Introduction

MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Suprim X is the company’s top-tier custom-design graphics card based on NVIDIA’s latest salvo at the sub-$1000 performance graphics segment, with the new RTX 4070 Ti “Ada” that we’re reviewing today. The Suprim X brand of graphics cards from MSI arose from a need within the company to match NVIDIA Founders Edition in aesthetics, while offering the best factory-overclock and OC headroom available in the market; while also differentiating itself from the company’s Gaming X brand (something Gaming Z probably had less success doing). The GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is an interesting proposition, letting you play maxed out gaming at 1440p, or 4K Ultra HD gaming with reasonably good details, where you can take advantage of new features introduced with the RTX 40-series, such as DLSS 3 frame-generation, to dial up eye-candy even further.

The new GeForce RTX 4070 Ti “Ada” is a rebranding of what would have been the GeForce RTX 4080 12 GB, which NVIDIA cancelled in the face of criticism from the press and gamers on social media, over how vastly different the SKU is to the the RTX 4080 16 GB. Not only is the memory different, but the RTX 4080 12 GB is supposed to be based on a smaller silicon, with 21% fewer CUDA cores and RT cores; and a 25% narrower memory interface. NVIDIA originally intended to sell this at $900, but a “x80” card with a 192-bit memory bus would’ve crossed the line for some. The new RTX 4070 Ti launches at a trimmed down price of $800 (starting price), and a model number more appropriate for a product of this class.

The GeForce RTX 4070 Ti debuts the new 4 nm “AD104” silicon, which it maxes out, by enabling all 60 streaming multiprocessors (SM) physically present. This works 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 a 192-bit wide memory interface, running at 21 Gbps. This yields 504 GB/s of memory bandwidth, which is much lower than the 608 GB/s of the RTX 3070 Ti, and the 760 GB/s of the RTX 3080 (comparable launch MSRP); but NVIDIA claims that it has generationally improved the memory sub-system at an architecture-level, with much larger on-die caches.

The MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Suprim X is an attempt by the company to match the NVIDIA Founders Edition card in aesthetics, while also being the best-performing card you can buy, with one of the largest cooling solutions we’ve seen today, and possibly the best product design. Rich two-tone aluminium makes up the cooler shroud, with neatly executed RGB lighting. NVIDIA has standardized the 16-pin 12VHPWR power connector, and the card features it, along with an adapter that converts two 8-pin PCIe power connectors (2x 150 W) to one of these. This is just a means to tell the graphics card that the connector can supply no more than 300 W continuous, there’s no physical difference with a standard 12VHPWR. MSI has also given the card its best factory-overclock, with the GPU Boost set at 2760 MHz, significantly higher than the 2610 MHz NVIDIA-reference speed. MSI is pricing the card at $880, a steep premium over the $800 baseline price.