GeForce RTX 4070 Review: NVIDIA Ada Hits A More Mainstream $599

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070: Compute, Rendering And Encoding Tests

geforce rtx 4070 box
We tested all of the graphics cards represented in this article on a Gigabyte X570 Pro Wi-Fi motherboard, equipped with a Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU and 16GB of G.SKILL DDR4 RAM clocked at 3,200MHz. The first thing we did when configuring the test system was enter the UEFI and set all values to their "high performance" defaults, then we disabled any integrated peripherals that wouldn't be put to use, and enabled Resizable BAR support. The memory clock was dialed-in to its optimal performance settings using its XMP profile and the solid state drive was then formatted and Windows 11 Professional installed and fully updated. When the Windows installation was complete, we installed all of the drivers, applications and benchmark tools necessary to complete our tests.
msi geforce rtx 4070 box

Our Test System Configuration:


Hardware Used:
AMD Ryzen 9 5800X3D
(3.4GHz - 4.5GHz, 8-Core)

Gigabyte Aorus X570 Pro Wi-Fi
16GB G.SKILL DDR4-3200
Samsung SSD 970 EVO
Integrated Audio / Network

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070
MSI GeForce RTX 4070
ASUS TUF GeForce RTX 4070 Ti
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 12GB
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080
AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT
AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT


Relevant Software:
Windows 11 Pro 22H2
AMD Radeon 22.11.1
NVIDIA Drivers v531.42
Benchmarks Used:
LuxMark v4
Blender v3.3.0
Blackmagic RAW Speed Test v2.6
IndigoBench v4.4.15

UL 3DMark
UL VRMark
Unigine Superposition
CryTek Neon Noir
Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker
Assassin's Creed Valhalla
FarCry 6
F1 2022
Guardians Of The Galaxy


LuxMark v4.0 Benchmarks

LuxMark is a cross-platform, OpenCL-accelerated 3D rendering benchmark. It's a tool based on the open source LuxRender physically-based spectral rendering engine, which accurately models the transportation of light and supports high dynamic range. LuxRender features a number of material types to allow rendering of photo-realistic and artistic scenes. LuxRender is free software, licensed under the GPL, that offers plugins for packages like Blender, Maya, Cinema 4D and 3DS Max.

luxmark geforce rtx 4070 perf

The new GeForce RTX 4070 series cards trade victories with the Radeon RX 6900 series here, depending on the model being rendered, and the RTX 4070s clearly outrun the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti. they couldn't quite can't catch the higher-end Radeon RX 7900 series and RTX 40-series cards, though.

IndigoBench Rendering Benchmarks

IndigoBench is based on Indigo 4's advanced rendering engine and offers both CPU and GPU rendering modes for its two built-in models. The standalone benchmark is available for Windows, MacOS, and Linux and outputs results in M/Samples per second.

indigo geforce rtx 4070 perf

The MSI GeForce RTX 4070 and NVIDIA Founders Edition cards performed similarly here. Both cards outpaced all of the Radeons we tested, with both models. They outran the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti as well, but slot in behind the RTX 4070 Ti and previous-gen RTX 3090 Ti.

Blender v3.3.0 GPU Rendering Benchmarks

Blender is a free and open source 3D creation suite that can handle everything from modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, even video editing and game creation. The developers offer a standalone benchmarking tool that will track performance while rendering a handful of models. We used all three of the default models for these tests...

blender geforce rtx 4070 perf

Blender is capable of exploiting NVIDIA's RT cores using the OptiX backend API, which results in a massive uplift in performance for the NVIDIA-powered cards. That said, the standings look similar to Indigobench, with the GeForce RTX 4070s outperforming all of the Radeons and the RTX 3070 Ti.

Blackmagic RAW Speed Test Results

The Blackmagic RAW Speed Test is a CPU and GPU benchmarking tool that tests the speed of decoding full-resolution Blackmagic RAW frames. The tool can be used to evaluate the performance at various resolutions and bitrates on the CPU or using OpenCL or CUDA on a GPU. We're reporting two results here, both at an 8K resolution, but at differing bitrates and compression levels.

blackmagic raw geforce rtx 4070 perf

Although it's a completely different type of creator workload, the Blackmagic RAW Speed Test has the GeForce RTX 4070cards finishing in a similar position. In the 8K 3:1 test, all of the cards perform similarly due to system memory bandwidth limitations. In the 8K 12:1 test, which uses more compressed data, the field separates and the GeForce RTX 4070s land in the familiar position, just behind the RTX 4070 Ti, but ahead of the 3070 Ti and Radeons.

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