It’s a good look for Nvidia; literally and metaphorically.
Every couple of years we get a new generation of graphics cards – but of course it’s only natural that not all cards, or even generations, are created equal. Nvidia’s 40-series of GPUs, designed with ray tracing, AI, and other such cutting-edge features in mind, impressed with performance but left brows furrowed on price.
In many ways, Nvidia’s mid-generation 40 series refresh is meant to fix all of that. Leading the charge is the RTX 4070 Super, which surpasses but doesn’t actually replace its direct predecessor.
The original 4070, which launched last year for $600, will remain on the market but take a subtle cut down to $550. The 4070 Super will launch into that old $600 price bracket, meaning those looking to buy a new graphics card at that budget here and now have a new option from Nvidia that offers 20% more cores and decently improved performance for the same price as you would’ve paid just nine months ago. On paper, that’s not a bad proposition.
In real-world conditions, testing a wide range of PC titles, the 4070 offers a 10-15% uplift over the vanilla 4070. If you want to compare it to the 4070 Ti, which in the initial release was the next bracket up, it lags behind by anywhere up to 20% depending on the title. So that improvement is there, it’s real, and it’s tangible – though obviously, the real target audience for the 4070 Super isn’t those who already own a 40 series card: it’s for those who skipped a generation or two out of a perceived lack of value. This is the primary market for a card like this.
In that category, the story is of a genuinely impressive upgrade. While game-dependent, running with a target resolution of 1440p I saw a broad improvement of around 50% when compared to the RTX 3070. Forza Horizon 5 on maxed settings jumps from around 95-100fps on the old card up to almost 150fps on the 4070 Super – and that’s without the support of DLSS3.
