MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ventus 3X 12G, 12GB GDDR6X, HDMI, 3x DP

Die erste Karte im heutigen kleinen Roundup ist die MSI RTX 4070 Ventus 12 GB. Zum heutigen Launchtag der MSRP-Karten können wir natürlich nur die Karten zeigen, die auch NVIDIAs Vorgaben entsprechen und zur UVP von 659 Euro angeboten werden. Da die Performance in Spielen und Anwendungen bei all diesen 200-Watt-Karten gleich ist, kann man diesen Part natürlich erst einmal übergehen. Die eigentlichen Unterschiede liegen in den technischen Details der Umsetzung, vor allem bei Platine und Kühler.

I think the RTX 4070 is an excellent graphics card for 1440p and 1080p gaming. It’s $200 cheaper than the RTX 4070 Ti variant. So, I guess it offers a (slightly) better value than its big brother GPUs. Aside from the RTX 3080-like performance at a lower cost and better power efficiency, the RTX 4070 features DLSS 3, which should give you more legroom, especially for graphics-intensive titles. It also features 8th generation NVIDIA Encoder (NVENC) with AV1 support, if that feature matters to you. Overall, I’m not overly excited about the RTX 4070; it could perform slightly better or at least cost $50 cheaper. Nevertheless, it is a good solid GPU for 1440p gaming.

The first card in today’s small roundup is the MSI RTX 4070 Ventus 12 GB. For today’s launch day of the MSRP cards, we can of course only show the cards that also meet NVIDIA’s specifications and are offered at the MSRP of 659 Euros. Since the performance in games and applications is the same for all these 200 watt cards, you can of course skip this part for now. The real differences are in the technical details of the implementation, especially the circuit board and cooler.

With the MSI RTX 4070 Ventus 3X being a stocked clocked card it not only matches the RTX 4070 Founders Edition in clock speed but also in its price. Its design however takes a completely different direction. Where the Founders Edition is more compact and has its all-metal housing the MSI RTX 4070 Ventus 3X is a long card with three fans and has a plastic fan shroud and plastic backplate as well. I don’t mind the plastic fan shroud because it opens up different styling options but I’m still not a big fan of the plastic backplate. It is better than having nothing as it does protect the back of the card some, but it doesn’t help prevent card sag and it doesn’t transfer heat out away from the PCB. The black design does look good and goes well with the silver and black design of the rest of the card.

Although the performance and power efficiency are pretty much the same as the RTX 4070 Founders Edition, the RTX 4070 Ventus 3X does has its own advantage over the FE. The most notable would be the use of PICe 8-pin instead of the new 12VHPWR for power, which makes upgrading from an older GPU to the RTX 4070 very easy as you don’t need to upgrade to a new power supply or have to deal with cable management issue after using the included 2 x 8-pin PCIe to 1 x 12VHPWR adapter.

The MSI Ventus 3X graphics card offers a solid baseline level of performance, comparable to the founder edition card. It is an option for users who require Wide Quad HD performance at an affordable price point. The card boasts impressive capabilities for WQHD performance, silent operation, and an efficient cooling system. However, it's worth noting that the topside of the card may run hot under game render stress. You can enhance the card's performance by taking advantage of the games that support DLSS(3). It has to be stated, though, the founder edition card is the better one. It offers roughly the same performance but remains the more silent product. And if looks matter, you'll probably agree with me on that. The RTX 4070 graphics card offers impressive performance and visual quality and improved power efficiency and thermals, making it an eco-friendly option. It effortlessly handles high-resolution gaming and complex creative workflows with HDMI 2.1 support and increased VRAM capacity (12GB). When choosing between the RTX 4070 and Radeon RX 6800 (XT), it's important to consider factors such as raytracing performance and DLSS3, which the RTX 4070 excels at. A bit newer, the Radeon RX 7900 XT offers faster rasterizer engine performance with an additional L3 cache, making it a strong(er) contender for the RTX 4070. The RTX 4070 is priced $200 lower, so perhaps it offers more value for money or is better in reach for you. Performance-wise, you can compare the card with RTX 3080 performance levels depending on where you measure. Overall, the RTX 4070 series edition is an attractive option for those looking for a visually appealing graphics card for their white-themed build. This graphics card has plenty of oomph up to even Ultra HD gaming (especially with DLSS3 / Frame generation enabled) with the option for a mild overclock. Overall, the Ventus 3X edition GeForce RTX 4070 is interesting. However, it competes with a very proper founder edition card that is a notch faster and has an extended power limiter, likely making it a more attractive product to get.

Averaged over the 25 games in our test suite, at 1440p resolution, the MSI RTX 4070 Ventus 3X ends up a tiny 1% slower than the NVIDIA RTX 4070 Founders Edition. This is the case for all cards tested today, they are all running slightly lower clocks than the FE, despite all having the same base and boost clock rating, with the same power limit. Binning does play a role in the clocks the NVIDIA Boost algorithm selects, so maybe NVIDIA is putting the best GPUs on the FE, while other AICs reserve those for their factory-overclocked models. Either way, these differences are negligible in daily use, there's no way you'll be able to notice such a tiny difference.