Introduction

The new MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Gaming X graphics card we’re reviewing for you today embodies the spirit of the GPU it is based on. The new RTX 4070 Ti “Ada” is designed to strike a price-performance sweetspot at a starting price of $800, while offering maxed out AAA gaming with ray tracing at 1440p, and 4K Ultra HD gaming with fairly high settings, where you can take advantage of the new DLSS 3 Frame Generation feature introduced with “Ada,” and dial up visual details even further. The Gaming X brand of graphics cards represents MSI’s most successful and pioneering custom-design graphics card brands, which is into its 10th year now.

The RTX 4070 Ti is a result of NVIDIA re-branding the now-cancelled RTX 4080 12 GB in the face of criticism of the SKU confusing buyers in the high-end segment. The RTX 4080 12 GB is a vastly different product from the RTX 4080 16 GB (now simply RTX 4080); with 21% fewer CUDA cores, and 25% less memory bandwidth, besides proportionate reductions in other components such as RT core counts; while being priced close to the $1,000-mark, at a starting price of $900 (baseline). NVIDIA has since corrected its branding and trimmed the starting price down to a slightly more acceptable $800.

The RTX 4070 Ti debuts the new 4 nm AD104 silicon, which it maxes out. The card enables all 60 streaming multiprocessors (SM) physically present on the chip, which work out to 7,680 CUDA cores, 60 RT cores, 240 Tensor cores, 240 TMUs, and 80 ROPs. The card gets 12 GB of GDDR6X memory across the chip’s 192-bit memory bus (one of the key reasons behind the branding controversy). NVIDIA is standardizing the 16-pin ATX 12VHPWR power connector, and this card features it, along with an NVIDIA-designed adapter that converts 8-pin PCIe power connectors into a 12VHPWR connector.

MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Gaming X comes with the company’s signature design of sharp design elements, plenty of RGB lighting, the company’s signature webbed axial flow fans, and a healthy factory overclocked speed of 2745 MHz GPU Boost, compared to 2610 MHz NVIDIA-reference. You also get some gamer-friendly features such as dual-BIOS, with the second BIOS running the card at reference clock speeds, and a quieter fan tuning. MSI is pricing the card at $840, a reasonable premium over the $800 NVIDIA baseline.