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

Reference clocks, slightly less than reference performance

By Jarred Walton
published
PNY RTX 4070 card photos and unboxing
(Image: © Tom's Hardware)

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PNY RTX 4070 4K performance charts
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Wrapping up with the 4K ultra results, as you'd expect, the PNY RTX 4070 starts to struggle. Several of the rasterized games still break 60 fps, but only Spider-Man: Miles Morales breaks 30 fps in our DXR tests.

4K definitely needs help, and if you enable DLSS upscaling, performance improves a lot. We could debate about whether or not AI-based upscaling to 4K counts, but unless you're using a substantially more potent GPU or running lighter games, it's really the only way 4K is viable on GPUs like the 4070.

Overall, the RX 6950 XT now leads the PNY 4070 by 3%, which again doesn't mean a lot. It's still the same split between DXR games favoring Nvidia and rasterization games favoring AMD. And while we haven't said much about some of the other GPUs, skipping 4K and getting a card like the RX 6750 XT certainly makes sense if you're on a budget.

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PNY RTX 4070 4K performance charts
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Native 4K in the rasterized games ranges from 35 fps in A Plague Tale: Requiem to 81 fps in Forza Horizon 5. So all nine of those games are at least playable, even without upscaling. Of the games that don't hit 60 fps, it's also worth mentioning that four of the six games support DLSS, and two others also support Frame Generation.

The DXR games are another matter. Even with DLSS support in all six games, most aren't going to get to 60 fps or more without Performance mode upscaling, and possibly Frame Generation as well. But you could drop to high settings instead of ultra and probably make up the difference.

Jarred Walton
Jarred Walton

Jarred Walton is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on everything GPU. He has been working as a tech journalist since 2004, writing for AnandTech, Maximum PC, and PC Gamer. From the first S3 Virge '3D decelerators' to today's GPUs, Jarred keeps up with all the latest graphics trends and is the one to ask about game performance.

7 Comments Comment from the forums
  • valthuer
    Yet another disappointing card, in a series filled with overpriced mediocrities - 4090 being the only exception.
    Reply
  • atomicWAR
    Great write up. I expected worse performance from the rumors floating around the web that single 8 pin cards were less performant. Yes its average clocks were a hair less at 2738 vs 2745 but that can be down to the silicon lottery at that point. Still not thrilled with the price with the alloted vram but all in all I am pleasantly surprised the card performs as well as it does.
    valthuer said:
    Yet another disappointing card, in a series filled with overpriced mediocrities - 4090 being the only exception.
    Yes and no...price and vram yes but as stated performance is decent compared to the 12vhpwr cards. But your not wrong the 4090 is the only real exception this gen. 60 percent performance for a 6% mark up. Seems fair to me...the rest of the stack not so much.
    Reply
  • valthuer
    atomicWAR said:
    Yes and no...price and vram yes but as stated performance is decent compared to the 12vhpwr cards.
    Unfortunately, decent performance means little to nothing, when it comes down to just 12 GBs of RAM.

    That's just not a decent amount for today's standards.

    Trust me, i've owned a 4070 Ti for approximately 5 months and had the opportunity to run some extensive tests. Bottom line, i expected more.

    At 4K max settings, it gets kicked out of games like Far Cry 6 (released on 2021) and Resident Evil 4 (remake), due to insufficient memory.

    If that's the kind of performance we get from a Ti, i don't expect a 4070 to be any better.

    Also a factor: is it gonna be any good for the games that will be released in these next few months? I don't think so.
    Reply
  • atomicWAR
    valthuer said:
    Unfortunately, decent performance means little to nothing, when it comes down to just 12 GBs of RAM.

    That's just not a decent amount for today's standards.

    Trust me, i've owned a 4070 Ti for approximately 5 months and had the opportunity to run some extensive tests. Bottom line, i expected more.

    At 4K max settings, it gets kicked out of games like Far Cry 6 (released on 2021) and Resident Evil 4 (remake), due to insufficient memory.

    If that's the kind of performance we get from a Ti, i don't expect a 4070 to be any better.

    Also a factor: is it gonna be any good for the games that will be released in these next few months? I don't think so.
    Agreed. Vram needs a boost.
    Reply
  • mrv_co
    I gave up on waiting for a 7700 XT and picked one of these up since it fit nicely in my SFF case without any modification or additional expenditures. It’s a solid step up over my 5700 XT for 1440p gaming. No complaints so far.
    Reply
  • Ricky Zeng
    mrv_co said:
    I gave up on waiting for a 7700 XT and picked one of these up since it fit nicely in my SFF case without any modification or additional expenditures. It’s a solid step up over my 5700 XT for 1440p gaming. No complaints so far.
    I'm in a very similar position. I got a 6600XT after traded-in my RX580 during the peak of pandemic / mining craze. Now waiting for a 7700/7800 as upgrade but the PNY 4070 dual fan version is really tempting, as it's one of very few that fits my A4 SFF case yet delivers good performance gains.

    I reckon tech product (CPU/GPU, or any kind of prime movers) advancement comes in from two aspects: raw power, and efficiency. If we got improvement from both that's real lucky and not happening all the time. But I'm content as long as we got improvement from at least either one. Similar performance as 6800XT with way less power draw and smaller form factor? Count me in.
    Reply
  • Karo96
    valthuer said:
    Unfortunately, decent performance means little to nothing, when it comes down to just 12 GBs of RAM.

    That's just not a decent amount for today's standards.

    Trust me, i've owned a 4070 Ti for approximately 5 months and had the opportunity to run some extensive tests. Bottom line, i expected more.

    At 4K max settings, it gets kicked out of games like Far Cry 6 (released on 2021) and Resident Evil 4 (remake), due to insufficient memory.

    If that's the kind of performance we get from a Ti, i don't expect a 4070 to be any better.

    Also a factor: is it gonna be any good for the games that will be released in these next few months? I don't think so.
    But it's not a 4K card.
    We can agree on that it should offer more Vram for future proofing. And the price is a little to steep. But a card that draws less than 200 Watts on a 1440p system is very welcome.
    Reply