author: Bart Woldanski
First Reviews GeForce RTX 3070 Ti - a Worthy Rival to Radeon RX 6800
Nvidia officially unveiled two new GPUs on June 1: the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3070 Ti. Reviews of the former are known, so it's time for benchmarks of the latter. How does the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti perform in games against, among others, the Radeon RX 6800?
Until almost the last moment, it was impossible to be sure not only about the final form, but even the release of the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti as well as RTX 3080 Ti. Judsing by rumors not only the specs of these cards could change from month to month, but above all, their fate was extremely unclear. However, Nvidia - despite many adversities - decided to release the hero of today's publication. On the eve of the release, we can take a look at GeForce RTX 3070 Ti's performance tests - below we have gathered for you several reviews. Does the release of this GPU, the specs of which you can find here, make any sense when compared not only the RTX 3070, but also the competing Radeon RX 6800 from AMD?
GeForce RTX 3070 Ti - selected benchmarks
TechPowerUp
"Memory size on the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti has remained at 8 GB, probably because the only other feasible option is 16 GB, which would have increased cost significantly without major performance improvements. (...). Averaged over our 22-game-strong test suite at 1440p resolution, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition achieves a 5% performance lead over the RTX 3070 non-Ti, 7% at 4K. To be honest, that's less than what I expected from this new model, especially considering the investment by NVIDIA: full GA104 GPU, GDDR6X, new PCBs, and a completely new cooler design. Compared to the Radeon RX 6800, the gap shrinks to only 4%, and the RX 6700 XT is clearly beat with a 13% performance difference. GeForce RTX 3080 is 15% faster than the RTX 3070 Ti, and the newly released RTX 3080 Ti is 24% faster. Last generation's GeForce RTX 2080 Ti flagship is 10% behind the RTX 3070 Ti, and the difference to the RTX 2070 Super is 30%," concludes the author of the test on TechPowerUp.
Guru3D
"Realistically, the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is slightly better than I anticipated at first when the specs arrived, whilst the card sees only a negligible increase in shading cores, the main benefit is the memory type. GDDR6X over DDR6 is making a difference as the card is a bit bandwidth limited for the GPU to do its thing with. The actual volume size of the VRAM partition however is very questionable for a 599 USD graphics card. Up to 2560x1440 you'll be fine even with raytracing and DLSS activated, at Ultra HD however you will be bound to run into limitations a bit faster. But in all fairness, this card is aimed at the 2560x1440 domain, so up to that resolution, you'll be really loving the performance that this card reproduces for you. This card can run games at WQHD quite easily even with raytracing and a DLSS combo; it will serve you well at that resolution. The closest product from the competition would be the Radeon RX 6800 and 6800 XT. NVIDIA however offers faster raytracing performance and offers you the option to put that into 6th gear with DLSS," reads the review summary on Guru3D.
Tom's Hardware
"Thankfully, the jump in pricing on the 3070 Ti relative to the 3070 isn't too arduous. $100 more for the switch to GDDR6X is almost palatable. Except, while the 3070 offers about 90% of the 3070 Ti performance for 80% of the price and represents an arguably better buy, the real problem is the RTX 3080. It's about 12–20% faster across our 13 game test suite and only costs $100 more (a 17% price increase). Well, in theory anyway. Nobody is really selling RTX 3080 for $700, and they haven't done so since it launched (...) If you can actually find the RTX 3070 Ti for close to its $600 MSRP, and you're in the market for a new graphics card, it's a good option," reads the review on Tom's Hardware.
GeForce RTX 3070 Ti - The GPU nobody asked for
While the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti actually turned out to be a better priced RTX 3090, the RTX 3070 Ti doesn't know what it wants to be, at least in the context of other Ampere chips. For $599 (Nvidia's MSRP) we receive a graphics card usually a few percent faster than GeForce RTX 3070, priced at $499 but with a significantly higher power consumption (290 W vs 220 W).
This is not surprising, looking at the specs. The RTX 3070 Ti, which is based on the Ampere GA104 core rather than the GA102 known from Nvidia's top cards, had to acknowledge the superiority of the RTX 3080. The differences are quite large, ranging from a dozen to even more than 20% in games. And yet in terms of price the card falls in perfectly between RTX 3070 and RTX 3080, which doesn't seem quite adequate. So we're dealing with a poorly priced model whose performance leaves us unsatisfied, at least considering the price difference. So, in the end: is RTX 3070 Ti a valid proposition? It depends. On the one hand, we'd prefer Nvidia to make steps to improve the availability of current models instead of releasing another, unnecessary one, which next to RTX 3060 is one of the least affordable cards in the Ampere family, but on the other it beats the higher priced Radeon RX 6800 ($649), so in direct competition the RTX 3070 Ti comes out victorious.
According to rumors, GeForce RTX 3070 Ti was also to be available in a 16 GB version, but eventually this idea was abandoned - so it has "only" 8 GB, which is as much as RTX 3070 and RTX 3060 Ti. In addition, as we mentioned, it was difficult to expect significantly higher performance, given the small differences in the number of CUDA cores (6144 versus 5888 in RTX 3070). The card makes up for it mainly with the speed of GDDR6X memory, which gives a bigger gain at higher resolutions, where the differences can reach up to a dozen percent. So it's not a total disappointment, but it's hard to shake off the feeling that this is a card that may not have seen the light of day without anyone's loss - at least if the Radeon RX 6800 didn't exist. The GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is set to launch on June 10, but don't expect good availability. If the cards will be available for purchase, then at horrendously high prices.