Introduction

The MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ventus 3X is the company’s most affordable custom-design RTX 4070 graphics card, and can be had at the NVIDIA-set baseline price of $600. The card sticks to reference clock speeds, and has a close-to-reference PCB design, but backs it with a large, triple-fan cooling solution, which is where the “3X” in the name comes from. The new GeForce RTX 4070 widens the audience for NVIDIA’s GeForce Ada graphics architecture. With this release, NVIDIA wants gamers to easily access the product at MSRP, and has set review release dates such that every board partner is incentivized to create a good product at the $600 price point. All RTX 4070 reviews from us today (April 12) cover cards priced at MSRP. You’ll see our reviews of premium factory-overclocked cards that are priced higher, tomorrow (April 13), both kinds of cards release to the market on April 13.

The new GeForce RTX 4070 promises maxed out AAA gaming at resolutions up to 1440p, or high refresh-rate competitive e-sports gameplay. 4K Ultra HD is very much possible if you know your way around game settings, or can simply flick the DLSS or DLSS 3 toggles. The new GeForce Ada graphics architecture debuts the third generation of NVIDIA RTX real time ray tracing technology, which promises even less of an impact of ray tracing on your game’s performance, thanks to generational increases in ray tracing performance. The optical flow accelerator component enables DLSS 3, which can generate entire frames of the game using AI, without involving the graphics rendering machinery.

The RTX 4070 is carved out of the AD104 silicon, which is NVIDIA’s third largest gaming GPU based on this architecture, and also powers the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti. While the RTX 4070 Ti maxes out the silicon, the RTX 4070 is heavily cut down from it, enabling just 46 out of 60 streaming multiprocessors. This works out to 5,888 out of 7,680 CUDA cores, 184 out of 240 Tensor cores, 46 out of 60 RT cores, and 64 out of 80 ROPs, besides 184 out of 240 TMUs. Thankfully, the memory sub-system is untouched—you still get 12 GB of 21 Gbps GDDR6X memory across a 192-bit wide memory bus, with 504 GB/s of memory bandwidth on tap.

The MSI RTX 4070 Ventus 3X comes with premium looks, the high-end feel of a graphics card with a triple-fan setup, and the convenience of a dual-slot design. Each of the three fans comes with webbed impellers, letting them guide all their airflow axially onto the GPU heatsink beneath. NVIDIA allows board partners to opt for 8-pin PCIe power connectors, and this card has just the one—which is plenty given the 185 W typical graphics power (TGP) of the RTX 4070. The Ventus 3X is designed for those who are buying into the RTX 4070 at MSRP to just install and game, and couldn’t be bothered with premium features.