Nvidia's RTX 40 series refresh is well underway, with the RTX 4070 Super already available to buy. The other two cards in the Super lineup — RTX 4070 Ti Super and RTX 4080 Super — will soon hit shelves before the month is done. But even before the reviews start rolling in, I feel we can make a pretty good case for these Super cards being a letdown from Nvidia.

The RTX 40 series had a ton of drawbacks related to pricing and performance, which made me quite hopeful for a solid refresh. I even expected a theoretical RTX 4080 Ti to make RTX 4090 performance affordable. Alas, we didn't get an RTX 4080 Ti (at least not yet), but what we got has a lot of good and bad to unpack. I believe the RTX 40 Super cards should have been a lot better to be counted among the best graphics cards in 2024.

RTX 4070 Super - Not as good as you think

This is what the RTX 4070 should have been

Our RTX 4070 Super review branded it a great 1440p graphics card and certainly better than the previous RTX 4070. However, the RTX 4070 itself was lacking in several departments — the VRAM being the most prominent. Nvidia has retained the awfully limiting 12GB VRAM on the new RTX 4070 Super. 12GB VRAM on a $600 GPU was terrible in 2023, let alone in 2024.

Overall performance of the RTX 4070 Super is 15-20% higher than the RTX 4070, but this is what the RTX 4070 should have been from the start. In the most demanding games, such as Cyberpunk 2077 or Alan Wake 2, the older RTX 4070 looked a lot worse than the RTX 4070 Ti. Even with the performance uplift brought by the 4070 Super, 1440p high-refresh gaming in the absolute best titles isn't optimal (even with the assistance of DLSS) for a $600 product.

Nvidia should have powered the RTX 4070 Super with a fully unlocked AD104 die and at least 16GB VRAM.

Nvidia should have powered the RTX 4070 Super with a fully unlocked AD104 die and at least 16GB VRAM. The RTX 4070 Ti is being discontinued anyway, so equipping the 4070 Super with the full might of the outgoing GPU should have been the preferable step.

RTX 4070 Ti Super - A 10% improvement

AIB cards could hurt the value proposition

GIgabyte GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Aero OC GPU

Out of all the new Super cards, the RTX 4070 Ti Super appears to be the only offering without any major issues — at least on the surface. The 11% jump in CUDA cores might be concerning, but Nvidia has generously increased the VRAM from 12GB on the RTX 4070 Ti to 16GB on the RTX 4070 Ti Super. The latter also features a 256-bit memory bus rather than 192-bit as on the RTX 4070 Ti.

But, according to reports, the RTX 4070 Ti is the only SKU where Nvidia is struggling with stock issues, namely having too many units of the soon-to-be discontinued product. This might prompt the manufacturer to limit the production of the new RTX 4070 Ti Super to clear the 4070 Ti inventory as soon as possible, thereby affecting the availability of the 4070 Ti Super.

Even in the absence of a Founder's Edition of the 4070 Ti Super, AIB cards could end up costing much more than the suggested $800 MSRP if Nvidia withholds the GPU supply. Even if stock issues don't materialize as predicted, the 4070 Ti Super is slated to be only around 10% faster than the 4070 Ti. We're getting a bit more for the same price (theoretically), but that's about it.

RTX 4080 Super - Doing the bare minimum

It's still something

Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 Trinity Black Edition Super GPU

The big daddy of them all, the RTX 4080 Super, is finally leveraging the power of the fully unlocked AD103 GPU. But that's where the positives end. With a meager 5% jump in CUDA cores and slightly lighter memory bandwidth, the RTX 4080 Super is simply the older RTX 4080 with a slashed MSRP. This is Nvidia doing the bare minimum, as it doesn't really have to do anything else in this segment — being virtually unchallenged by the RX 7900 XTX in ray tracing and Frame Generation.

Nvidia's VRAM problem is on display here again — shipping a $1,000 GPU with the same shameful 16GB VRAM.

Nvidia's VRAM problem is on display here again — shipping a $1,000 GPU with the same shameful 16GB VRAM found on the even poorer value $1,200 RTX 4080. What the RTX 4080 Super should have been is a significantly more powerful GPU than the RTX 4080 (at least 20-25%) at the same $1,000 MSRP.

Instead of reserving a huge gulf between the RTX 4080 Super and the RTX 4090 for a future and more expensive product (RTX 4080 Ti?), Nvidia could have delivered a standout product that would have erased all memories of the dismal sales record of the outgoing RTX 4080. But, again, there's no incentive for Team Green to do us any favors as far as the high-end GPU market is concerned.

What lies ahead for GPUs in 2024?

With the next generation of gaming GPUs — Nvidia's Blackwell, AMD's RDNA 4, and Intel's Battlemage — set to arrive only by late 2024, this year is looking to be pretty uneventful once the "Super" hype dies down. If AMD manages to brew something great for the budget and mid-range segments ahead of Nvidia's next-gen launch, we might see some exciting shake-ups. Intel's Battlemage cards might also compete with these "non-high-end" AMD products and offer something interesting.

Whatever that might look like, Nvidia is likely to sit alone at the top. And it's hard to see that in a positive light.