PNY RTX 4070 Review: Single 8-Pin, No 16-Pin 12VHPWR

We showed benchmarks of the PNY GeForce RTX 4070 Verto Dual in our initial Nvidia RTX 4070 Founders Edition launch review. Then a bunch of other stuff came along, like the RTX 4060 Ti and RX 7600 launches, but now we're getting around to various third-party reviews. These are some of the best graphics cards, for gaming and other purposes, and the RTX 4070 looks to hit the sweet spot in terms of specs and pricing.

At its core, the RTX 4070 performs a lot like the previous generation RTX 3080, despite having 2GB more VRAM but a much narrower 192-bit memory interface. That's thanks to the Nvidia Ada Lovelace architecture, and specifically the inclusion of up to 8MB of L2 cache per 32-bit chunk of memory interface. The additional memory can help in a few instances, but higher resolutions also tend to prefer the increased raw bandwidth of the 3080's 320-bit interface.

Let's start with the usual specs table before getting into the specifics of the PNY card.

The above specs table shows the ten GPUs we'll be using for this review. The PNY RTX 4070 Verto Dual and Nvidia RTX 4070 Founders Edition have identical specs, since both use the reference clocks. There's not much more we can add.

The RTX 4070 lands at a $599.99 MSRP, and there are even cards periodically available for less than that — like right now, you can pick up the RTX 4070 from Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, or Zotac with a $50 instant rebate using code "ZIPDADS" (for Fathers' Day, if that wasn't obvious). PNY's card unfortunately isn't part of that deal. It's also "while funds last," so you may or may not be able to take advantage of that offer.

That sort of deal does speak volumes about graphics card sales in general. The past several Black Fridays and Prime Days, for example, had very few if any noteworthy GPU deals, but that's a straight $50 discount from Newegg on a graphics card that released less than two months ago. It's a safe bet that Nvidia could also drop the prices on all of its GPUs $50 or so without incurring too much pain.

Short-term sales aside, we can't help but feel the RTX 4070 should be selling for a lot less than its MSRP. It's faster than the previous generation RTX 3070, but it also comes with a substantially smaller die size. 294.5 mm^2 on TSMC 4N compared to 392.5 mm^2 on Samsung 8N likely means the AD104 chips do cost more, but Nvidia should still get about 190 chips per wafer. Even at $19,000 per 4N wafer, that's only $100 per chip (and Nvidia probably pays less than that due to the number of wafers it orders).

PNY GeForce RTX 4070 Verto Dual

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PNY uses a nondescript box for its base model RTX 4070. That's fine, as most people are far more interested in the performance and graphics card than in the packaging. Inside the box sits the card in an anti-static bag... and that's pretty much it.

There's no support stand here, which, considering the card weighs 687g, shouldn't be a problem. The card's dimensions are 247x120x40 mm. Nvidia's RTX 4070 Founders Edition by way of comparison measures 244x111x40, so it's just a touch shorter in both length and height, though it's quite a bit heavier at 1021g.

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PNY uses a dual-fan configuration, as implied by the model name. Each fan is 85mm in diameter, so smaller than some cards. More importantly, there's no integrated rim to improve static pressure and airflow. That gives Nvidia's reference card a double advantage: Its 91mm fans have more area, and they include a rim around the outside diameter.

The radiator also carries this same approach of not going hog-wild on cooling capacity. There are plenty of heatsink fins, but only three heatpipes running through them. The RTX 4070 only has a 200W TGP (Total Graphics Power), so the cooling should be sufficient, but as we'll see later, this modest setup ultimately results in higher fan speeds and noise levels.

As with most recent Nvidia GPUs, you get three DisplayPort 1.4a outputs and a single HDMI 2.1 port. With DSC (Display Stream Compression), you can get "visually lossless" 4K at 240Hz. Some might quibble about how good the image truly looks, but having tested it, we don't have any complaints — and most of the time, at 4K you won't be pushing framerates anywhere near the 240 Hz maximum refresh rate.