NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Launch – PowerSpec Prebuilt Systems and 4070 Breakdown!

Written by Sean Mekinda

Today marks the arrival of the newest card in NVIDIA's 40 series lineup, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070. The 4070 is positioned to be a killer value proposition, delivering high-quality 1440p gaming at a fraction of the cost of other cards on the market. And we have PowerSpec prebuilt systems packed with the card ready to go!

PowerSpec NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Prebuilts, Available on Launch Day!

PowerSpec, the official house brand of Micro Center since 1992, is thrilled to have NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 prebuilt systems available on launch day! If you want to get your hands on a new GeForce RTX 4070 machine on launch day but don't want to build your own system or wait for a prebuilt to be shipped, we have PowerSpec prebuilts ready and available in store. Pick up yours and start gaming on the latest from NVIDIA without waiting!

We're incredibly excited about the GeForce RTX 4070, so we gave it a home that will make the most of it. The PowerSpec G443 is full of top-of-the-line parts, like the Intel Core i7-13700KF, and packed with enough speed to rival even the fastest of PCs thanks to 32GB of DDR5 RAM and a 2TB NVMe SSD. It's also fully unlocked and fully overclockable, so if you're someone who likes to really get under the hood of your PC, the G443 offers a lot to dig into.

Complete PowerSpec G443 Specs:

• CPU: Intel Core i7-13700KF
• Motherboard: MSI Pro Z690-A DDR5
• Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 with 12GB DDR6X
• RAM: 32GB DDR5-5600
• Storage: 2TB NVMe SSD
• PSU: 750W
• Case: PowerSpec/Lian Li ATX 205 Mesh
• OS: Windows 11 Pro 64-Bit
• What's In the Box: System, power cord, mouse, keyboard

Why are we so excited for the 4070 launch? Read on!

What Makes the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 So Exciting?

We sat down with two of our techs to pick their brains about why exactly the GeForce RTX 4070 is so exciting. They had a lot to say about why you should be looking forward to this card.

Making the High-End more Accessible

"The 4070 takes everything that made the 3080 great and then adds even more features, like DLSS 3."

Both had nothing but glowing things to say about the GeForce RTX 4070's price-to-performance ratio. If you're unfamiliar with the term, the price-to-performance ratio is a great way to understand the value of a card. It looks at a GPU's specs, compares it to other, similar cards, then looks at the pricing. For a good idea of what that looks like, they said that the 4070 is roughly comparable to last generations RTX 3080 10GB. The 4070, with a similar - but more modern - spec line offers close performance, with up to a 40% performance increase over the 3080 when DLSS 3 is enabled. A fantastic price-to-performance ratio!

Plug-And-Play

"We're seeing the highest performance possible out of the box."

While the 4070 Ti has the headroom and power to overclock, if you're looking for a card that you can just slot into your system and make the most of it, the 4070 is your card. Early testing shows that the card pushes its maximum power immediately, with no fine tuning needed to get the most out of it. But if you're worried that this means you're getting less than other cards in the 40 Series, fret not. The 4070 has the exact same feature set as every other card in the lineup. 3rd Gen RT cores, 4th Gen Tensor Cores, HDMI 2.1, everything, just without the hassle of maximizing its efficiency. And speaking of efficiency...

No Need to Overhaul Your Current System

"Coming in under 2lbs and with a standard 8-pin connector, this is a card that can fit into almost any system today."

Some of the higher-end cards may require some overhauls to use. Whether its upgrading to a larger case to fit the behemoth that is the 4090 or swapping out a PSU to power it, you might be looking at some work to get it up and running. Not so with the 4070!

The 4070 is a small card in comparison to its siblings, weighing less than half of a 4090. It's even thinner than the 4070 Ti, meaning there are very very few cases it won't fit in. It'll even work with any PSU that has enough juice to get it running. Which, thankfully, at a TDP of only 200W, is not a lot at all. For the average gaming setup, this is already sounding like an easy swap. But when it comes to small form factor builds, thermals are always a concern.

Well, more good news! The 4070 runs cool, even at max load. Our testing saw the 4070 only reach temps of 67°C in our test bench (Ambient room temp of 73°F, built in a Lian Li ATX 205 Mesh case, using the MSI RTX 4070 Ventus 3X 12G OC) with even the GPU die hot spot only reaching temps of 82.34°C. That's a well-cooled card that'll run without thermal throttling in any SFF build with solid airflow.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Specs:

• RAM: 12GB GDDR6X
• CUDA Cores: 5888
• PCIe support: 4.0
• Architecture: Ada Lovelace
• Boost Clock Speed: 2.48GHz
• Ray Tracing Cores: 3rd Generation
• Tensor Cores: 4th Generation
• Max Display Resolution: 4K at 240Hz or 8K at 60Hz with DSC

What's new with the NVIDIA 40 Series?

If you've missed the past few launch breakdowns, you may be wondering what exactly is new with NVIDIA's 40 Series graphics cards and the answer is, in short, a lot. From a brand-new architecture to advancements in video upscaling, there's a ton to cover.

NIVIDIA Ada Lovelace Architecture

The brand-new Ada Lovelace architecture brings with it improvements on basically every front. NVIDIA Tensor Cores are crucial for a range of AI technologies, but most recognizably enable NVIDIA's DLSS (see below for more on DLSS!). The Ada Lovelace architecture introduces the fourth generation of Tensor Cores which offer up to 5x the throughput of previous generations and make DLSS 3 the frame-multiplying powerhouse it is. Without Tensor Cores, you might still be running Cyberpunk 2077 at 22FPS - well under what's considered playable!

Also new to Ada Lovelace is third-gen RT, or ray tracing, Cores. These updated RT Cores represent another giant leap forward for ray tracing, doubling the efficiency of many ray tracing tasks, including ray-triangle inspection throughput. There's also a new Opacity Micromap Engine and Diplaced Micro-Mesh engine - both of which are huge for ray tracing - but really boil down to improved lighting effect in games. All of this is in service of making it look natural when sun shines through tree leaves in Cyberpunk's Night City and accurately catching light reflections in Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

Whether you're a streamer or someone who just spends a lot of time on video calls, the new AV1 encoders included in Ada Lovelace architecture will greatly increase your video quality. NVIDIA reports a 40% increase in efficiency over H.264, meaning if you regularly stream at 1080p, you'll be able to bump up to 1440p without sacrificing bit rate or quality.

DLSS 3

DLSS, or Deep Learning Super Sampling, is an AI upscaling program. It takes lower resolution frames, analyzes them, and upscales them to native-quality levels, reducing the strain on your GPU. What that means for you is that games that ran at 1080p without DLSS will see increased FPS at higher settings when DLSS is enabled. You might even be able to push the game to higher resolutions with a minimal hit to your frame rate. And all this is done without putting extra strain on your GPU, as it is all done. DLSS 3 takes this even further with the introduction of AI Frame Generation.

NVIDIA's AI Frame Generation technology - officially called Optical Multi Frame Generation - is the next step in what made the original DLSS so powerful. While the first DLSS analyzed frames and added pixels in order to upscale the images to the best fidelity it could, DLSS 3's Frame Generation technology does exactly what it says: it makes brand new frames. This allows for smoother, more seamless gameplay without the need for the absolute top-of-the-line graphics card.

And more!

While the new Ada Lovelace architecture and DLSS 3 will be useful for basically anyone looking to pick up a 40 Series GPU, there are a ton of other features that have a bit more niche use.

• NVIDIA Reflex - NVIDIA Reflex improves response times and reduces latency to give competitive gamers even more of an edge over their competition.
• NVIDIA Studio - NVIDIA Studio is a platform designed for creative users to make the most out of their applications, whether it's 3D animation, video editing, photography, graphic design, architecture, or broadcasting.
• NVIDIA Broadcast - Get your stream or video calls looking and sounding the best they can with a range of helpful, AI-powered tools like echo removal and virtual background.
• NVIDIA Omniverse - Upgrade your 3D workflow with Omniverse, allowing you to create by yourself or work with cloud-based collaborators.
• NVIDIA Canvas - Canvas takes simple brushstrokes and, using AI, turns them into realistic images.

Benchmarks coming soon!

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