I downgraded to the RTX 4070 and I
couldn't be happier ever since the 4070
came out it's been the focal point of
contention in the Enthusiast PC market
it offers unprecedented performance for
a 70 class card while being priced like
we owe Nvidia tribute for their
generosity of rolling over our Vasa
state that we call PC gaming and at only
12 gigabytes of vram if you dare to
mention that's good enough get ready to
be emulated in the comments for not
understanding that games need a minimum
of 16 gigabytes because game devs are
now targeting the 16 gigabytes of RAM on
the latest consoles as long as we forget
the series s but I really love this card
and I suspect that you will too if you
stop living in the theoretical abstract
of tech YouTube's ability to Nuance
anything into a sub-optimal system and
instead living the reality of reality
and just choose to enjoy your PCS and
enjoying PCS is the business model of
today's video sponsor Micro Center which
is where Kyler and I went to get this
RTX 4070 on launch day and we actually
ended up getting two and we were able to
give one away right after this store
open the winner was actually able to
upgrade from their kepler-era Quadro
card which is a massive leap in
performance for them but Micro Center is
the place that you should go if you're
considering getting a new GPU a new
system any new parts that you want in
the PC Enthusiast sector because that's
exactly what they are there for and if
it's your first time shopping at Micro
Center they actually have a deal
specifically for you because you can use
this coupon that we have Linked In the
video description to get a free 256
gigabyte SSD in store only they're just
going to give you a free part for being
there at the store if you're wondering
where's the closest Micro Center well
they have 25 stores located Nationwide
here in the United States with the first
brand new store in eight years going to
be opening up in Indianapolis this
summer of 2023 and they'll have two more
opening by 2025 but if you check the
link in the video description for the
Indianapolis store you can get a free
128 gig flash drive as long as you click
on the link you sign up and you show up
to the Indianapolis store you can get
that free flash drive as well they're
just giving away a bunch of free stuff
they have over 30 000 items in stock and
a vast selection of different products
whether you're a maker and you want a 3D
printer you want to build your own
keyboard or you're looking for
components or even pre-builts because
May is desktop month at Micro Center and
the desktop deals are featured all month
long and while we're talking about a GPU
that you slot into your system their
pre-builts are there for you to be able
to pick up your PC with none of the
hassle of any type of configuration they
have a ton of great deals like this 800
off the power spec g439 you get an i7
12700 KF 32 gigs of RAM a 30 70 TI
graphics card with a one terabyte SSD
all for 800 off that's on top of other
deals like this one on the Lenovo Legion
Tower 5 or this power spec g442 or this
g473 and they also have great deals on
graphics cards it was the obvious place
for me and Kyler to go to get our 4070
or even to pick up anything from team
red in case you want to spec out your PC
yourself you don't want to go with one
of their amazing pre-built Deals they
also have a PC Builder that you can use
online to make sure that all of your
parts fit together and they can offer
same day in-store assembly so you get
all the ease of that pre-built with all
of the customization of you being able
to select your parts yourself Micro
Center really does have it all they're
opening up brand new stores they give
you free stuff for being a first-time
customer or going to the new
Indianapolis store and I couldn't be
happy to have them as a sponsor because
it allows me to do things like go to the
4070 launch grab one give one away to
one of our subscribers and that all
happens because of great companies like
Micro Center so check them out at the
link in the video description check out
their pre-builts check out the
Indianapolis store new first time
customer coupon and anything else that
they got that might be peaking your
wallet's interest big thanks again to
Microcenter for sponsoring today's video
getting back to the 4070 I think part of
the conversation that we are forgetting
when it comes to these 70 class cards
which are costing 5.99 is that this is
not the first time that Nvidia did this
this actually is the same price as the
RTX 2070 because a lot of people don't
remember that Nvidia actually had two
different pricing tiers for their 2070.
for these third-party cards they cost
4.99 but then for the first party
Founders Edition they were 5.99 and
videos already been trying to charge us
5.99 470 class cards for quite some time
that doesn't make it better but it does
indicate that there has been some
precedence and we shouldn't really have
sticker shocks surrounding this
especially when you consider the fact
that the 3070 never actually sold for
4.99 yes you could in some instances
find it at that MSRP but for the most
part people were paying well north of a
thousand dollars for that 70 class car
that is what the open market was
determining was the street price of that
GPU and it's actually only within the
last few weeks since the 4070 launch
that we are seeing that 30 70s are
finally going below MSRP so the real
reality is that we can complain about
the price of these cards and we can
choose not to buy these but Nvidia and
AMD have seen two to three years of
evidence that we will continuously buy
these cards at this price and a lot of
the complaining might just be us running
our mouth but at this 599 price point
the 6950 XT is being touted as the solid
replacement for the 4070. it comes in at
roughly the same price you get The Last
of Us Part One for free for right now
and it has 16 gigabytes of vram so
Nvidia but I think they're two different
cards for two different situations and
let's also not forget to talk about the
fact that AMD hasn't launched a new GPU
in over six months and we're still
eating off the scraps of the last gen
and acting like that's okay and healthy
and somehow amd's better because they're
making sure that we can buy their last
generation goods for a healthy price I
mean especially if you don't even talk
about gaming performance the 4070 has
upgraded features you get av1 you get
DLS S3 but my favorite thing is you get
better power efficiency and honestly I
think this conversation that we've been
having about vram isn't really correct
because you're not going to need 16
gigabytes of vram for the performance
that you're targeting with the 4070.
it's just not relevant to high settings
1440p gameplay that you should be
targeting with this classic card and
60fps 4K gameplay is still a possibility
and you're not really limited by the 12
gigabytes of vram on this card accepting
games that are poorly optimized which we
have been getting a lot of lately so I'm
going to go through the Benchmark
showing the 4070 versus the 6950 XT to
really indicate that even with the
latest games the 16 gigabytes of vram is
not an advantage a faster core is the
advantage the 4070 TI beats the 4070
even though it has the same amount of
vram because it's really not the issue
but besides the vram conversation the
thing that gets me excited about the
4070 is that this is a low powered
souped-up version of the RTX 3080 and
that makes it wonderful for so many new
scenarios like ITX builds which if
you've been watching this channel for
any length of time you know that is a
favorite form factor of mine whenever I
can find an excuse to build in an ITX
chassis I will do that I did my 7800 X
3D review in a mini ITX form factor
because I love them that much and that's
exactly what we did for the review of
the RTX 4070 it fits perfectly in a case
like this fractal Ridge because you're
getting RTX 3080 level performance and
you're not restricted so much by the
thermals or the power output that's
causing the rest of the system to heat
up so this is the brand new fractal
Ridge and inside we have the ASRock b550
ITX motherboard and then for the CPU
we're on the ryzen 7 5800 X 3D which I
believe is the best CPU that you can get
for gaming right now in terms of value
and you can watch our 7800 X 3D review
right up there to get more details on
that I've got a crucial one terabyte P3
Plus in this system as well as 16
gigabytes of g-skilled trident Z Royal
RAM and powering everything is the
Silverstone sx700 lpt power supply which
we did not need that much for the RTX
4070 but we absolutely needed it for the
6950 XT and then cooling that 5800 X 3D
is the noctua nhl12 ghost S1 Edition
based on the reviews that I read about
the ridge you can fit the regular
edition l12 in this case but it is very
very tight if you really want to make
sure you have a good fit the ghost S1
Edition is the way to do it but I want
to discuss a little bit more about that
after we talk about the benchmarks so I
made sure to run this thing in 1440p
high settings in the latest games as
well as a 4K High settings in the latest
games as well as Ray tracing both in
1440p and 4K to put it in both the most
useful scenario for this card and also
put it in the most demanding scenario
that you can find in games out there and
what we found was no surprise at 1440p
the 6950 XT Stomps all over the RTX 4070
it comes in anywhere from five percent
to 22 percent faster than the RTX 4070
but one of the things that I made sure
to pay very close attention to in all of
my benchmarking is how much vram were we
actually being told was being used by
the system because that's also one of
the conversations that needs to be
happening even though your system might
be reporting that you are using a
certain amount of vram some of that is
just being reserved and not actively
used by the game take a look at
something like Horizon zero Dawn at
1440p high the RTX 4070 used 10.8
gigabytes in this PlayStation 4 game
this is as unoptimized as you could
possibly get and then when we scale it
up to the 6950 XT it used
13.2 gigabytes at the same resolution in
the same settings and that might make
you think you're being vram bottlenecked
but the truth is that's not happening at
all the game is Just gobbling all that
vram up in reserve and saying if it's
available I will take it I will use it
if I need it and I'm not going to give
it back so the game used 18 more vram
and only got 15 percent better
performance but then you can look at
other games like Hitman 3 which used
nearly 24 percent more vram but only got
eight and a half percent better
performance because vram is not a direct
indication of how well your gaming card
is going to perform it is part of the
equation but not all of it and then in
some of the latest most unoptimized
games like Jedi Survivor we use two and
a half percent more vram with the 6950
XT but got eight and a half percent
better performance but then in The Last
of Us Part One we used 31 and a half
percent more vram on the 6950 XT but
only got less than 11 better performance
the key takeaway from all of this is
that these games are unoptimized game
developers are actually not developing
these games in a way that makes sense
for PCs to span a whole wide range of
systems and it's really not a super big
problem to have 12 gigabytes at 1440p
which is where I believe the RTX 4070
really shines for the most part you're
at 70 to 150 FPS in the latest AAA
titles but then if you scale it up to 4K
the 4070 can still keep Pace go about 60
FPS which is where a lot of people are
going to have the 4K display at and what
we find here is that because we're not
as CPU bottlenecked which I want to
discuss in a second the 6950 XT actually
goes a little bit higher up to 28
percent faster than the 4070 in some
scenarios and then for the most part
used about 22 percent more vram in the
games
[Music]
thank you
[Music]
and then if we take a look at Ray
tracing in 1440p I tested out five
different games that support Ray tracing
and what we found is that the 4070
actually beats the 6950 XT in a lot of
games when you turn Ray tracing on
thanks to the fact that a lot of these
games have been optimized for nvidia's
RT cores which means that if you're
trying to get the most pretty realistic
looking lighting out of a video game the
4070 is going to be a better option than
the 6950 XT but even though the 4070 was
faster it used between 16 and 40 percent
more vram in a game like Hitman 3. 40
more vram but the 6950 XT was 27 slower
than the 40 70. so you're using more
resources to get less out of it and it's
a very similar scenario in 4k the 4070
still beats the 6950 XT and a lot of the
different games into The Witcher 3 F1
2022 and Jedi Survivor the 6950 XT
finally kept pace but again used a ton
more vrams simply because it was
available and this is one of the reasons
why when you hear reports of an RTX 3070
that got upgraded from 8 gigabytes of
vram to 16 gigabytes of vram the only
game they showed off in that video was
Resident Evil 4 where the average FPS
didn't go up but the 0.1 percent and one
percent lows were actually increased
which means that the game was smoother
and more playable however that is one
game out of a bunch of other examples
and the fact that that's the only one
they tested seems to indicate that there
is not currently a huge bottleneck when
it comes to vram in most games add 12
gigabytes of vram with the 4070 you're
going to be fine I want to drill that
home because most people I think are
getting worked up over the amount at the
resolution and the settings and the
frame rate that you're targeting the
4070 is gonna be fine with 12 gigabytes
of vram game devs might have more to
work with with the latest consoles but
the series s also has to be optimized
for and a bunch of these different games
and that only has eight gigabytes of
shared Ram which means they have to find
a way to actually utilize using less
vram across the entire system which
should apply when they bring it across
to the PC Port it has it because they're
not doing good PC ports lately but I
just want to communicate the 4070 is
good at what it does and if it was
faster it would be more vram but where
it ends up at it doesn't actually need
it but one of the things I didn't talk
about with all of those benchmarks is
the reason why I'm so excited to get rid
of my 6950 XT in this system and that is
because the 4070 number one is smaller
number two is way quieter than the 6950
XT in a scenario like this and number
three draw significantly less power so
on average while gaming this system with
the 5800x 3D and the RTX 4070 Drew
anywhere from 315 to 330 Watts meanwhile
the 6950x Drew between 515 and 530 Watts
which number one in the total cost of
ownership of a device if you're gaming
for three hours a day that's 26 dollars
a year and 12 cents per kilowatt hour
it's 65 a year if you're living in
California with 30 cents per kilowatt
hour or that number increases the more
that you gain but in this instance
you're using 60 plus percent more power
on the 6950 XT to only get between 15
and 20 percent better gaming performance
and that doesn't matter to a whole host
of people but it does matter in
scenarios where you're either thermally
constrained your size constrained or you
just want to make sure that you're
running as efficiently as possible the
fact that Nvidia could give us a car
that can put out these frame rate
numbers while drawing less than 350
Watts from the wall with an entire
system is truly remarkable and makes
something like the fractal Ridge
actually possible because what I found
in my test testing is that the 5800 X 3D
could not possibly be cooled by that
ghost S1 cooler we were thermal
throttling in a lot of scenarios getting
up to 90 to 91 degrees Celsius and
dropping down to 4.1 gigahertz four
gigahertz on the CPU core which means
ideally I need to be running a slightly
slower CPU in this system which actually
gives a way better benefit to something
like the 4070 because the 6950 XT
honestly for this type of system is too
hot too loud and too fast because if we
have to lower the CPU to something that
can actually be cooled by that ghost S1
we are going to be way more CPU
bottlenecked and wasting the potential
of the 6950 XT whereas the 4070 will
slot in very nicely and especially
because the hot spot temperatures on the
6950 XT were northwards of 90 to 95
degrees Celsius at some points we're
dumping a lot more heat into this total
system and making it so that the CPU
Cooler has to work harder to keep that
5800 X 3D cool the 4070 honestly brings
a lot to the table av1 encoding DLS S3 I
didn't test any frame generation because
that's a separate conversation
altogether but the amount of performance
that you get for the size for the power
draw and the opportunities it gives you
to put it into systems like this to make
truly console sized gaming PCs that can
put the actual consoles to shame is
amazing this card is neat it is not for
everybody at 5.99 I would still argue
that it costs too much I would like to
see it drop down by another hundred
dollars to be at 4.99 but I don't think
that you can write it off simply because
the 6950 XT was discounted over a year
past its launch and AMD still refuses to
give us any sort of real competitor for
the 4070 and all they've delivered
within six months is something that is
750 dollars plus I think who we have to
blame for a 599 4070 is NVIDIA India and
ourselves and AMD it's the whole
ecosystem that is working together to
create a card like this which does
deserve to exist ideally at a slightly
lower price point but the 4070 is a very
exciting card I like it and I like our
video sponsored Micro Center for
allowing me to take road trips on over
there to actually be able to get these
cards and the CPUs that I've been able
to pick up on launch day you guys should
check them out at the link in the video
description don't forget that we are
giving away a PC over on our twitch
Channel right now if you want to come
check that out it's this fractal North
build with the RTX 3070 noctua Edition
it's got a 13 600k noctua coolers it's a
gorgeous looking system come watch us
over on Twitch in case you want to
participate in that let me know your
thoughts on the 4070 down below and I'll
see you in the next video