Final Thoughts
The NVIDIA RTX 4070 is a card I think a lot of gamers have been waiting for. The initial launch of the RTX 40 series saw NVIDIA really pushing performance to the next level, but that also came with much higher prices. I mean the RTX 4080 is a whopping $500 more than what the RTX 3080 launched at! With these prices many could assume we could see the same thing throughout the RTX 40 line, but it seems with the RTX 4070 NVIDIA has calmed things down a little bit. You are getting a 70-class card that performs about the same as the RTX 3080 for $599, which is $100 more than the RTX 3070 launched at, but $100 cheaper than what the RTX 3080 launched at. Although you can buy an RTX 3080 brand new right now for $599.
Looking at pure performance without any NVIDIA-specific features we see this card averaging around 150 – 152 FPS in our 7 game test suite at 1080p and around 107 – 110 FPS at 1440p, and that is with the settings completely maxed out. This means this is going to be a great card for gaming at high frame rates at 1080p and you are easily going to get over 100 FPS in most titles at 1440p. 4K is a different story as the narrow memory bus definitely comes into play here. Many games running at maxed out settings will not be able to break 60 FPS here. And this is fine as NVIDIA is not really marketing this card as a 4K card, but rather a 1440p card.
If we get down to the nitty-gritty here the card is more or less on par with the RTX 3080. While you can see our RTX 3080 does outperform both RTX 4070 models we have, this is because the RTX 3080 we are testing is an overclocked model. What is impressive is that it is getting this level of performance at far less power draw than the RTX 3080. For those wondering how this card stacks up against the RTX 4070 Ti in our 7 game test it is about 13% faster at 1080p and 19% faster at 1140p. So for 28% more cost ($799) the RTX 4070 Ti is at best 20% faster than RTX 4070. NVIDIA really seemed to mess things up with the RTX 4070 Ti, remember they tried to market it to us first as the RTX 4080 12GB at an even higher price. But that whole debacle is another story. But it does seem odd to have a $200 difference between the RTX 4070 and RTX 4070 Ti.
Now obviously you can’t judge this card just on its raw performance as one of the biggest features of NVIDIA’s RTX 40 series is DLSS 3.0. We have praised DLSS since it was first introduced and as of right now only RTX 40 series cards support DLSS 3.0. To give you an example of what it can do we used the DLSS feature test built into 3DMark. It renders different scenes and without DLSS 3.0 on we rendered a 4K scene with an average FPS of 22.73. Turn DLSS 3.0 on and it renders the same scene at 84.1 FPS! This will definitely enable you to game at a higher resolution if your game supports it!
When it comes to the MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ventus 3X it is honestly a pretty plain-jane card. A slim 2-slot profile, no RGB lighting, and a graphene backplate. This is MSI’s entry-level into the RTX 4070 and it will be at MSRP of $599. The triple-fan cooling solution has no problem keeping the AD104 nice and cool and we really didn’t run into any problems with this card.
Unlike the RTX 4070 Ti, it appears as if NVIDIA will have a Founders Edition of this card. Also it is expected that every manufacturer will have an MSRP card at the $599 price point. We hope that inventory of these MSRP cards is high as once you get into the higher-end cards you could easily approach the price of an RTX 4070 Ti. I think that at the end of the day this would be a solid choice for a graphics card if you are building a new system or upgrading over something in to 10 or 20 series.
Right now you can pick up this card at our favorite online retailer for $599. Overall ThinkComputers gives the MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ventus 3X graphics card a 9 out of 10 score.
Pros:
– Over 144 FPS at 1080p
– Over 100 FPS at 1440p
– DLSS 3.0
– More reasonable price
– 2-slot design
– Cool and quiet fans
Cons:
– Graphene not metal backplate
– No RGB lighting
