GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Review: Supercharged Midrange Gaming

Before wrapping up our testing, we also spent a little time overclocking the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, to see what kind of additional performance it had lurking under its hood...

Overclocking The GeForce RTX 3070 Ti

Ampere-based GeForce RTX 30-series cards feature GPU Boost just like previous-gen GeForces. GPU Boost scales frequencies and voltages up and down based on the GPU's workload at the time, within predetermined power and thermal limits. Should a temperature or power limit be reached, GPU Boost will drop down to the previous boost frequency/voltage stepping, in an attempt to bring power and temperatures down gradually and not cause and significant performance swings. The maximum boost clock and power limit can be tweaked and tuned to wring more performance from most cards, however.

As we've mentioned in some of our previous coverage, NVIDIA has optimized the interfaces and power delivery on RTX 30-series cards to preserve signal integrity and ensure a smooth supply of power, which are two things that should help with overclocking. That said, like previous-gen Turing-based cards, the Ampere-based GeForce RTX 30-series is still power limited to prevent damage and ensure longevity, which will usually be the gating factor in any overclocking efforts. With the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition, however, the power target can be increased by up to 10%, the max temperature target from 83°C to 89°C, and the GPU voltage can be raised by up to .1v as well.


We used the frequency and voltage offsets, and power and temperature target sliders available in the latest version of Precision X1, to manually push the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti FE beyond its stock configuration. First, we turned up the temperature and power targets to their maximum values, bumped the voltage up by 45mV, and then we increased the GPU and memory clock offsets until the test system was no longer stable, showed on-screen artifacts, or performance peaked due to hitting the power limit.

The GeForce RTX 3070 Ti technically has a default boost clock of 1,770MHz, but that number means very little in the real world, since it routinely boosted much higher. The GeForce RTX 3070 Ti FE boosted to 1,935MHz in its stock configuration, with a 19Gbps effective memory speed. While overclocked, however, we were able to take its GPU clock up to 2,130MHz with a 19.7Gbps memory speed.


With the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, we re-ran a few high-resolution benchmarks and were able to wring another 6 - 10% out of the card, though as you can see in the screenshots above, the power limit was most likely the gating factor. While overclocked, the GPU temp never got higher than the mid-70s and we've seen these Ampere-based GPU hit even higher clocks. Even still, you can't really complain about a ~10% performance kicker, just for messing with a few sliders.

GPU Power Consumption Tested at the Outlet

Before bringing this article to a close, we'll cover a couple of final data points regarding power consumption and acoustics. Throughout all of our benchmarking and testing, we monitored noise output and tracked how much power the GPU's were consuming using NVIDIA's PCAT device. Our goal was to give you an idea as to how much power each GPU used while idle and also while under a heavy workload. These power numbers were captured over the duration of an entire 3DMark Fire Strike run, including the full demo, and are indicative of the GPU alone -- not the entire system...

As expected, the new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti consumes somewhat more power than the original, but it remains one of the more power-friendly cards relative to the competition. Idle, peak, and average power are all up slightly, but the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti still consumes less power than a 2080 Ti or Radeon RX 6800.

As far as noise output is concerned, it's a non-issue. At idle or when under light loads, the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is effectively silent and can't be heard over the chassis and PSU fans in our test system. When under a heavy, sustained workload, the RTX 3070 Ti's fans do spin up, but this card runs so cool they never get loud or obtrusive. The highest GPU temperature we saw with our sample was only 75°C. The cooler on this card is more than capable of keeping temperature in check without making any racket at all.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Review Summary

After evaluating the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti last week, it was clear that the updates NVIDIA made to that card resulted in performance that was much closer to the more-expensive RTX 3090, than the lower-priced original 3080 (at least in terms of MSRPs). When the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti was announced, some were hopeful that its performance profile would be similar and that it would come within striking distance of the GeForce RTX 3080, while leaving its predecessor in the dust. The GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is clearly faster than the original RTX 3070 across the board -- to the tune of about 5%-12%, give or take -- but the GeForce RTX 3080 remains well beyond its reach.

Find GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Cards @ Amazon

While the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti has a clear advantage over the Radeon RX 6800 with Ray Tracing in the mix, the slightly lower-priced Radeon trades blows with the 3070 Ti everywhere else. AMD's Radeon RX 6800 also has double the memory, which could pay dividends down the line as game assets get larger and more complex. With all of that in mind, the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti's $599 MSRP is justifiable, if not terribly exciting. Then again, NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti effectively offers better-than-RTX 2080 Ti performance, at lower power, and at a roughly 50% lower introductory price. If you sat out the previous generation and are rocking a GTX 10-series card or older Radeon, the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti represents a major upgrade in terms of performance and features. It's also easily overclockable, runs cool and quiet, and will give you access to all of NVIDIA's latest software features and technologies. Once we're not contending with supply chain shortages and street prices return to normal levels (hopefully soon), the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti should be on your short list of considerations if you're a 1440P (or lower res) gamer and it falls within your budget.

Fast GDD6X Memory Good Overclocking Potential Strong Performance Better Than 2080 Ti Perf @ 1/2 The Introductory Price Cool And Quiet	Lower MSRP RX 6800 Faster In Some Cases