Nvidia’s RTX 4070 graphics card has been flying low under the radar lately, with all the attention focused on the 4070 Ti, which is rumored to be releasing soon, but now we’ve seen leaked specs for the lower-tier model.
Unfortunately, this is not good news at first glance, as according to leaker Kopite7kimi – who regularly tweets when it comes to GPU leaks – the RTX 4070 will be much smaller compared to the RTX 4070 Ti.
Some RTX 4070 upgrades: PG141-SKU336/337AD104-250-A15888FP3212G 21Gbps GDDR6X36M L2250WDecember 9, 2022
At least as far as CUDA cores are concerned, as you can see the RTX 4070 is supposedly running at 5888 cores, a fairly old downgrade from the AD104 GPU max load the 4070 cards are based on, which is 7680 cores (configuration, rumored, the 4070 Ti will be advertised ).
Also, don’t forget that this number for the RTX 4070 corresponds to the RTX 3070 which has 5888 cores – but keep in mind that architectural advancements and other specs (like clock speeds) mean that a 4070 configured according to this leak will still be much faster (obviously not there is a chance that Nvidia will have it differently).
The better news is that while previous speculation pointed to an RTX 4070 with 10GB of VRAM – a prospect that has certainly caused a lot of bitterness in online GPU-related discussions – this leak points to 12GB of hardware in the 4070. It is also rumored to have 192- bit memory bus, which is good to hear because lower bandwidths have been, um, flipped in the past.
Analysis: Weaker or stronger prices will be crucial
We’ve also heard in the past that Nvidia had a hard time figuring out where to place the RTX 4070 and whether to push a weaker or stronger offering in this mid-range (or upper mid-range) category. we suppose).
A theory put forward by Moore’s Law is Dead a few months ago is that Team Green waited to see how powerful the RDNA 3 cards were before deciding on the final specs, and indeed, that wait could go on – although there’s a pretty strong indication that AMD has accurately targets the RTX 4080 with its flagship RX 7900 XTX.
In other words, perhaps Nvidia now feels confident enough to make the decision to go with the slightly weaker RTX 4070, with significantly fewer CUDA cores than the 4070 Ti. It’s a leap for sure, and we shouldn’t get carried away here, but this rumor suggests that Nvidia isn’t going to go out of their way to make the RTX 4070 a graphics card so close to the Ti variant.
Even if that’s true, as we mentioned, the other specs this RTX 4070 works with, 12GB VRAM and 192-bit bus, match the 4070 Ti (leaked specs, that is). So, even if the cores are cut quite brutally, the jury still falls short in efficiency to some extent. There’s also the possibility that a slightly less powerful graphics card could be lined up for a much cheaper price than the RTX 4070 Ti, so it could be a good relative value proposition.
However, given Nvidia’s current form, we think competitive pricing is an unlikely prospect, with all those RTX 3000 cards still for sale. This rumor has sparked quite a bit of pessimism around the internet regarding the RTX 4070, and we totally understand why, but the key will really be price/performance and how much Nvidia is charging for how powerful this graphics card is. Unfortunately, here we lean towards a pessimistic point of view and we are not holding our breath to get a good result in this regard.
Perhaps the only thing that could change that is that RTX 4070 Ti prices will be good, after the RTX 4080 price cut that is rumored to be possible. In that case, maybe the RTX 4070 could come at a relatively tasty price…
Watch that space, and of course the other obvious question is: how much latency will there be between the 4070 Ti and the 4070? Given that the former was supposed to launch in January, will the entry-level RTX 4070 also be pushed out next month? Given how it’s been under the radar, perhaps that seems unlikely, and previously rumored release dates like March 2023 could be more about RTX 4070 money (again, especially if Nvidia has to spend more time on sale of the remaining RTX 3000 shares).
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