Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Super Trinity Black Edition review: A stone's throw from RTX 4070 Ti

I can sum up this RTX 4070 Super review by simply saying it's a $600 RTX 4070 Ti and that it's likely the best RTX 40-series Super GPU you can buy among the lot, as it offers the best value for your money. But it's far more complicated than that. It delivers solid performance at 1440p, which is not only better than the RTX 4070 that we tested last year but is comparable to an overclocked RTX 4070 Ti. Almost everything I mentioned in my RTX 4070 Ti review stands true for this particular Super GPU, meaning it's an excellent card that packs enough punch to deliver a smooth gaming experience at 2K resolution. It makes me wish I had waited for Nvidia's Super GPUs.

About this review: Nvidia sent XDA the Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Super Trinity Edition GPU for this review and had no input into its contents.

Pricing and availability

This particular variant of the Zotac RTX 4070 Super carries identical specs to that of the Founder's Edition reference card, and it's priced at $600. It goes on sale Jan. 17, and it will be available from various retailers. It'll be available alongside the original RTX 4070 non-Super variant, which has now received a $50 price cut at retail.

Design and features

Not as bulky as other RTX 40-series GPUs we've tested

In addition to making a Founder's Edition design, Nvidia is relying on its board partners to dish out a custom design and layout for the RTX 4070 Super. The one we tested is the Trinity Black Edition, which features three blade fans on the bottom, a metal backplate on the top, and some RGB lights on the sides to emphasize the Zotac branding. The cutouts on the backplate are a part of the extended heatsink and allow air to pass through toward the top. You also get three DisplayPort 1.4 ports and a single HDMI 2.1 on the back, so you can use a 4K monitor at 240Hz or power an 8K panel at 60Hz.

Comparing it side-by-side with Gigabyte's GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Gaming OC Edition GPU, you'll see that Zotac's RTX 4070 Super design has a smaller footprint. It's about the same thickness as the 4070 Ti, but it demands less clearance overall, making it ideal for small PC cases. I had no issues installing the Zotac RTX 4070 Super inside the Asus Prime AP201 case. In fact, I had enough space to use the included GPU sag bracket to keep my motherboard's PCIe slot safe.

Zotac has made plenty of good-looking GPUs in the past, and the RTX 4070 Super definitely joins those ranks.

I like the overall design of the Zotac GeForce RTX 4070 Super GPU. The only complaint I have is that there are a couple of visible cables on top of the GPU that could've been routed properly. It's not necessarily a deal-breaker, but they stick out like a sore thumb on an otherwise good-looking design. The backplate, in particular, looks stylish, and it even has a functional design to allow the air to pass through. Zotac has made plenty of good-looking GPUs in the past, and the RTX 4070 Super definitely joins those ranks.

As for the power connection, Zotac is using a single 12-pin PCIe 5 connector. It also includes an adapter cable in the box for those who don't have the new ATX 3.0 PSUs with a PCIe 5.0 12VHPWR connector. I connected two 8-pin PCIe power cables to the GPU using the included adapter during the review period and had no power draw issues. The adapter sticks out quite a bit, though, but that issue isn't exclusive to this GPU. Remember that the RTX 4070 Super is a triple-slot card, so make sure there's enough clearance inside the case for it.

Performance

Handles both 1080p and 1440p gaming well

The GeForce RTX 4070 Super is based on the same AD104 silicon as the RTX 4070, but it packs more CUDA cores and also has a slightly higher base clock speed. Housed inside the AD104 GPU are 7,168 CUDA cores that are arrayed over 56 streaming multiprocessors (SMs). It also gets 80 ROPs, 224 fourth-gen Tensor cores, and 56 third-gen RT cores.

The RTX 4070 Super also has a slightly higher base clock than the regular RTX 4070, coming in at 1,920MHz, but its boost speeds are on par with the non-Super graphics card. Just to put things into perspective, the RTX 4070 non-Ti variant had 7,680 CUDA cores and a 2,610MHz boost clock, so the new RTX 4070 Super is more comparable to the 4070 Ti than the regular RTX 4070 graphics card was.

Even 4K gaming wasn't out of reach for this GPU with a little help from DLSS and Frame Generation in supported games.

The RTX 4070 Super, as you can tell, has a pretty respectable specifications sheet, but it's not capable — nor is it designed — to show a generational leap in performance compared to the regular RTX 4070. You'll still see a noticeable performance improvement, as I did pairing it with a Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor with 32GB of DDR5-6000 RAM and a 1TB M.2 SSD for the OS and games. This is the exact system I used to test Gigabyte's GeForce RTX 4070 Ti graphics card, so that should set a good comparison point for us in the following benchmark comparison.

Staying true to my expectations, the Zotact RTX 4070 Super Trinity Black Edition GPU performed well in the suite of 3DMark benchmarks that target 1440p and 4K performance.

I also pitted it against an MSRP-level RTX 4070 from MSI (the MSI RTX 4070 Ventus 3x represents the base RTX 4070 as its specifications are almost identical to the Founder's Edition reference cards from Nvidia), and an overclocked RTX 4070 Ti's Time Spy scores. You can see below how much of an improvement the new RTX 4070 Super GPU is over the regular RTX 4070. It couldn't match the RTX 4070 Ti Gaming OC GPU's score, but that's also because it has a slight factory overclock, and it costs more than the base RTX 4070 Ti.

The performance difference you notice on synthetic benchmarks also translated well when I moved to some real-world testing with games. It managed to put some solid numbers on the board at both 1080p and 1440p resolutions, with all games running smoothly. Even 4K gaming wasn't out of reach with a little help from DLSS and Frame Generation in supported games, as we saw with the RTX 4070 Ti. DLSS once again plays a crucial role in helping the RTX 40-series GPUs shine, and I highly recommend taking full advantage of it. It's particularly useful to give you a boost in performance when you play with ray tracing on.

The Zotac RTX 4070 Super effortlessly ran all the titles I tested at 1080p, delivering upwards of 60FPS on games like Cyberpunk 2077 with max ray-tracing even without DLSS. Even Alan Wake 2 ran pretty smoothly at 1080p. The GPU also handles ray-tracing with ease, thanks to DLSS. I cranked up Alan Wake 2 — which is one of the most demanding titles when it comes to ray tracing right now — and the RTX 4070 Super handled it quite well. The MSI RTX 4070 Ventus 3x GPU was barely able to deliver 40FPS in Cyberpunk 2077 without DLSS during our tests last year. Meanwhile, I could comfortably run Cyberpunk 2077 at almost 50FPS with max ray-tracing when rendered at native 1440p resolution on the RTX 4070 Super.

The numbers definitely add up to show the performance improvement over the non-Super variant of the RTX 4070 GPU.

It may not seem like a stark difference, but the numbers definitely add up to show the performance improvement over the non-Super variant of the RTX 4070 GPU. The overall performance of this RTX 4070 Super isn't too far behind the Gigabyte RTX 4070 Ti Gaming OC GPU, so I'd say it's only a stone's throw away from catching up to a base RTX 4070 Ti GPU.

Temperatures and fan noise

Under acceptable limits

The Zotac Gaming RTX 4070 Super sports three fans at the bottom to pull fresh air and pass it through the heatsink. These fans stop spinning when the GPU is idle, so they remain silent for the most part and kick in only when you start gaming or doing something resource-intensive, like video editing. According to the data provided by HWiNFO utility, my RTX 4070 was idling at about 35 degrees Celsius, and it remained completely silent. While gaming, I recorded a peak temperature of about 72 degrees Celsius, which is about what I expected for a long gaming session during which the GPU was seen chugging around 220W of power.

The overall fan noise and the temperatures remain well under acceptable limits for regular day-to-day use.

The triple fan setup gets just as loud as the ones on the Gigabyte RTX 4070 Ti GPU. I recorded 59dB of noise when the GPU and case fans were spinning at around 1,300RPM under heavy load while playing games and running benchmarks. It never got to a point where the fans got unbearably loud. This GPU wouldn't be my first pick if I were trying to make my PC quieter, but the overall fan noise and the temperatures remain well under acceptable limits for regular day-to-day use.

Should you buy the Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Super Trinity Black Edition GPU?

You should buy the Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Super if:

• You are upgrading from 1080p gaming and want a reliable GPU for 1440p performance
• You are building a mid to high-end GPU and don't want to splurge a lot
• You don't need the quietest GPU, but don't want the loudest one, either

You shouldn't buy the Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Super Trinity Black Edition GPU if:

• You want to play games at 4K resolution
• You want a simple graphics card with no RGB lighting

The Zotac RTX 4070 Super is a great graphics card with enough power to deliver a smooth 1440p gaming experience. Not only does it comfortably beat the base RTX 4070, but it also comes close to matching the general performance of the RTX 4070 Ti. That puts it in a very good spot in a market where prices have been increasing generation over generation. In fact, all RTX 40-series GPUs are good for value-seekers over their non-Super counterparts. 4K gaming is well within reach of this graphics card with DLSS and Frame Generation, but I'd leave it up to more competent GPUs like the RTX 4070 Ti Super and RTX 4080 Super.

Not only does it comfortably beat the base RTX 4070 graphics card, but it also comes close to matching the general performance of the RTX 4070 Ti.

However, the RTX 4070 Ti Super costs $200 more. You can get AMD's Radeon 7800 XT with more VRAM for around the same price as the RTX 4070 Super, but you'll have to consider the lack of DLSS support and inferior ray-tracing performance.

The Zotac RTX 4070 Super is a great card overall, and I'm glad I can easily recommend it to those stepping up from 1080p gaming. Nvidia will continue selling the non-Super variant of the RTX 4070, but there's no reason to consider it over the new RTX 4070 Super, especially with the performance gains for just $50 more.