GeForce RTX 4070 Super Review: NVIDIA Delivers More Performance And Value

Speed Way is the most recent addition to the UL 3DMark graphics test suite. Speed Way uses the DirectX 12 Ultimate API and leverages advanced features like DirectX Ray Tracing tier 1.1 for real-time global illumination and real-time raytraced reflections, Mesh Shaders, and high resolution textures and artwork…

UL 3DMark Speed Way DX12 Ultimate Benchmarks

The 3DMark Speedway test foreshadows much of what you're going to see throughout out performance data. The new GeForce RTX 4070 Super finishes just behind the RTX 4070 Ti, but clearly outruns the vanilla GeForce RTX 4070 and the Radeon RX 7800 XT. The Radeon RX 7900 XT is a notch ahead here, but its lead over the GeForce RTX 4070 Super is quite small, despite the 7900 XT's higher price.

UL 3DMark Time Spy Extreme DX12 Benchmarks

3DMark Time Spy Extreme is a synthetic DirectX benchmark test from UL. It features a DirectX 12 engine built from the ground up to support bleeding-edge features like asynchronous compute, explicit multi-adapter, and multi-threading. Time Spy is designed to test the DX12 performance of the latest graphics cards using a variety of techniques and varied visual sequences. This benchmark was developed with input from AMD, Intel, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and the other members of the UL Benchmark Development Program, to showcase the performance and visual potential of graphics cards driven by close-to-the-metal, low-overhead APIs.

3DMark Time Spy Extreme is highly detailed, and runs at a high resolution, but does not feature any ray tracing. As such, the Radeons fare relatively well, but yet again the GeForce RTX 4070 Super outguns the Radeon RX 7800 XT and trails only the higher-end Radeon RX 7900 XT and GeForce RTX 4070 Ti.

DirectX Ray Tracing (DXR) Feature Test

We also tested the cards with UL's DirectX Ray Tracing Feature test. This test is laser-focused on path-tracing performance, and uses few of the card's other resources.

Unlike Speedway (and the older Port Royal test), 3DMark DXR Feature Test relies solely on Ray Tracing for its lighting and shadows. This test clearly shows NVIDIA's generational lead over AMD when it comes to ray tracing. Here, the GeForce RTX 4070 Super outguns all of the Radeons yet again, and clearly dominates the base-model GeForce RTX 4070.

VR Benchmarks: VR Mark & Unigine Superposition

Superposition is the latest benchmark from Unigine, powered by the UNIGINE 2 Engine. It offers an array of benchmark modes, targeting gaming workloads as well as VR, with both DirectX and OpenGL code paths. There is an extreme hardware stability test built-in too. Unigine Superposition uses the developer’s unique SSRTGI (Screen-Space Ray-Traced Global Illumination) dynamic lighting technology, along with high quality textures and models, to produce some excellent visuals. We ran Superposition's VR Future benchmark to compare the performance of all of the graphics cards featured here.

Unigine Superposition VR Future Test

AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XT rules the roost here, outpacing the other cards by wide margins. The new GeForce RTX 4070 Super, however, still managed to edge past the Radeon RX 7800 XT and clearly outruns the original GeForce RTX 4070. The GeForce RTX 4070 Super's performance is closer to the RTX 4070 Ti than it is to the vanilla RTX 4070.

UL VR Mark Blue Room Benchmarks

UL's VRMark is designed to test a PC’s readiness for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets. The benchmark does not, however, require that one of the headsets is attached to the PC to run and it uses an in-house graphics engine and content to ensure comparable results between different platforms. We ran the "Blue Room" VRMark test at defaults settings here, which is currently the most taxing test offered by the tool.


Our results with VRMark somewhat mirror what we saw with Superposition. The GeForce RTX 4070 Super finished well ahead of the Radeon RX 7800 XT, but can't quite catch the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti (as you would expect) or the Radeon RX 7900 XT.