Nvidia RTX 4070 models might be slower than RTX 3080: Pricing, expected performance, and more

The launch of the RTX 4070, yet another powerful Ada Lovelace-based GPU, is rapidly approaching. The specs and performance details of the card surfaced late last year and remain largely unaltered. Unfortunately, the situation isn't looking too good for Nvidia's upcoming 70-class offering as it might be slower than the last-gen RTX 3080 10 GB.

Reliable leaker and industry insider Moore's Law is Dead outlined how Nvidia's Ada Lovelace scales in terms of theoretical performance and pointed at the pricing and performance details of the upcoming RTX 4070. As per the YouTuber's report, this card will follow the pricing trends of previous GPUs in this generation. At the same time, the leaker believes that Nvidia still hasn't confirmed the details of its add-in board (AIB) partners.

As such, the highly anticipated GPU is expected to hit shelves sometime next week. Some sources believe that Nvidia is currently planning for an April 13 launch, with the company being rather tight-lipped about the exact date and details. This has led to the community going wild with speculation.

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The upcoming Nvidia RTX 4070 might not be as powerful as expected

Over the past few months, the Ada Lovelace lineup has impressed the community with its performance gains over the last-gen RTX 30 series lineup. In fact, all the cards launched so far can go head-to-head with the RTX 3090 Ti and beat the Ampere flagship by an impressive margin. As it stands, the RTX 4070 is expected to deliver similar gains over the last-gen variant.

Unfortunately, the most recent developments speak otherwise. Cheaper variants of the new card might not even be able to keep up with the RTX 3080 10 GB, which is far slower than the $800 RTX 4070 Ti.

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Specs and expected performance of the 4070

The RTX 4070 will be based on a cut-down AD104 GPU and will allegedly pack a similar number of CUDA cores as its last-gen equivalent, the 3070. The card will come with 12 GB of high-speed GDDR6X memory and can draw up to 250W in video games.

	Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070
GPU	AD104-250-A1
CUDA cores	5,888
Memory size	12 GB
Memory type	21Gbps GDDR6X
TDP	250W

These specs translate to a theoretical performance of 29.15 TFLOPs. In comparison, the RTX 3080 10 GB delivers a solid performance of 29.77 TFLOPs. While theoretical performance isn't a definite indicator of how they will perform in video games, it certainly points to what to expect from the cards.

Moore's Law is Dead compared the expected performance of the cards concerning the theoretical performance. This hints at the fact that the 4070 might not be able to keep up with the RTX 3080 10 GB video card. Nevertheless, the 4070 has certain advantages. It supports DLSS 3, which provides far higher framerate gains than the 3080's DLSS 2, thanks to its frame generation technology.

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Pricing

Initially, it was leaked that the RTX 4070 would be even pricier than the RTX 3080. Industry insiders had hinted at a $749 price tag for the upcoming GPU. We speculated that such a high price tag would tank its sales.

However, Nvidia seems to have reconsidered its pricing plans as the company now plans to launch the card at a much lower price point. According to Moore's Law Is Dead, add-in board partners have already been asked to specifically design their cards in a way to keep them profitable despite a slight reduction in pricing.

Although the leaks don't confirm the pricing, the YouTuber expects it to cost no more than $649. It's worth noting that the 3070 was launched for $499 and was praised for its price-to-performance ratio. Although inflation and a post-pandemic market do affect the pricing of the new variant to some extent, $649 certainly seems to be a bit on the higher end.