Hardware company Nvidia has unveiled its latest PC graphics cards, showing off a mid-cycle update to the existing generation of GPUs focused on ray tracing and artificial intelligence enhancements.
Three new graphics cards were announced today at the 2024 CES technology conference in Las Vegas, all bearing the “SUPER” moniker that Nvidia has used many times before.
They are Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER, 4070 Ti SUPER and 4070 SUPER.
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If you’re wondering how to fit it into an existing scope, this is how it changes now:
- The high-end card is still the $1,599 RTX 4090.
- The RTX 4080 SUPER is priced at $999, which is $200 cheaper than the previous 4080. The original 4080 will be discontinued.
- The RTX 4070 Ti SUPER is aimed at 1440p gaming, but may have at least a bit of a 4K advantage. Price is $799. The existing 4070 with the same MSRP will be discontinued.
- The RTX 4070 SUPER retails for $599 and continues to target 1440p.
- The RTX 4070 vanilla is still on the market, but the price has been slashed by $50, to $549.
- The entry levels for getting RTX features on more basic cards remain unchanged, with the $299 RTX 4060 and $399 RTX 4060 Ti.
The original 40-series cards were widely criticized for their value – the increase in price compared to the previous generation didn’t quite match the increase in performance. Nvidia is determined to address these criticisms with its SUPER cards – mostly by increasing performance while keeping the price the same, but in one case also retaining a price cut.
However, Nvidia admits that these cards aren’t really a popular upgrade for those who already own a 40-series RTX GPU. Instead, these cards are intended to be the new gold standard for Series 20 or 30 card upgrades, replacing generations of cards that debuted in 2020 and 2018 respectively.
Nvidia’s internal comparisons confirm much of this intent. For example, compare the 4080 SUPER to the 3080 Ti and you’ll see a significant jump: three times more Tensor Cores, significantly more memory, less power consumption, and more. These types of comparisons continue throughout the range – 4070 Ti SUPER vs. 3070 Ti, and 4070 SUPER vs. regular 3070.
In gaming, at least according to Nvidia’s own metrics, there’s a significant uptick with and without Nvidia’s RTX “frame generation” technology.
For frame generation, taking “Alan Killer 2” as an example, with DLSS and ray tracing enabled, it barely reached 30 fps at 1440p and maximum settings on the RTX 3070 Ti. On the 4070 Ti SUPER, Nvidia has over 80fps frame rates. Using the same settings, Cyberpunk 2077’s frame rate jumped from just under 40 fps to 90 fps.
A similar jump would occur without frame generation technology – The Last of Us Part 1’s frame rate jumped from around 75 fps to around 100 fps on the 4070 Ti. These numbers come directly from Nvidia, and we recommend waiting for the media to test the card more extensively before taking these numbers as absolute numbers. But if this improvement does come at the same price and with lower power consumption, it would at least be a small salvation for Nvidia, which has left consumers in the cold with its current few 40-series GPUs.
The new cards will be released next month in reverse power order. The 4070 SUPER will be available on January 17th, followed by the 4070 Ti SUPER on January 24th, and finally the 4080 SUPER on January 31st. For those who don’t want to wait for a review, pre-orders will begin soon.
