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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(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

The PNY RTX 4070 doesn't try to do anything wild. There's no RGB lighting, no factory overclocks, and not even an option to crank up the power limit for manual overclocking. It's not a card targeted at enthusiasts, in other words, but instead something that OEMs and system integrators might find useful. It will happily chug along at less than 200W, providing good performance.

If you want a flashier RTX 4070 card, or something quieter, there are plenty of options. Depending on the week or month, some of those cards might even cost less than the PNY RTX 4070 Verto Dual. That's fine, and there's room for all types of cards. Some will undoubtedly like the no-frills aesthetic that's on tap.

PNY RTX 4070 card photos and unboxing

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

But if we're being frank ("Hi, I'm Frank..."), we want graphics cards to either beat the Nvidia reference card on price, features, or performance. PNY doesn't do any of those. It's close enough to call performance a tie, but the RTX 4070 Founders Edition will still be a better card for most people.

Unless you hate the superfluous 12VHPWR 16-pin connector and the adapter cable that comes with Nvidia's card. And there are definitely good reasons to dislike it! In a typical case, you end up with a stiff adapter cable that sticks out several inches above the top of the card. Then you have to make the side panel of your case fit on properly, without putting too much strain on the cable.

If you have a high-end ATX 3.0 power supply, maybe it won't matter. But how many people are actually buying high-end PSUs with native 12VHPWR support for a 200W graphics card? We still don't have a good explanation for why Nvidia has pushed so hard on use of the 16-pin connector (or the 12-pin precursor for it's RTX 30-series Founders Editions). It's not like they're provably better, and the melting cable issue still hasn't really ended.

Is that one item a big enough reason to opt for the PNY RTX 4070 over a different model? Perhaps! But if so, know that there are MSI, Asus, Zotac, and Gigabyte models that will also suffice. In fact, it's only the higher-end third-party 4070 cards that have 16-pin connectors, and not even all of those.

PNY has other RTX 4070 options as well, with some RGB lighting if that's what you're after. It's a good GPU, going toe to toe with the previous generation RTX 3080 while cutting the price, increasing features, and improving efficiency. That's not the most exciting description of a new GPU, but you could do far worse.

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
  • 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
  • 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