said, things are forever changing behind the scenes and nothing’s set in stone.
Nvidia RTX 4070 specs rumours
Nvidia is keeping its next-gen GPU under wraps, but that hasn’t stopped RTX 4070 specs from reaching the outside world. According to leaks relayed by Digitimes, the RTX 4000 GPU will use a TSMC 5nm process instead of 8nm nodes. This should help Nvidia improve its graphics card capabilities tenfold, as it allows the company to use more transistors than on the RTX 3070.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 specs | |
VRAM (GDDR6X) | 12GB |
CUDA cores | 7,680 |
Ray tracing cores | 60 |
Tensor Cores | 304 |
Bus Width | 192 |
Reliable RTX 4000 leaker Kopite7kimi says RTX 4070 specs aren’t set in stone, as two potential SKUs are still being considered. That means we could end up with a scaled-back version of the mid-tier AD104 GPU, equipped with 10GB VRAM, 7,168 CUDA cores, and a 160-bit memory bus.
Additional spec leaks suggest that the RTX 4070 will pack RTX 3090 Ti levels of performance, paired with clock speeds that outpace the RTX 4090. In addition, the mid-range RTX 4000 card now apparently rocks GDDR6X VRAM, just like the RTX 4080.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is also apparently a thing, and the “full fat” AD104 chip can allegedly hold up against an RTX 3090 Ti. The variant also supposedly comes armed with 12GB GDDR6X memory, but it’ll demand up to 400W of power supply juice.
Nvidia RTX 4070 benchmark rumours
Expect RTX 4070 benchmarks and reviews will eventually reveal the graphics card’s abilities, but we’ll need to make do with leaks and whispers for now. Moore’s Law is Dead says the RTX 4070’s AD103 GPU is 10-30% faster than the RTX 3090, and up to 50% quicker when dealing with intense workloads like ray tracing. This means the mid-tier chip could trump current high-end cards, but keep in mind that these metrics are hypothetical and based on early figures.
Both the RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 supposedly come with ravenous power requirements, but it might be easier to satiate the RTX 4070. The graphics card will likely still use the same 12-pin PCIe 5.0 power connector, but its comparative RTX 3090 performance might be matched with a similar 350W TDP. So, if your rig’s using one of the best power supplies for RTX 3000 cards, your RTX 4070 upgrade probably won’t require a shiny new PSU.