Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti: Hobbled and wildly overpriced

With prices like these, who needs scalpers? 

- BRAD CHACOS

This review will be short and sweet. Nvidia's new $799 GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is a technically hobbled, drastically overpriced graphics card that costs $100 more than the higher-tier RTX 3080 did last generation. In exchange for that 14 percent higher price tag, you usually get 14 percent higher performance at 4K resolution and around 20 percent at 1440p.

Depending on how you look at it, the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti offers stagnant-at-best value at similar prices to last generation, or a painfully steep markup over last gen's already overpriced RTX 3070 Ti. It's a beastly card that can topple the previous RTX 3090 Ti flagship in many games, especially at 1440p resolution or when DLSS 3 swings into action, but at this chest-clutching price, we simply can't recommend it. In fact, we recommend avoiding it outright unless there are mammoth price reductions.

SPECS, FEATURES, AND DESIGN

The specs for the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti shouldn't surprise anyone, since it's the "unlaunched" $899 RTX 4080 12GB (fave. co/3kCzgls) with a new name. Gamers (and us, fave.co/3wwBv2Z) called shenanigans on Nvidia initially giving this scaled-down GPU the same 4080 branding as the much more powerful 16GB RTX 4080, and shortly before AMD revealed its Radeon RX 7900-series graphics cards (fave. co/3kFEZOq)-which would've made this GPU look silly at the same $899 price as the 7900 XT-Nvidia canceled its original launch plans. It's back with a lower price tag that's still unreasonably, uncomfortably high for what's being offered. Here's a recap of the RTX 4070 Ti's core specs:

Graphics Processing Clusters: 5

Texture Processing Clusters: 30

Streaming Multiprocessors: 60

CUDA Cores: 7680