• More Affordable

  Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti

  $800 $840 Save $40

  Brand

  Nvidia

  Architecture

  Ada Lovelace

  Process

  4 nm

  Transistors

  35.8 billion

  Shader Units

  7,680

  Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is part of the RTX 40 series of cards based on Ada Lovelace. It's also the most affordable RTX 40 GPU to date, which doesn't mean much with the current state of graphics card pricing.

  Pros & Cons

  • "Better" price
  • Still an excellent 4K GPU

  • Weaker than the RTX 4080
  • Not great value

  $800 at Amazon $800 at Newegg
• Best Performance

  Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080

  Memory Clock Speed

  1,400 MHz

  Brand

  Nvidia

  Architecture

  Ada Lovelace

  Process

  4 nm

  Transistors

  45.9 billion

  Shader Units

  9,728

  Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4080 is an impressive graphics card that's capable of smooth 4K gaming with ray tracing enabled. It's expensive and likely not the best value GPU for your PC build, but it's still an incredible card for gaming.

  Pros & Cons

  • Better performance
  • Impressive 4K gaming

  • More expensive
  • Higher power draw

  $1183 at Amazon $1183 at Newegg $1280 at Best Buy

The GeForce RTX 4080 was introduced as part of the 40 series from Nvidia in 2022, and the company kicked off 2023 with the RTX 4070 Ti, sitting just below it. Offering a slightly more affordable entry point to the RTX 40 series of graphics cards, this guide will be comparing the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti vs. RTX 4080 to see which Ada Lovelace GPU would be the better buy for you.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti vs. RTX 4080: Price, availability, and specs

It's difficult to discuss GPU pricing without having a giggle. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 launched for $1,199, which is a lot of money to pay for a graphics card that isn't even the flagship model. To put this into perspective, its predecessor, the RTX 3080, originally launched for $699. Sure, Nvidia made some serious improvements with the latest Ada Lovelace architecture, but does it warrant an additional $500? The newer Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti launched with an MSRP of $799. That's still more than what the previous gen RTX 3080 launched for. Now, the RTX 4070 Ti is technically the better card over the RTX 3080 and so that may make some sense, but the older RTX cards were substantial upgrades without such a steep price hike. Gamers are struggling to fund PC gaming and new card releases such as this don't help.

Both the RTX 4080 and RTX 4070 Ti aren't great deals at all, which makes recommending either GPU difficult. It's also worth noting that Nvidia will not be releasing its own Founder's Edition of the RTX 4070 Ti, meaning you can expect to pay more than $799 for AIB partner cards. When shopping around for a new GPU, value really should be of no concern, as it doesn't really matter which new graphics card you end up buying, you're likely getting a subpar deal. Even the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX could be viewed as overpriced. For better outright performance, the RTX 4080 is the way to go. If you'd rather not spend too much, the RTX 4070 Ti is your card.

• 	Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti	Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080
  Architecture	Ada Lovelace	Ada Lovelace
  Process	4 nm	4 nm
  Transistors	35.8 billion	45.9 billion
  Ray Accelerators/Cores	60	76
  Stream Processors	60	76
  Base Clock Speed	2,310 MHz	2,205 MHz
  Boost Clock Speed	2,610 MHz	2,505 MHz
  Memory Capacity	12 GB GDDR6X	16 GB GDDR6X
  Memory Bus	192-bit	256-bit
  Memory Bandwidth	504.2 GB/s	716.8 GB/s
  Power Draw	285 W	320 W

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti vs. RTX 4080: Battle of Ada Lovelace

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is actually a relaunch of sorts. Originally announced as a 12GB RTX 4080, the card was met with much-deserved criticism from just about everyone. The company is back with the RTX 4070 Ti, and it's based on the very same platform and architecture as its RTX 4080 sibling. With the RTX 4070 Ti, Nvidia cut down the RAM by 4GB and it's on a slower 192-bit bus, compared to the 256-bit bus with the RTX 4080.

This is a substantial step down and adds to the performance deficit of the RTX 4070 Ti, which is largely what caused all the fuss about it originally being listed as an RTX 4080. To go alongside the reduction in memory bandwidth are fewer CUDA cores, fewer ray tracing cores, and slower clock speeds. But the Ada Lovelace architecture is really efficient and you won't see the RTX 4070 Ti or RTX 4080 hit draws anywhere close to the ridiculous numbers of the RTX 4090.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti vs. RTX 4080: Great gaming performance

The results when using either GPU shouldn't come as a surprise as the 4070 Ti is priced to sit comfortably behind the two AMD Radeon RX 7900 cards. While the RTX 4070 Ti loses out to the AMD RX 7900 XT, it's a considerable downgrade to the RTX 4080. There are fewer ray tracing cores, so you can expect to see an even worse showing for the RTX 4070 Ti compared to the RTX 4080 when ray tracing is enabled in games.

The RTX 4070 Ti doesn't perform terribly, but it's simply no match for the RTX 4080, which costs $400 more. $400 is the price of an RTX 3060 Ti, which is incredible when you consider that's one step up within the RTX 40 series of graphics cards.

Which GPU is best?

This is a difficult one to answer because both GPUs don't offer great value. If you want the best performance, go with the RTX 4080 if you absolutely must buy a 40-series GPU from Nvidia. If you want to save money and get a "better" deal, the RTX 4070 Ti is the choice for you. There's also AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XTX, which may be overpriced but is a far better value proposition than both Nvidia cards here. The GPU landscape looks set to continue offering terrible value for PC gamers in the coming months, and holding out may not provide a golden opportunity to bag a GPU deal.

The RTX 4080 is a better GPU, but that's only in performance metrics. It's still a bad deal for price-to-performance. The selection of Nvidia graphics cards is limited for RTX 40, so we'll have to wait and see how the company will position the lower-end cards. It's a shame as the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 is an incredibly powerful GPU.