How does Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti compare to the RTX 4080? DLSS 3, specs, and more explained

The RTX 4070 Ti is Nvidia's latest launch. It is a severely cut-down version of the RTX 4080 16 GB, with which it once shared a name. However, the company has reduced the price of this weaker card by another $100, thereby increasing the difference between these two pixel pushers to $400.

So, the question is: when pitched against each other, how do these two cards fare in the latest games? The answer, as seen across multiple benchmarks and results across the internet, is not something users would expect.

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How does the RTX 4070 Ti hold against its older sibling?

The RTX 4080 and the RTX 4070 Ti are decked in terms of overall specs. They are based on the Ada Lovelace architecture, which is Nvidia's latest for consumer GPUs.

However, the cards do not share the same graphics processor. While the higher-end 4080 is based on the AD103 GPU, the 4070 Ti uses a much smaller 295 mm² AD104 GPU.

The CUDA cores have also been massively cut down across these offerings. The RTX 4080 comes with 9,728 CUDA cores, which is lesser than the RTX 3090 Ti, but it manages to beat the BFGPU by a solid margin.

On the other hand, the 4070 Ti comes with just 7,680 cores, which is higher than the last-gen RTX 3070 Ti but not enough to justify the price tag. Slamming an 80-class name and a $900 price tag would have made this card look even worse. Thus, Nvidia has saved itself some backlash in this aspect.

	Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti	Nvidia RTX 4080
CUDA core count	7,680	9,728
Tensor cores	240	304
RT cores	80	76
Base clock	2,310 MHz	2,205 MHz
Boost clock	2,610 MHz	2,505 MHz
VRAM	12 GB GDDR6X	16 GB GDDR6X
VRAM bus width	192 bit	256 bit
Total board power (TBP)	285 W	320 W
Price	$799+	$1,199+

Other specs have been massively cut down as well. The 4080 comes with 16 GB of 22.4 Gbps GDDR6X memory that is based on a 256-bit bus. In contrast, the RTX 4070 Ti packs 12 GB of 21 Gbps GDDR6X memory that is based on a much narrower 192-bit bus.

This reduces the bandwidth by over 200 GB/s, which makes it a very high step-down and reflects the in-game performance of the GPUs.

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Benchmarks and in-game performance difference

The massive difference in the specs of the two cards makes the 70-class GPU about 22% slower than the RTX 4080, according to TechPowerUp's performance aggregate. In addition, the RTX 4070 Ti is slower than the RX 7900 XT, which is priced the same.

Since Nvidia did not launch the Founder's Edition variant of the RTX 4070 Ti, all variants of the card are from third-party AIB manufacturers. Thus, Nvidia's suggested MSRP of $799 is just a placeholder, and almost none of the available cards are priced the same.

Thus, most cards will cost gamers $850 to $900, making it barely cheaper than the RX 7900 XTX, which is about 26% faster than the Nvidia card.

Thus, the performance difference, along with the prices, makes the new card a bad value option over the competition. Of course, the RTX 4080 is priced much higher. Most gamers will not bother spending over $1,000 on a graphics card.

Thus, the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT and the 7900 XTX prove to be better options when compared to Nvidia's latest card in the market.