Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti review: revisiting the super-performers

We begin our benchmarking with the 'super-performers'. These are the four games that showed some of the biggest gen-on-gen gains when we first tested Ampere (eg RTX 3080) against Pascal (eg RTX 2080). The reason we see such large differences here is complicated, but one element is that each game here is built on a modern engine that can make full use of high core counts CPUs like the 10900K in our test rig. This allows the GPU to stretch its legs further than in games that use older engines and graphics APIs.

We've run our benchmarks at three resolutions: 1080p, 1440p and 4K. For ultra-wide resolutions, you can consider 2560x1080 between 1080p and 1440p, and 3440x1440 almost exactly between 1440p and 4K in terms of expected performance.

Note that our benchmark results are presented a little differently to what you might be used to from other publications. On mobile, you'll get a basic overview, with simple bar charts with average frame-rate and lowest one per cent measurements for easy comparisons. On desktop browsers, you'll get embedded YouTube videos of each test scene and live performance metrics. Play the video to see exactly how each card handled the scene as it progresses. You can even choose exactly what GPUs at what resolutions you're interested in and it'll update in real time. Below the real-time stuff is a bar chart, which you can mouse over to see different measurements and click to switch between frame-rates and percentage differences. All the data here is derived from video captured directly from each GPU, ensuring an pinpoint accurate replay of real performance.

Let's see how the RTX 3070 Ti compares - are we going to see the near-3080 levels of performance we're hoping for?

Doom Eternal

Legendary devs id Software are well known for their technical prowess, so it's no surprising that their most recent effort scales incredibly well across all kinds of PC hardware. We're using the first in-engine cutscene in Doom Eternal from the opening stages of the Hell on Earth level, which shows the 3070 Ti claiming only a tiny two percent lead over the regular 3070 - way less than we hoped to see here and nearly 25 percent behind the RTX 3080. The margin varies slightly as we change to 1440p and then 1080p resolution, with a five percent advantage at QHD and four percent at FHD, but this is still a pretty meagre performance. AMD's RX 6800 is about four to five percent faster here, for comparison, and this remains relatively steady at each resolution.

Borderlands 3

The land of a trillion guns beckons, as we take the integrated benchmark from Borderlands 3 for a spin. We see a much healthier advantage for the 3070 Ti here at 4K, with a seven percent advantage for the Ti over the vanilla card, but the RTX 3080 remains in a class of its own - it's 28 percent faster here. The RX 6800 is also relatively strong, claiming an 11 percent advantage over the 3070 Ti at the same 3840x2160 resolution. Dropping to 1440p sees the 3070 Ti managing a respectable 84fps at the Bad Ass quality preset we're using for our tests, again with a six to seven percentage point advantage for Nvidia's latest GPU over its predecessor, a margin that becomes closer to five percent at 1080p.

Control

RT darling Control is our third super-performer, but it's important to note that this test is run without DLSS or RTX features enabled to allow a fair comparison for Nvidia and AMD GPUs alike. (We'll return to Control with RT enabled later on in this review.) AMD cards struggle here regardless, and indeed we note our first win for the 3070 Ti over the RX 6800 - and by a solid nine percent margin at 4K. Compared to the RTX 3070, the 3070 Ti is eight percent faster, but the RTX 3080 is once again a massive 26 percentage points to the good. The margin drops slightly as we lower the resolution, but even at 1080p you're looking at a 23 percent lead for the 3080.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Shadow of the Tomb Raider's integrated benchmark is one of our favourites, though it's a bit laborious to run with three distinct sections to cut out for our frame-rate tools to analyse. This does provide a nice demonstration of how different parts of the same game can run quite differently, with the middle section keeping our cards closer together than the beginning or ending moments of the bench. On average though, we see a 10 percent advantage for the 3070 Ti over the 3070 at 4K, the biggest margin so far. Gen-on-gen differences look reasonable too, with a 47 percent leap from the outgoing RTX 2070 Super to the new 3070 Ti. The Ti also outperforms the RX 6800 by a margin-of-error difference at 4K, with the AMD card reclaiming the card at 1440p and then narrowly losing out at 1080p.

So far, the 3070 Ti is a little underwhelming, but let's see how the card fares in games where we see more typical gen-on-gen differences.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti analysis

• Introduction and hardware analysis
• Doom Eternal, Control, Borderlands 3, Shadow of the Tomb Raider - Game Benchmarks Part 1 [This Page]
• Death Stranding, Far Cry 5, Hitman 2, Assassin's Creed Odyssey - Game Benchmarks Part 2
• Metro Exodus, Dirt Rally 2, Assassin's Creed Unity - Game Benchmarks Part 3
• Resizable BAR benchmarks and requirements
• Control, Metro Exodus, Battlefield 5 - RT game benchmarks
• Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti - the Digital Foundry verdict