Nvidia has the GeForce RTX 4070 desktop GPU, a move that anyone who’s been putting off a new mid-range DIY PC is probably eagerly awaiting. It puts the company’s impressive Ada Lovelace graphics architecture at your fingertips for people who don’t want to spend $1,000 or more on a huge graphics card.
It launches tomorrow, April 13, starting at $599 for Nvidia’s Founders Edition single-fan model. As always, other manufacturers such as Asus, Zotac, Gigabyte, MSI and others also release factory overclocked variants.
The RTX 4070 Founders Edition card requires a 650W power supply and connects via two PCIe 8-pin cables (an adapter is included in the box). Alternatively, it can be connected via a PCIe Gen 5 cable that supports 300W or higher. The RTX 4070 doesn’t need a huge case, as it’s a two-slot card that’s a lot smaller than the RTX 4080. It’s 9.6 inches long and 4.4 inches wide, which is about the same size as my RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition card.
Despite being a lower-end GPU compared to Nvidia’s RTX 4080 or RTX 4090, it retains the selling point of the DLSS 3. It’s the next iteration of Nvidia’s upscaling technique that lowers the render resolution to make games run better, and then the AI cores of the GPU used to intelligently upscale what you see. Ultimately, DLSS makes it possible to run more graphics-intensive settings, such as ray tracing, without breaking your PC. And with DLSS 3, the GPU uses frame generation to insert frames that otherwise wouldn’t be there, delivering even faster performance than DLSS 2 with no performance loss.
Nvidia is aiming for 1440p (aka QHD) resolution for the RTX 4070, claiming you’ll be able to play all your games at maximum graphics settings. Given the influx of beautiful 1440p OLED gaming monitors we saw at CES 2023 from LG, Asus, Acer and more, this could be the perfect card to pick up. 4K might get all the attention when it comes to TVs, but games and the Windows interface look great in 1440p.
To soften the value of this card, as well as the RTX 4070 Ti, 4080, and 4090 cards, Nvidia adds the Overlook 2 ultimate battle pass with purchases made through May 8, 2023. You also get 1,000 Overwatch 2 coins, worth $40.