Gigabyte RTX 3070 Ti Gaming OC

Factory overclocking only gets you so far

- JARRED WALTON

GIGABYTE’S RTX 3070 TI GAMING OC follows the typical path of custom AIB designs, rather than trying to blaze any new trails. You get a larger card, improved cooling, a slight factory overclock, and some other cosmetic differences. It’s a conservative approach, though Nvidia doesn’t allow for much more than that. Unfortunately, the biggest concerns with the RTX 3070 Ti remain; higher power use, minor performance gains, only 8GB of memory, and it’s sold out and overpriced at most retailers. We’ve seen it all before and we will see it again in the next round of GPUs.

The Gigabyte overclock only improved performance by about two percent on average compared to the reference clocked Founders Edition, though that’s not the only difference. Power use also increased by about 20W over the reference design, while GPU temperatures dropped 13C. The card wasn’t really any quieter, but higher performance at lower temperatures proves the overall quality of the design. Alternatively, it proves that Nvidia’s RTX 30-series Founders Edition designs aren’t all that great.