Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super review: a new 4K/1440p contender

Game benchmarks: Hitman 3, A Plague Tale: Requiem, Returnal.

Review by Richard Leadbetter Technology Editor, Digital Foundry

Published on Jan. 24, 2024

Our rasterisation benchmarks come to a conclusion on this final page of tests, where we continue to expect AMD's RDNA 3 cards to be more competitive against their Nvidia 40-class rivals.

Once again, if you're jumping straight to this page without looking at prior results, we should stress that our benchmarking system offers a number of ways to get to the data you want, the presentation varying according to the device you're using. You'll get a basic overview of our findings on mobile, with metadata from the video capture of each GPU being translated into simple bar charts with average frame-rate and lowest one per cent measurements for easy comparisons.

On a desktop-class browser, you'll get the full-fat DF experience with embedded YouTube videos of each test scene and live performance metrics. Play the video, and you'll see exactly how each card handled the scene as it progresses. Below the real-time metrics is an interactive bar chart, which you can mouse over to see different measurements and click to switch between actual frame-rates and percentage differences. All the data here is derived from video captured directly from each GPU, ensuring an accurate replay of real performance.

Hitman 3

Hitman 3 is a highly performant game, with all of our focal points for this review achieving hundreds of frames per second at 1440p - but some data points are still worth mentioning. For example, it's an AMD-friendly game once RT is factored out, meaning that the RX 7900 XT is around 21 percent faster at 1440p, the gap closing to 18 percent at native 4K. That said, the Ti Super is around 13 to 15 points ahead of RTX 3090, which is impressive.

There are also nice gains against the RTX 4070 Ti, somewhat in line with what we saw when looking at ray tracing performance - which is surprising. Indeed, the Ti Super seems to fall somewhere in the middle between 4070 Ti and 4080, which is a state of affairs we wish was the case across all tested games.

Hitman, Ultra, TAA

A Plague Tale: Requiem

We had to include this game in our test suite simply because it's so beautiful - a proper next generation showcase. It also runs exceptionally smoothly, bearing in mind that so much is being asked of the graphics hardware... and with RT disabled at least, it doesn't trouble the limitations of 8GB GPUs. We're testing like-for-like here, but do bear in mind that there is frame generation support for RTX 40-series cards and it works nicely. Even without, the 4070 Ti has an 11 point advantage over RTX 3090, dropping to 7.5 points at native 4K.

Against the Ada competition though, we're back to six to seven point leads over the RTX 4070 Ti, while the RTX 4080 is 18 to 19 percent ahead of the new Super. RX 7900 XT? It does very well here, with a 10 to 14 percentage point advantage.

A Plague Tale Requiem, Ultra Settings

Returnal

In our final rasterisation benchmark, Returnal's excellent benchmark sequence is put through its paces, where the developers have crafted a series of performance challenges encompassing all major environmental elements found in the game. Up against last-gen, the RTX 3090 is beaten by a handy 10 points at 1440p, though that advantage halves at full 4K.

Otherwise, it's uninspiring stuff - a mere four point lead at 4K over the non-Super RTX 4070 Ti, dropping to half that at 1440p. This is the worst delta found in this review. At both 1440p and 4K, the RTX 4080 is a mammoth 24 points clear. Wow.