The GeForce RTX 4070 and 4080 form the backbone of NVIDIA’s Ada Lovelace family. However, both GPUs cost substantially higher than their predecessors despite offering lukewarm generation uplifts. In this post, the RTX 4080 and 4070 will clash in the battle of the best 1440p and 4K GPUs. The benchmarks will include rasterized and ray-traced games with ten tests per segment.
| GPU | NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti | NVIDIA RTX 4080 | NVIDIA RTX 4070 |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPU Die | AD104 | AD103 | AD104 |
| SMs | 60 | 76 | 46 |
| CUDA cores | 7,680 | 9,728 | 5,888 |
| RT Cores | 60 | 76 | 46 |
| Tensor Cores | 240 | 304 | 184 |
| Base clock | 2,310 MHz | 2,205 MHz | 1,920 MHz |
| Boost clock | 2,610 MHz | 2,508 MHz | 2,475 MHz |
| Memory | 12GB GDDR6X | 16GB GDDR6X | 12GB GDDR6X |
| TBP | 285W | 320W | 200W |
| L2 Cache | 48MB | 64MB | 36MB |
| MSRP | $799 | $1199 | $599 |
Test Bench
- CPU: Intel Core i9-13900K.
- Mobo: ASUS ROG Z790 Maximus Hero.
- Memory: 16GB x2 @ 6000MT/s CL38.
- PSU: Corsair HX1000i.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 vs. 4080: 1440p Gaming Benchmarks
A Plague Tale: Requiem scales well across all GPUs. The RTX 4080 is 35-40% faster than the RTX 4070 at 1440p Ultra, while Assassins’ Creed Valhalla maintains a lead of ~40% over the RTX 4080. Dying Light 2 runs substantially faster on the RTX 4080 with a massive 80% advantage over the 4070.
The frame times are uniform across both GPUs, with minor spikes here and there. “A Plague Tale: Requiem” does run into micro-stutters at times, but AC: Valhalla maintains a clean graph.
Dying Light 2 also runs smoothly, with many inter-scene spikes in between. Interestingly, the RTX 4070 is just as smooth as its elder sibling in this test. The CPU seems to be the limiting factor here.
Ghostwire Tokyo is 45% faster on the GeForce RTX 4080 with much closer lows, while Hitman 3 only sees a delta of 25% between the two SKUs. The frame times are also very similar across the two tests.
Hogwarts Legacy consumes quite a bit of memory and tends to stutter and crash on 8GB cards. The GeForce RTX 4080 is 28% faster than the 4070 in Hogsmeade, with a significant deficit between the lows. The frame times, once again, are of the same wavelength.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is heavily CPU bound at 1080p but works the GPUs enough at 1440p. We see a gain of 44% upon going from the RTX 4070 to the 4080 at the “Highest Quality” graphics preset. Barring a few inter-scene transitions, the frame times are incredibly uniform throughout.
The Callisto Protocol is a recent title with a troubled release. Regardless, both GPUs average 100 FPS or higher at 1440p Ultra. The RTX 4080 holds a 40% advantage over the 4070 in this case. The frame times indicate a smoother experience on the 4080 in the first half of the benchmark.
Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands runs substantially better on the RTX 4080, keeping the RTX 4070 at bay with a massive lead of 60%. The frame times are comparable with a delta of 4-5ms between the two GPUs. Some minor spikes can be seen throughout the test but didn’t affect the gameplay meaningfully.
4K Gaming Benchmarks on the next benchmark…
