Does the RTX 5070 Ti stand a chance against the RTX 4080 Super?

The RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 have dominated the spotlight for Nvidia’s 50-series launch, but for gamers unwilling to drop over $1,000 on a GPU, the RTX 5070 Ti stands out as a more appealing option. Positioned as a high-performance midrange option, the latest GPU is said to offer a significant upgrade over the previous generation and is more or less a cut-down version of the RTX 5080.

But how does it stack up against the RTX 4080 Super? Can it offer a better performance package at a lower price point? We break down the key differences to help you decide which one is right for you.

Pricing and availability

The RTX 5070 Ti will be available for purchase starting February 20 and comes with a suggested retail price of $750. Considering the launch pricing and limited availability of the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080, the RTX 5070 Ti will likely see inflated prices at release, with limited stock making it harder to find. At the time of writing, the cheapest RTX 5070 Ti that we could spot was on Best Buy retailing at $900.

Meanwhile, the RTX 4080 Super launched in January 2024 with a starting price of $999. After one whole year of its launch, the GPU is nowhere to be seen with limited stock and prices going upwards of $1,500.

Specifications

The new RTX 5070 Ti sits right under the RTX 4080 Super in terms of specifications. It has 13.3% less CUDA cores, RT cores and Tensor cores. It also comes with slower 2.45GHz boost clock speeds compared to 2.55GHz on the RTX 4080 Super. Notably, the RTX 5070 Ti comes with similar 16GB of VRAM, although it is upgraded to GDDR7, with faster memory speed and wider bandwidth. It also consumes 20W less than the RTX 4080 Super, which is all thanks to the efficiency of Nvidia’s Blackwell architecture.

Granted that the 5070 Ti comes with lesser CUDA, RT and Tensor cores compared to the 4080 Super, but it should make up for that with its faster and wider memory. On top of that, the new RTX-50 series GPUs benefit from DLSS 4 with multi frame generation and improved ray tracing with neural rendering.

Performance

We are currently in the process of testing the RTX 5070 Ti which means we don’t have a comprehensive comparison between the two GPUs. What we can tell you is that gaming performance is marginally slower compared to the RTX 4080 Super and in some cases offers similar framerate. Even in some of the synthetic benchmarks that we ran, both the cards offer similar looking scores.

This doesn’t come as a surprise as the RTX 5080 was only marginally faster than the 4080 Super. With future driver updates we could see a slight improvement in numbers, although that might not translate into a visible difference in terms of real world performance. Another point to consider is that the RTX 5070 Ti is able to deliver almost similar performance as the 4080 Super at a much lower power consumption. It may not be a huge victory, but it is an important one.

Yet another disappointment?

Like the RTX 5080, the new RTX 5070 Ti is not going to offer a huge uplift over its previous generation counterparts. It may be slightly better than the RTX 4070 Ti, but it is going to struggle to keep up with the RTX 4080 Super.

This is quite concerning especially since Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang claimed during the launch of the RTX 50-series that the non-Ti RTX 5070 would match the performance of an RTX 4090. At this moment, it is clear that one should steer away from what Nvidia wants you to believe. On top of that, stocks for the GPU are expected to be limited with prices going way beyond the suggested retail price of $750.

If you currently have an RTX 30-series card or older and are willing to pay close to $1,000, the RTX 5070 Ti should offer really good 1440p performance with improved ray tracing. If you are willing to switch sides, AMD is expected to launch its new Radeon RX 9070 series next month. By the looks of it, the company might just undercut Nvidia with its pricing, provided it offers enough stocks.