MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3x review: The awkward middle child

The MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super is a good graphics card that dishes out great performance for 1080p and 1440p gaming. It can even handle 4K gaming, provided you drop the settings quite a bit or DLSS. It's still one of those products that's not very easy to recommend, though. I say that because it's stuck between the $599 RTX 4070 Super and the $999 RTX 4080 Super, both of which make much more sense than the RTX 4070 Ti Super at their respective price points.

The RTX 4070 Super shines as a fantastic alternative to the RTX 4070 Ti Super, as it has gotten significantly better than the baseline RTX 4070. The RTX 4080 Super, which is $200 cheaper than the RTX 4080 it's replacing and is well within reach, is also a much better option for those who want a true 4K gaming experience. That puts the RTX 4070 Ti Super in an awkward spot as a middle child, making it very difficult to recommend, especially at its current price.

About this review: Nvidia sent XDA the MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X GPU for this review and had no input into its contents.

Pricing and availability

This particular variant of the RTX 4070 Ti Super from MSI is priced at $830 in the U.S. market when writing this review. That's slightly higher than the $800 recommended price, but it's priced similarly to other 4070 Ti Super variants out there from the likes of ASUS, Zotac, and more. Nvidia won't be selling a Founder's Edition reference card for the RTX 4070 Ti Super, so it's up to its partners to dish out these units. The baseline RTX 4070 Ti and its variants have also been discontinued with the arrival of this card, so keep that in mind.

Design and features

Among the best-looking graphics cards out there

The RTX 4070 Ti Super is the only one of the three refreshed GPUs without a Founders Edition variant. This MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X is one of the many cards you'll be able to get from various board partners, and I believe it is among the best-looking ones. Like other third-party cards, the MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X also sports a triple-fan design for its heatsink, but I believe it does a few things differently to stand out.

The black and silver dual-tone finish gives it a unique look and makes it one of the best-looking GPUs out there.

The black and silver dual-tone finish gives it a unique look and makes it one of the best-looking GPUs out there, in my opinion. I also like the vented plastic backplate on this graphics card, which contributes to better air circulation. It would've been nice to have a metal backplate, but MSI has gone with a plastic one, which I'd say is quite sturdy and gets the job done. Another thing to note here is that this model doesn't feature any RGB lights whatsoever, and it relies entirely on the triple-fan layout and its dual-tone finish to make a mark. As for the heatsink, it includes three TORX 4.0 fans, a copper baseplate, and a few heat pipes to move the hot air away from the GPU and memory modules.

The MSI RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X only takes up two PCIe slots, but it is a sizable card that demands a good amount of clearance inside the case. It also sags quite a bit, so you'll have to use the included sag bracket to ensure it stays in place. There are three 1.4 DisplayPorts and a single HDMI 2.1 port at the back of this GPU, and MSI has also included a 12VHPWR connector on it for power. It also comes with a rather chunky power adapter that lets you use two regular eight-pin PCIe power connectors, but you might want to look at something that doesn't stick out as much.

The MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X is a great-looking graphics card overall, and I highly recommend it to those looking for a stealthy card that doesn't attract too much attention with flashy lights.

Specifications and performance

Very little difference over the original RTX 4070 Ti

The RTX 4070 Ti Super is the only one of the three Super cards to receive a noteworthy GPU upgrade, jumping from AD104 to AD103. In case you're wondering, this GPU is the same one that's found on both the RTX 4080 Super and non-Super models. The AD103 GPU that's built on TSMC's 4N process comes with 3rd-gen RT cores, 4th-gen Tensor cores, the 8th-gen NVENC encoder with support for AV1, and support for DLSS 3 with Frame Generation capabilities.

Nvidia has also included more streaming multiprocessors (SMs) for additional CUDA cores, but it's not as significant as the 1,280-core count increase we saw for the RTX 4070 Super over the RTX 4070. The amount of L2 cache for the RTX 4070 Ti Super remains the same as RTX 4070 Ti at 48MB, but this new card incorporates a 256-bit bus and 16GB of 21Gbps GDDR6X memory for a rated bandwidth of 672GB/s. That's a considerable step up over the non-Super RXT 4070 Ti.

The GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super is faster on paper than the baseline RTX 4070 Ti, but the performance improvement hasn't materialized, at least in my testing.

Based on specifications, the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super is faster on paper than the baseline RTX 4070 Ti, but the performance improvement hasn't materialized, at least in my testing. I used the MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X on a test system with a Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor with 32GB of DDR5-6000 RAM and a 1TB M.2 SSD for the OS and games. It's also worth noting that I tested this particular GPU on the latest VBIOS supplied by MSI, which is likely the version consumers will run once they buy the GPU at retail.

Regarding the benchmarks, the MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X managed to perform well in the suite of 3DMark tests, targeting 1440p and 4K performance.

Looking at the 3DMark test figures, it is safe to say that the new RTX 4070 Ti Super shows very little difference over the original RTX 4070 Ti's scores. Comparing it with an MSRP-level MSI RTX 4070 Ventus 3x, a Zotac RTX 4070 Super, and an overclocked RTX 4070 Ti, it's easy to see where the new MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X stands and how it stacks up. This MSI card beat both regular RTX 4070 and 4070 Super GPUs, but it didn't land close to my expectations while going against the Gigabyte RTX 4070 Ti Gaming OC card. Yes, it is going against a unit with a factory overclock, but I would've liked to see more than just an incremental improvement.

This incremental performance uptick also translated over to games when I tested a few of them for this review. There's no doubt this MSI RTX 4070 Ti Super GPU performs well at 1080p and 1440p resolutions, but there's barely an improvement over the card it's replacing, and that's particularly disappointing as it carries the same price tag. There's nothing to write home about the RTX 4070 Ti Super's 4K gaming performance either, but you can get some solid results with DLSS 3, which I highly recommend using in games that support it.

The MSRP-level MSI RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X GPU runs all titles very well at 1080p and 1440p resolutions. Even demanding titles like Alan Wake 2 run well with ray-tracing. But there's little to no difference in performance between the RTX 4070 Ti and the RTX 4070 Ti Super, so it's not as powerful as I thought. I didn't notice any performance improvement in titles like Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty and The Last of Us, which is a disappointing result overall.

Temperatures and fan noise

Runs a bit hot but quieter than other cards in its class

The MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X GPU was installed inside the ASUS Prime AP201 MicroATX case during this review, and it was being operated in a room with an ambient temperature of around 25 degrees Celsius. The GPU was chugging around 260W of power under load, and I recorded a peak temperature of about 73 degrees Celsius, while the GPU hotspot reached around 84 degrees Celsius. The memory temperature also peaked at 83 degrees Celsius, which I'd say is a bit hotter. ​​​​​​

Using this GPU compared to the likes of Zotac RTX 4070 Super Trinity Black Edition and Gigabyte RTX 4070 Ti OC resulted in a relatively quieter operation.

The graphics card never got to a point where the temperatures were alarmingly high, though, and the trio of TORX Fan 4.0 fans did a pretty good job of regulating the temps at a speed of 1,500 RPM. I recorded 52dB of noise with the GPU and the case fan spinning at around 1,500 RPM while running 3DMark tests in a loop, so using this GPU compared to the likes of Zotac RTX 4070 Super Trinity Black Edition and Gigabyte RTX 4070 Ti OC resulted in a relatively quieter operation for day-to-day usage. In case you're wondering, the fans stop spinning when the GPU idles, so it doesn't contribute to the system noise when the PC is simply sitting idle doing nothing.

Should you buy the MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X GPU?

You should buy the MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super if:

• You want to comfortably play games at 1440p and try casual 4K gaming.
• You want a good-looking graphics card that also runs pretty quietly.
• You can get it for a slightly cheaper price.

You shouldn't buy the MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super if:

• You only want to play games at 1080p and 1440p resolution. The RTX 4070 Super is more than enough for that.
• You want a solid 4K gaming experience with modern AAA titles.
• You want a graphics card with a striking design and flashy RGB lights.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X is in a bit of a tough spot as it doesn't do enough to stand out from its siblings in the RTX 40-series Super family. The $600 RTX 4070 Super is a much better pick for those looking to game at 1440p resolution, while the RTX 4080 Super is also an easy recommendation for those seeking a 4K gaming experience. That makes the RTX 4070 Ti Super an awkward middle child, and it isn't easy to see who it is really for.

The Radeon RX 7900 XT is also a great pick coming from Red Team, which can now be had for as low as $749 following its recent price cut. The RX 7900 XT doesn't particularly shine as a no-brainer card over the RTX 4070 Ti Super, as you're looking at a similar rasterization performance while missing out on stronger ray-tracing chops. It is, however, a good pickup for those who are really chasing VRAM.

Currently, the RTX 4070 Ti Super only exists as an option for those who find the RTX 4070 Super's 12GB VRAM a bit limiting. The 16GB VRAM is certainly nice to have, but it's still a bit of a tough pill to swallow due to its $800 price tag.