Should you buy the RTX 4070 or wait for the RTX 4070 Super?

Nvidia’s RTX 4070 is one of the best graphics cards you can buy, and it’s quickly dropping in price at the start of 2024. You might be tempted to pick one up, but Nvidia’s RTX 4070 Super, set to hit the shelves on January 17, makes that choice trickier.  Is it worth it to wait?

According to the official specifications for the RTX 4070 Super, as well as Nvidia’s performance claims, the card might be well worth the wait. Here’s everything we know about it.

Pricing and availability

Let’s get the RTX 4070 out of the way. The card launched early last year for a list price of $600, and it’s still widely available at retailers for that price. Later on in the year, Nvidia dropped the price to $550 in response to AMD’s RX 7800 XT. You can find models in stock at $550 still, and sometimes even for less.

Those sales are what make the RTX 4070 so attractive right now. At the time of writing, for example, there’s this

, and over the holiday shopping season, I found models as low as $515.

Nvidia officially announced the RTX 4070 Super during its keynote at CES on January 8, following months of rumors about the RTX 40-series refresh. The RTX 4070 Super is set to launch on January 17, and it will retain the same $600 list price that previously belonged to the RTX 4070.

Following the announcement about the new GPUs, Nvidia’s officially cutting the price of the RTX 4070 down to $550, so some savings are guaranteed.

Specs

Although the RTX 4070 and RTX 4070 Super share a name, the Super model has a big spec boost. Starting with what’s the same, the RTX 4070 Super delivers the same 12GB of GDDR6X memory we see on the base model and the same bus width.

The big change comes in the number of CUDA cores. The RTX 4070 has 5,888 CUDA cores, while the RTX 4070 Super bumps up to 7,168 CUDA cores. That’s almost as many as the RTX 4070 Ti and nearly a 22% increase over the base RTX 4070. The power consumption has been tweaked to reach 220 watts — a minor increase over the card’s predecessor.

The card’s boost clock remains unchanged, maxing out at 2,475MHz, as does the 21Gbps bandwidth. While not everything has changed, the changes we’re getting are enough to push the RTX 4070 into a whole new league of graphics cards. In fact, with the updated specs, the RTX 4070 Super is really not far off from being a replacement for the non-super RTX 4070 Ti.

Performance

We don’t know much about the performance of the RTX 4070 Super beyond our own estimates and Nvidia’s promises, but we can make some guesses by looking at the RTX 4070 Ti. At 1440p, the RTX 4070 Ti is about 18% faster than the RTX 4070, and it comes with 30% more CUDA cores. That provides a good basis for understanding how the CUDA cores scale with real-world performance.

As mentioned, the RTX 4070 Super comes with 22% more CUDA cores than the RTX 4070. Given that, I suspect the performance jump will be in the range of 10% to 15%, with most games landing closer to that 10% mark. Seeing as Nvidia is launching the RTX 4070 Super with the same $600 price tag, it’s hard to argue with that performance jump.

Nvidia’s claims are in line with what the specs are telling us. According to Nvidia, the RTX 4070 Super will be around 15% faster than the base RTX 4070 on average and just around 5% slower than the RTX 4070 Ti — and that’s while being $200 cheaper than the base RTX 4070 Ti. Nvidia also says that the RTX 4070 Super is faster than the RTX 3090, and that’s a GPU that launched with a $1,500 list price.

I can’t say anything conclusively about performance right now, however. Core counts only tell us so much, so we’ll have to wait until the card is released to see how it stacks up in a head-to-head battle.

Should you wait?

Nvidia’s RTX 4070 Super brings an increase in performance at the same recommended list price as the RTX 4070. The price of the older model is expected to drop, though, with some cards already falling down to the $515 range. Does that mean the RTX 4070 Super isn’t worth the wait?

If you’re sold on the RTX 4070 and spot a good deal on one — particularly a card around $500 — there isn’t much sense in waiting. If you haven’t found a deal, however, you’re most likely better off waiting for the RTX 4070 Super to come out on January 17. It’s rare to score a GPU of that caliber at the same price as its predecessor.

Nvidia’s RTX 4070 Super isn’t going to replace the base model. While the RTX 4080 Super and the RTX 4070 Ti Super are both set to replace their counterparts, the RTX 4070 will coexist alongside its Super counterpart.

The big reason to wait for the RTX 4070 Super is if you already have $600 set aside to buy a GPU. For an extra $50 you get up to 15% faster performance and a card that’s better than the $1,500 RTX 3090. It’s not a long wait, so if you’re in no rush, go for the RTX 4070 Super.

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