Mid-Cycle Mastery: NVIDIA’s RTX 40 Series Gets a SUPER Upgrade [Updated]

NVIDIA has announced its RTX 40 SUPER Series GPUs with 3 new products today at CES 2024 – the RTX 4080 SUPER 16GB, RTX 4070 Ti SUPER 16GB, and the RTX 4070 SUPER 12GB.

This mid-cycle refresh is expected to deliver better value to gamers as the prices seem pretty competitive compared to what’s on shelves. They also address the complaints about the lack of VRAM on upper mid-range products like the RTX 4070 Ti.

These new SUPER GPUs will join many existing RTX 40-series products in the final lineup.

NVIDIA’s final 40-series lineup excludes the RTX 4080 and RTX 4070 Ti, which probably means those SKUs are being dropped. That said, it’s not like they were particularly good value products, and the launch of these SUPER GPUs makes them (presumably) more pointless.

Official MSRPs for the new SUPER cards are as follows:

• RTX 4080 SUPER: $999
• RTX 4070 Ti SUPER: $799
• RTX 4070 SUPER: $599

Now, depending on performance, these prices could mean good news for gamers and creators eagerly waiting on the sidelines for a good value GPU to show up on shelves.

However, we’ll have to wait for third-party benchmarks, as buyers can’t rely solely on NVIDIA’s claims to make a buying decision.

NVIDIA’s own benchmarks, unfortunately, also only compare the SUPER cards to last-gen GPUs, which is disappointing to say the least. So, we’ll only know more about these cards once we test them ourselves.

Here is a slide from NVIDIA that showcases relative performance:

For reference, the RTX 2080 Ti launched in 2018 at $999! So, if these numbers are accurate, it’s taken us over 5 years to get double the performance at the same price point. Yikes.

Note – the numbers published by NVIDIA still use DLSS 2, so actual performance in creative workloads and non-DLSS games is unknown.

The specifications shared by NVIDIA also focus on comparisons with last-gen GPUs, so we guess you won’t see too much of an uplift when it comes to specs like core counts, etc., compared to the existing RTX 40-series products.

Either way, performance matters in the end, so we’ll find out more once third-party benchmarks are out.

RTX 4080 Super ($999): Slotting in Between the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080

The RTX 4080 SUPER is advertised as a 4K gaming powerhouse, with a 1.4x uplift over an RTX 3080 Ti in traditional rasterization tasks.

That said, the improvements are pretty significant for games using DLSS and Frame Generation.

NVIDIA claims that an RTX 4080 SUPER is “2x RTX 3080 Ti” – a very bold statement. But I’m guessing this number happily includes the uplifts from both DLSS 3 Frame Generation and DLSS, which would inflate the results quite a bit.

Nonetheless, if the non-Frame Gen numbers are accurate, we’re looking at 2-2.5x higher performance than an RTX 2080 SUPER. For $999, that’s no steal, but it’s the best we’ve seen in a while, so I’d take it.

It’s probably too much to hope for performance to come anywhere near the RTX 4090, though.

Availability: 31^st Jan 2024; MSRP: $999

RTX 4070 Ti SUPER ($799): A Better “Mid-Range” Hopefully?

With the launch of the RTX 40-series, NVIDIA set a $799 price point for 70-class cards for the first time (the RTX 3070 launched at $499). However, the performance on offer wasn’t very enticing – making it an ‘okay’ product when compared within its own lineup or against AMD’s Radeon 7000 GPUs.

We hope the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER now features the performance to make the upper mid-range GPU lineup more exciting and desirable to gamers and creative professionals.

The RTX 4070 Ti SUPER is advertised as a GPU for high frame rates at 1440p, which can go “up to 4K”. Compared to the RTX 4070 Ti, it has more cores, more VRAM (16GB), and a 256-bit memory bus instead of the 192-bit memory bus to serve the additional VRAM more effectively.

From first-party benchmarks shared by NVIDIA (1440p + DLSS + RT ON), NVIDIA claims that the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER is 1.6x faster than an RTX 3070 Ti and 2.5x faster when Frame Generation is added into the mix.

Availability: 24^th Jan 2024; MSRP: $799

RTX 4070 SUPER ($599): Same Price, But Better-er

The RTX 4070 SUPER now occupies the price point of the original RTX 4070, while offering (hopefully) better performance.

According to NVIDIA, the RTX 4070 SUPER boasts 20% more cores than an RTX 4070. If that’s 20% more CUDA cores, it’ll be a fantastic product at $599.

Why? Because that’ll put it closer to an RTX 4070 Ti than an RTX 4070, which is a massive improvement.

However, the RTX 4070 SUPER retains the 12GB VRAM buffer and 192-bit memory bus. It’s not awful, but it’s not great either. That said, it should be adequate for most creative workloads that don’t exceed the 12GB VRAM capacity.

According to NVIDIA’s benchmarks, the RTX 4070 SUPER looks pretty decent.

However, it now looks like the RTX 4070 SUPER offers twice the performance of an RTX 3070 – following the theme of doubling performance at the same price after over 5 years.

Still, better late than never?

Availability: 17^th Jan 2024; MSRP: $599

Wrap-up: Other Announcements from NVIDIA @ CES 2024

While this mid-cycle refresh from NVIDIA does look promising, it’s prudent to wait for independent testing and benchmarks before opening your wallet. Sadly, there’s nothing in this release for mid-range shoppers who want to shop under the $500 price point. Hopefully, a 60-class SUPER graphics card is on its way.

Another factor to remember about these new SUPER graphics cards is that the MSRPs “start from” $599, $799, and $999. We can realistically expect most AIB and OC models to cost much more.

In addition to the RTX 40 SUPER series announcements, NVIDIA also unveiled NVIDIA ACE (Avatar Cloud Engine) for developers of tools, games, and middleware. It allows devs to integrate state-of-the-art generative AI models into digital avatars inside their games and applications.

GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER Founders Edition: First Look and Prepping for a Thorough Workout

Although NVIDIA announced three RTX 40 SUPER graphics cards at CES 2024, their launch will be staggered across this month.

First up, is the RTX 4070 SUPER – a graphics card that will hopefully breathe new life into the currently abysmal $599-699 price category, which will launch on 17th January 2024!

The RTX 4070 SUPER Graphics Card’s outer packaging is nearly identical to the RTX 4070 Founders Edition, barring the word “SUPER” at the end. The same goes for the GPU shroud:

Honestly, it doesn’t look like much has changed with the RTX 4070 SUPER when it comes to design and shape/size.

Included in the box, will be the graphics card, a PCIe Gen5 Power Connector adapter, and a Quick Start guide that we all definitely read.

The RTX 4070 SUPER retains the dual-slot width of the RTX 4070 to offer a more compact design for creators who might want to stack multiple cards together and gamers who want more compact PCs.

If the performance does match the margins that NVIDIA claims in its launch slides, this is going to be one of the best value graphics cards for creative professionals using GPU render engines like Redshift and Octane. At $599, this RTX 4070 SUPER Founders Edition is set to bring competition back to the market (again, assuming performance numbers do hold up) by going against NVIDIA’s own RTX 40 and 30-series products as well as Radeon 6000 and 7000 products.

Of course, we can’t reveal benchmarks or performance data right now. So, you’ll have to wait a bit longer to find out whether these new ‘SUPER’ graphics cards are worth a second look or not.

And yes, for those wondering, NVIDIA is still sticking to the 16-pin 12VHPWR connector on the RTX 4070 SUPER Founders Edition, which means systems with older PSUs have no choice but to use the included adapter.

That said, don’t worry about issues like melting connectors on mid-range products like this one, as the power draw will be (presumably) much lower than something like an RTX 4090.

The Founders Edition card features the familiar three Display Port outputs and a single HDMI output to give you the flexibility needed to connect and manage multiple monitors.

Although the lack of a 16GB VRAM buffer at nearly $600 does sting a bit, it is what it is. The RTX 4070 SUPER comes equipped with 12GB VRAM, which should theoretically be enough for most creative professionals.

However, if your scenes are larger than 12GB, I would recommend springing for a higher-end model as shuffling things in-and-out of VRAM typically causes a noticeable performance drop.

Well, we’ll spend quite a few hours putting the RTX 4070 SUPER Founders Edition through the wringer to give you a firm verdict from a creator’s standpoint for workloads like 3D rendering, graphics design, Stable Diffusion, and much more. From NVIDIA’s data, the card looks pretty favorable. But then that’s to be expected from first-party benchmarks? Either way, we’ll find out once we’re done testing and can report our findings.

Stay tuned!

What do you think about these new ‘SUPER’ graphics cards? Are you planning to buy one? Let us know in the comments below!