NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Graphics Card Review: An odd predicament

NVIDIA had introduced the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti alongside the RTX 3080 Ti at COMPUTEX 2021. These are the most recent members of the RTX 30-series GPUs and there’s already rumours of one other GPU within the high-end section. Once we reviewed the RTX 3080 Ti, we’d discovered it to be very near the RTX 3090 by way of efficiency. Actually, with driver optimisations bettering efficiency with every driver launch, the RTX 3080 Ti with present drivers beats the RTX 3090 when paired with its launch drivers (that are practically a 12 months previous as of now). So it’s utterly pure for people to imagine that the RTX 3070 Ti would possibly find yourself an amazing performer as nicely. Would it not match as much as the RTX 3080 by way of efficiency and inch it out of the stack similar to the RTX 3080 Ti is doing to the RTX 3090? Not fairly.  

The NVIDIA RTX 3070 Ti has an official price ticket of INR 53,500 and you may nonetheless get the Founders Version playing cards from their official Indian distributor, RPtech, as soon as each couple of months. Accomplice playing cards proceed to promote for roughly INR 1,20,000 (greater than twice the official worth) and the costs present no indicators of dropping any time quickly.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Specs

The RTX 3070 Ti, just like the RTX 3080 Ti makes use of GDDR6X reminiscence which provides a good enchancment in bandwidth over the GDDR6 reminiscence that the RTX 3070 makes use of. Nevertheless, the bus width stays the identical at 256-bit huge. This shouldn’t be seen as a bottleneck since there’s loads of headroom and the 3070 Ti has a max theoretical reminiscence bandwidth of 608.3 GB/s whereas the RTX 3070 had a max bandwidth of 448 GB/s. The core increase clock can also be increased on the RTX 3070 Ti by about 45 MHz whereas the bottom clock is increased by 75 MHz.

So that you’ve acquired quicker reminiscence, increased bandwidth, increased base and increase clock speeds. All the things appears to be pointing in the suitable route. Which leaves us with the core configuration. And that’s the place the RTX 3070 Ti falls wanting impressing us. In comparison with the RTX 3070, the RTX 3070 Ti solely has two further SMs which interprets to 256 further CUDA cores. In an entry degree section, a 2 SM increment is kind of a big improve so long as the clock speeds and reminiscence bandwidth are adequate. In a mid-range and even high-end section, a 2 SM increment is barely price something. And that’s precisely what we’ll see taking part in out within the benchmarks.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Efficiency

With the brand new set of benchmarks, we’ve featured a few of the older GTX 10 sequence playing cards together with a lot of the RTX 20 sequence playing cards together with the Tremendous playing cards. We even have AMD RX 5000 sequence playing cards in addition to the most recent RDNA 2 based mostly RX 6000 sequence playing cards. Additionally included are the RTX 30 playing cards that had been launched beforehand. A few of these playing cards haven’t been retested for near a 12 months, so we anticipate some discrepancies since driver optimisations may have improved efficiency of the older graphics playing cards in our checklist.

Like at all times, we’ve a piece for artificial benchmarks in addition to gaming benchmarks with loads of charts to showcase variations. Coming to the rig, we’ve examined the playing cards on an Intel platform.

INTEL GPU BENCHMARKING RIG

Processor – Intel Core i9-10900K

CPU Cooler – Corsair H115i RGB PLATINUM

Motherboard – ASUS ROG MAXIMUS XII EXTREME

RAM – 2x 8 GB G.Ability Trident Z Royal 3600 MHz

SSD – WD Black SN750 1TB x2

PSU – Cooler Grasp V1200

Graphics playing cards

AMD RX 6900 XT

AMD RX 6800 XT

AMD RX 6800

AMD RX 6700 XT

RTX 3090

RTX 3080 Ti

RTX 3080

RTX 3070 Ti

RTX 3070

RTX 2080 Ti

RTX 2080 Tremendous

RTX 2080

RTX 2070 Tremendous

RTX 2070

RTX 2060 Tremendous

RTX 2060

GTX 1080 Ti

GTX 1080

AMD RX 5700 XT

AMD RX 5700

AMD RX 5600 XT

Let’s begin with the artificial benchmarks.

3DMark

In 3DMark, we choose the Fireplace Strike Extremely benchmark because the Excessive and regular runs have began producing ridiculous scores with newer GPUs. The opposite benchmark inside 3DMark which we use is Time Spy and we run each, the conventional run and the intense run. Right here, we’re showcasing Fireplace Strike Extremely and Time Spy scores. The NVIDIA RTX 3070 Ti scores about 14,416 in TimeSpy which places it forward of the RTX 3070’s 12,618 by 14 per cent which is a pleasant delta. Equally, in Fireplace Strike Extremely, the 3070 Ti scores a bit over 10 per cent increased than the RTX 3070. TimeSpy scores are at par with the AMD RX 6800 and Fireplace Strike Extremely scores are about 9-10 per cent increased. To date, it’s trying good within the synthetics.

Basemark GPU

Basemark GPU is a pleasant benchmark to match the efficiency of various graphics APIs between playing cards. We are able to use the identical textures with OpenGL, Vulkan and DirectX 12 to see if the graphics card excels at any explicit API greater than the remaining or if the efficiency is constant throughout the board. The RTX 3070 Ti, like all NVIDIA GPUs, has a slight benefit in OpenGL over AMD playing cards and scores greater than 2x that of the RX 6800 XT. And when taking a look at DirectX 12 and Vulkan benchmarks, we see a 2 per cent and 14 per cent enchancment. In comparison with the RTX 3070, the 3070 Ti scores about 17 per cent increased on common throughout all three APIs.

Blender

Blender is a superb 3D modeling and animation software program that’s open-source and it’s the popular software for people desirous to get their arms soiled with 3D modeling. We use model 2.8 to maintain up with legacy scores that we’ve for older playing cards. The most recent secure model can be 2.9 and it’s an incremental improve. We use the classroom scene since that’s able to utilising the GPU for rendering the scene other than the CPU. The RTX 3070 Ti completes the benchmark about 6 seconds quicker than the RTX 3070 which is a good enchancment.

IndigoBench

That is the most recent artificial to be added to our take a look at suite. IndigoBench relies on the Indigo 4 rendering engine that’s accessible for well-liked software program reminiscent of SketchUp, Blender, 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, Revit and Maya. It makes use of OpenCL and might benchmark each, the CPU and GPU collectively or individually. We choose to check simply the GPU with the software program and the rating offered is by way of .M samples/s’. With a a lot increased reminiscence bandwidth, the RTX 3070 Ti scores approach forward of the RTX 3070. Actually, it’s a big improve if you happen to go by simply the artificial benchmark numbers.

Unigine SuperPosition

Unigine SuperPosition is the opposite well-liked DX11 benchmark which we choose to make use of alongside 3DMark. We run it on the Excessive High quality preset and use the rating metric for delineating the efficiency between graphics playing cards. There’s barely any distinction in Unigine Superposition, the distinction comes all the way down to lower than 1 FPS on common between the RTX 3070 Ti and the RTX 3070.

Borderlands 3

Gearbox’s newest sport within the Borderlands franchise which makes use of Unreal Engine 4 and permits you to swap between DirectX 11 and 12. The sport has an inbuilt benchmark which takes you thru an array of traumatic eventualities. The DirectX 12 model is kind of flaky and we choose to make use of the DirectX 11 API whereas benchmarking the sport and all our present knowledge relies off the DX11 model so there’s no level switching now. In Borderlands 3, the RTX 3070 Ti scores about the identical because the RTX 3070. At increased resolutions, you possibly can see a distinction of about 4-5 FPS.

Loss of life Stranding

Hideo Kojima’s Loss of life Stranding has been a latest addition to the PC scene and had been a PlayStation unique till July 2020. Being a console sport, the sport engine is kind of optimised to utilize the scarce sources one will get with consoles. Nevertheless, when 505 Video games ported the sport to PC, you wouldn’t find yourself calling the sport a console port. The Decima sport engine is able to rendering as much as 4K and might use excessive dynamic-range imaging and can also be geared for the upcoming next-gen PlayStation console. It’s additionally the identical engine utilized by Horizon Zero Daybreak. In Loss of life Stranding, we see a few 5 per cent enchancment in 1440p and 4K resolutions. That’s actually as many in FPS.

Doom Everlasting

Doom Everlasting takes the story ahead from the 2016 DOOM and it does it in spectacular style. It’s additionally one of many new video games to include ray-tracing as an replace. The sport relies on the most recent Id Tech 7 sport engine from Bethesda and is tremendously optimised for present gen {hardware}. In contrast to the earlier DOOM which allowed you to decide on between DirectX and Vulkan, Doom Everlasting is locked to Vulkan and makes use of RTX to level-up the ingame visuals. We hold the FOV at default with all the opposite graphics settings cranked as much as Extremely Nightmare. Movement Blur is switched off throughout all runs as a result of it takes away from the visible constancy and makes working a benchmark kinda pointless. The story in DOOM Everlasting is not any completely different with the identical degree of efficiency enchancment seen by way of percentile.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

We run Shadow of the Tomb Raider in DirectX12 mode. It finally ends up consuming a bit extra reminiscence as most video games that assist each DirectX 11 and DirectX 12. The preset is ready to the best high quality and HBAO+ enabled. The ingame benchmark software takes us by a number of scenes which characteristic open areas in addition to closed areas with numerous world element other than the central character. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, we see a a lot increased delta of about 31 per cent at 1080p however that’s extra to do with the enhancements that the builders have been incorporating over time. Patch 2.01 that was launched just lately remastered the sport to repair reminiscence and loading points so the scores should not comparable with our scores from again once we examined the RTX 3070.

The Witcher 3

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is yet one more sport whereby we are able to see the generational enhancements fairly clearly as the sport continues to be able to stressing the top-end graphics playing cards. We swap off NVIDIA Hairworks in our bench runs because it’s a proprietary NVIDIA characteristic and that messes up the efficiency measurements between AMD and NVIDIA playing cards. In Witcher 3, we see a efficiency enchancment of 1-4 per cent at 1080p and 1440p with 4K gaming exhibiting a a lot increased 15 per cent enchancment.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Ray Tracing

NVIDIA RTX graphics playing cards have continued to attain increased in artificial ray-tracing benchmarks reminiscent of 3D Mark Port Royale with the RTX 3070 Ti scoring 6 per cent increased than the RTX 3070 and about 15 per cent increased than the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT. In sport benchmarks have a a lot narrower efficiency hole.

Pricing and availability

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti has an official worth of INR 53,500 for the Founders Version graphics playing cards whereas the accomplice playing cards price about INR 1,20,000 in India owing to the GPU scarcity problem. Trade reviews had indicated that GPU costs would have normalised round mid-September and we did see a big worth drop in direction of the tip of July however costs have since then stagnated and present no indicators of dropping. Nevertheless, we are able to not blame the worldwide chip scarcity for the excessive costs since virtually each main laptop elements retailer has been placing out loads of models on the market. Even their social media handles are suffering from photographs exhibiting huge cartons and full partitions lined with graphics playing cards.

Verdict

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti places players in an odd predicament. There’s barely any efficiency to be gained with the RTX 3070 Ti because it’s virtually just like the RTX 3070’s efficiency however has a a lot increased price ticket. Formally, you’d be shelling about INR 10K for 1-5 per cent further efficiency however in actuality, you’re paying INR 20-35K. There’s no approach players could make any sense of this price-to-performance issue however if you happen to occur to be a content material creator, then the 3070 Ti is certainly definitely worth the further 10K.