Introduction

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is the company's attempt at bolstering its sub-$700 lineup targeting a segment of the gaming market that predominantly games at 1440p, but needs an upgrade path toward 4K UHD. Cards from this segment are very much capable of 4K gaming, but require a tiny bit of tweaking. There are also handy features like DLSS to fall back on. NVIDIA already has such a product in the RTX 3070, so why did it need the new RTX 3070 Ti? The answer lies in AMD's unexpected return to the high-end graphics market with its Radeon RX 6800 series "Big Navi" graphics cards. The RX 6800 was found to outclass the RTX 3070 in most games that don't use raytracing, and the more recently released RX 6700 XT only adds to the pressure as it trades blows with the RTX 3070 at a slightly lower price.



The GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is among a two-part refresh by NVIDIA for the higher-end of its GeForce RTX 30-series "Ampere" product stack, with the other being the RTX 3080 Ti we reviewed last week. NVIDIA attempted to set the RTX 3070 Ti apart from the RTX 3070 without significantly increasing manufacturing costs (i.e., without having to tap into the larger GA102 silicon). It did this with two changes. First, the RTX 3070 Ti maxes out the GA104 chip, enabling all 6,144 CUDA cores physically present as opposed to the 5,888 on the RTX 3070—a 4% increase. Next, NVIDIA gave the memory sub-system a major boost by giving this card 19 Gbps GDDR6X memory instead of the 14 Gbps GDDR6 on the RTX 3070. This in itself is a 35% increase in memory bandwidth even if the memory size remains the same at 8 GB. Slightly higher GPU clock speeds wrap things up. The idea is to outclass the RX 6700 XT and make up ground lost to the RX 6800.

The "Ampere" graphics architecture debuts the second generation of NVIDIA's ambitious RTX real-time raytracing technology that combines raytraced elements with conventional raster 3D to significantly improve realism. It combines second-generation RT cores, fixed-function hardware that accelerate raytracing, now even even more raytraced effects, third-generation Tensor cores, which accelerate AI deep-learning and leverage the sparsity phenomenon to significantly increase AI inference performance, and the new Ampere CUDA core that doubles compute performance over the previous generation, leveraging concurrent INT32+FP32 math.

The new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition graphics card comes with an all-new design that looks like a cross between the RTX 3080 FE and RTX 3070 FE. It implements the same dual-axial flow-through concept as the RTX 3080 FE, but with styling elements that remind more of the RTX 3070 FE. The design involves two fans, one on either side of the card, and the PCB being shorter than the card itself, so fresh air drawn in by one fan is exhausted from the other side for better heat dissipation. NVIDIA is pricing the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition at $599, a $100 premium over the RTX 3070. We expect that current market conditions will have the card end up at around $1300, matching the RTX 3070 and slightly below the $1400 RX 6800 non-XT.

Packaging

The Card

As mentioned earlier, the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition is a brand-new design from NVIDIA that is neither the RTX 3070 FE nor the RTX 3080 FE, but a cross between the two. The dual-axial flow-through design is carried over, but with the S-shaped aluminium accent dissecting two halves of the cooler. The fan on the obverse side pulls in fresh air, which is guided through one half of the cooler, while the second fan, located at the backplate, pulls air through the heatsink and out the back. According to NVIDIA, this ensures uniform heat dissipation along both ends of the cooler. With its rich aluminium surfaces and diamond-cut edges, the card looks like a piece of jewellery.


Dimensions of the card are 27 x 11 cm, and it weighs 1199 g.


Installation requires two slots in your system.


Display connectivity options include three standard DisplayPort 1.4a and one HDMI 2.1. The DisplayPort 1.4a outputs support Display Stream Compression (DSC) 1.2a, which lets you connect 4K displays at 120 Hz and 8K displays at 60 Hz. Ampere can drive two 8K displays at 60 Hz with just one cable per display.

Ampere is the first GPU to support HDMI 2.1, which increases bandwidth to 48 Gbps to support higher resolutions, like 4K144 and 8K30, with a single cable. With DSC, this goes up to 4K240 and 8K120. NVIDIA's new NVENC/NVDEC video engine is optimized to handle video tasks with minimal CPU load. The highlight here is added support for AV1 decode. Just like on Turing, you may also decode MPEG-2, VC1, VP8, VP9, H.264, and H.265 natively, at up to 8K@12-bit.

The encoder is identical to Turing. It supports H.264, H.265, and lossless at up to 8K@10-bit.


Just like the RTX 3080 and other Ampere cards, the RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition uses the NVIDIA 12-pin power connector. It's basically a much more compact solution to provide a lot of power for the card. The 12-pin carries up to 300 W of power, the equivalent of two 8-pin PCIe power cables. Total available power is 375 W (300 W from the 12-pin + 75 W from the PCIe slot). With every Founders Edition, NVIDIA includes a 2x 8-pin to 12-pin adapter cable, so you're good to go and don't need any special adapters.

Unfortunately, NVIDIA has placed it in the middle of the card, which makes the life of case modders more difficult because cleanly routing the cable won't be easy.


The GeForce RTX 3070 Ti does not support SLI.

Teardown

The teardown is a tricky process, just like with other Ampere Founders Edition cards. We'll go through it step by step.


First, remove the magnetic screw covers and screws underneath (TorX T5). Using magnets instead of glue is an ingenious approach that impresses me every time. NVIDIA could have simply used glue and saved some money, but it would have made taking the card apart much harder for us.

Try to avoid using metal tools to remove the screw covers; you'll probably scratch them. The magnets feel stronger than on the RTX 3080 FE. Apply force from the outside edge of the cover, towards the inside, not from the inside towards the outside.


Remove the metal cover near the right-side fan.


Remove the backplate. The thermal pads on the backplate are 1.3 mm thick.


Remove the two flat ribbon cables. Fold up the connector with your fingers and pull out the cable. This is exactly the same approach as on the RTX 3080 Founders Edition; we have more details on that step in our RTX 3080 FE review.


Remove the TorX screws holding the GPU in place.


Remove the screw for the slot cover.


Remove the remaining four screws holding the slot cover in place.


You can now wiggle the PCB away from the heatsink.


A copper base makes direct contact with the GPU, while a secondary base plate pulls heat from the memory and VRM components.


Four 8-mm-thick, nickel-plated copper heat pipes skewer both heatsinks and make contact with the base and secondary base plate.

High-resolution PCB Pictures

These pictures are for the convenience of volt modders and people who would like to see all the finer details on the PCB. Feel free to link back to us and use these in your articles, videos or forum posts.



High-res versions are also available (front, back).