What you need to know
- NVIDIA has officially launched the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti for $799.
- The card is identical to the 12GB version of the RTX 4080 that debuted in November 2022 but was later scrubbed.
- NVIDIA isn't rolling out a Founders Edition variant of the RTX 4070 Ti.
Back when NVIDIA introduced the GeForce RTX 4080 in November, there were two variants: a 16GB model and a 12GB version with tweaks to the memory bus width and number of cores for $899, $300 less than the 16GB RTX 4080.
However, a lot of users took issue with the 12GB model, and the backlash got to a point where NVIDIA scrubbed the variant altogether. It was a given that the model would launch under a different name, and the brand is doing just that: the 12GB RTX 4080 is back, and it is now called the RTX 4070 Ti.
The best part about the introduction of the RTX 4070 Ti is that it is debuting at $799, $100 less than its asking figure when it was branded as the RTX 4080. That's great news for gamers looking to get their hands on a card based on the new Ada Lovelace architecture.
The new architecture brings exciting efficiency gains and huge performance uplifts, with NVIDIA touting that the card is 3x faster than the mighty $2,000 RTX 3090 Ti. There's obviously a caveat associated with a claim like that, but in my testing, I found the RTX 4080 to be noticeably faster than the RTX 3090 Ti at 4K and QHD resolutions, and the 4070 Ti is likely to be in a similar boat.
NVIDIA hasn't shared much in the way of technical details just yet, but given that it was officially launched in November, the hardware is unchanged. That means we're looking at 7,680 cores, 12GB of GDDR6X memory at a 192-bit wide interface, leading to a bandwidth of 504GB/s. And coming in at a requirement of 285W, the RTX 4070 Ti is a little more efficient than the 4080.
The RTX 4070 Ti is turning out to be the best GPU for customers still on the GTX 1080 Ti or the first-gen RTX 2080, and NVIDIA notes that the card is able to provide a "12x relative performance upgrade" over the 1080 Ti.
Sales of the RTX 4070 Ti will kick off starting January 5 for $799, and notably, NVIDIA isn't offering a Founders Edition version of the card — it will only be available with AIB vendors like Zotac, ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte, Colorful, and others.
