Image: NVIDIA
NVIDIA’s new GPU is the most budget-friendly way to game at 1440p with the 4000-series graphics cards.
After much speculation, NVIDIA has finally announced its upcoming GeForce RTX 4070 desktop GPU, a graphics card best suited for midrange PC builds for users on a budget. It’s pretty much the only way any of us are going to get one of the 4000-series graphics cards without shelling out $1000 for it.
The RTX 4070 launches on April 13 with prices starting from $599, specifically for the Founders Edition single-fan model of the card. This announcement comes after Nvidia ‘unlaunched’ its 12GB RTX 4080 graphics card from its RTX 4000-series lineup, due to it being named too similarly to its other 16GB RTX 4080 card. Confused? That might have been the point.
In layman’s terms, the RTX 4070 pretty much lets you run any modern game with maxed out settings at 1440p, putting the benefits of Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace architecture in the hands of PC gamers at a lower price point. In more technical terms, the RTX 4070 is best compared to the RTX 3070 in performance. While the RTX 3070 HAS 8GB of GDDR6X however, the RTX 4070 has 12GB.
For a lot of gamers out there however, this still won’t be enough VRAM to justify the card’s pricepoint. Modern games running at 1080p and higher resolutions demand more memory, and 12GB only barely cuts it. For example, you might be able to run games like Valorant and Overwatch 2 at 1440p - but you might have a much harder time with Hogwarts Legacy, whose minimum recommended specs ask for 16GB of RAM. Some games eat up more memory than others, after all.
Thankfully, the RTX 4070 also comes with DLSS 3, which uses the same AI from DLSS 2 with an additional AI frame generation technology that boosts framerates. That means you get higher framerates at less performance costs, which could solve the Hogwarts Legacy problem mentioned above. This is due to DLSS 3 essentially allowing users to run games at higher graphical settings without letting performance take a blow.
NVIDIA is also sweetening the deal by including Overwatch 2 Season 4’s battle pass with any purchase made up until May 8 - including other RTX cards like the RTX 4080 and 4090. This bundle includes:
- Season 4 Ultimate Battle Pass Bundle Includes:
- Season 4 Premium Battle Pass
- 2,000 OW2 Coins
- 20 Tier Skips
- Infinite Guard: 76 Legendary Skin
- Infinite Ace D.Va Epic Skin
- Infinite Airwings Weapon Charm
- 1,000 Additional OW2 Coins