Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
Our new test PC uses an Nvidia PCAT v2 device, and we've switched from the Powenetics hardware and software we've previously used to PCAT, as it gives us far more data without the need to run separate tests. PCAT with FrameView allows us to capture power, temperature, and GPU clocks from our full gaming suite. The charts below are the geometric mean across all 15 games, though we also have full tables showing the individual results further down the page.
If you're wondering: No, PCAT does not favor Nvidia GPUs in any measurable way. We checked power with our previous setup for the same workload and compared that with the PCAT, and any differences were well within the margin of error (less than 1%). PCAT is external hardware that simply monitors the power draw of the PCIe power cables as well as the PCIe x16 slot by sitting between the PSU/motherboard and the graphics card.
We have separate charts for 1080p medium/ultra, 1440p ultra, and 4K ultra in the galleries below. Keep in mind that factory overclocked cards will also perform differently, so the data here is for the Founders Edition. We suspect some third party cards will perform worse than the 4070 Super FE, even if their paper specs look better, but there will also be cars that perform better than the reference design.
One of the most impressive things about Nvidia's Ada Lovelace architecture is just how efficient all of the GPUs are — and conversely, how much more inefficient the competition is. The RTX 4070 Super averaged 183W of power use at 1080p medium, 199W at 1080p ultra, 210W at 1440p, and 216W at 4K. It's 90–100 watts less power than the competing RX 7900 XTX at every resolution. In fact, the 4070 Super also uses less power than the significantly slower RX 7700 XT at every tested setting.
Calculating performance per watt, the RTX 4070 Super is one of the most efficient GPUs currently available — only the significantly more expensive RTX 4080 delivered slightly better performance per watt. It's also about 40–50 percent more efficient than AMD's RDNA 3 GPUs.
Officially, Nvidia and AMD are both pretty conservative in their advertised boost clocks these days. The 4070 Super has a 2475 MHz boost clock, but it often runs about 200 MHz higher than that. The heavier the load, of course, the lower the clocks.
At 1080p medium, average clocks across our test suite are 2761 MHz, nearly 300 MHz higher than the listed boost clock. 1080p ultra is only slightly lower at 2742 MHz, 1440p averages 2718 MHz, and 4K drops to 2679 MHz. Other GPUs also exceed their boost clocks, but note that the 4070 Ti averages 200–235 MHz higher, which is why in our testing we often find the 4070 Super closer to the 4070 Ti than the raw specs would otherwise suggest.
GPU temperatures have become far more 'sane' with recent generations. Gone are the days of 90C GPU temperatures, and we don't miss them. As such, that means temperatures are tightly coupled with the fan speed and cooler. Put on a massive cooler and you can hit lower temps with less noise. The 4070 Super Founders Edition isn't a particularly large card, and it ran slightly warmer than some of the other options because of that.
It's not a bad card, though, as far as cooling goes. Throughout our full test suite, average GPU temperature was below 70C in every game. We do have a well-ventilated setup, but in general we don't expect the 4070 Super Founders Edition to get too toasty — though that's less true if you happen to stuff it into a cramped mini-ITX build.
Nvidia RTX 4070 Super Noise Levels
Our noise test consists of running Metro Exodus, because it's one of the more power hungry games. We load a save, with graphics set to appropriately strenuous levels (1080p ultra in this case), and then let the game sit for at least 15 minutes before checking noise levels. We place the SPL (sound pressure level) meter 10cm from the card, with the mic aimed at the center of the back fan. This helps minimize the impact of other noise sources, like the fans on the CPU cooler. The noise floor of our test environment and equipment is around 31–32 dB(A).
Noise levels are mostly what you'd expect from the design, which is basically the same as the 4070 FE and 4060 Ti FE. With a higher TGP, the 4070 Super runs the fans a bit louder. We measured 41.3 dB(A) under load in our noise test, with a fan speed of 39%. That's a bit interesting as it suggests the maximum fan speed has been increased quite a bit compared to the 4070 Founders Edition.
Setting a static fan speed of 75% confirms the difference in fan curves, as it resulted in 57.6 dB(A). That's significantly louder than the ~48 dB(A) that the 4060 Ti FE and 4070 FE hit with the same setting. Obviously, with the higher power limit, Nvidia tweaked things to allow the fans to provide more airflow if necessary, though in our normal gaming tests that doesn't appear to be required.
- MORE: Best Graphics Cards
- MORE: GPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy
- MORE: All Graphics Content
