Nvidia is introducing three RTX 40-series Super cards this month that offer more performance at similar or better price points than current cards. Pricing for the RTX 40 series has been a sticking point for gamers, especially for the RTX 4080. Nvidia is replacing this GPU with the RTX 4080 Super and lowering the price to $999 when it launches on January 31.
The $200 price cut will put significant pressure on AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 XT ($899) and XTX ($999) cards. Before the RTX 4080 Super launches, there’s also the RTX 4070 Super on January 17 at $599 and the RTX 4070 Ti Super, with some interesting changes, on January 24 at $799. Nvidia is also phasing out the RTX 4070 Ti but is keeping the RTX 4070 at a lower price point of $549.
The RTX 4080 Super comes with the full Nvidia AD103 chip, so it doesn’t get chopped up like the RTX 4080 before it. There are more CUDA cores and faster memory at 736GB/s of bandwidth, it comes with the same 16GB of the G6X and can draw up to 320W of power.
Nvidia is aiming the RTX 4080 Super for existing RTX 3080 Ti or RTX 2080 Super owners, rather than RTX 40 series users. The performance bump on the RTX 4080 should range between one and five percent, depending on the games, so it’s basically RTX 4080-level performance (or better) for $200 less.
The RTX 4070 Ti Super looks like it might be the most interesting card of the three RTX 40-series Super GPUs. Nvidia is upping the memory to 16GB from the G6X, and it’s upgrading to the 256-bit memory bus found on the RTX 4080/4090 cards Instead of the 192-bit bus found on the original RTX 4070 Ti.
Combined with more CUDA cores, this feels like a bigger upgrade than the RTX 4080 Super changes. Although it will remain at $799, you get more memory and performance. Nvidia says you should see about 10 percent better performance with the RTX 4070 Ti Super compared to the original RTX 4070 Ti.
Nvidia didn’t have to sacrifice more power consumption to deliver this improved performance either. The RTX 4070 Ti Super will ship with the same 285W power draw as the original, but there won’t be a Founders Edition of this card.
Nvidia claims the new RTX 4070 Super card will be faster than the RTX 3090 while using less power when drawing up to 220 watts. That’s just 20W more than the original RTX 4070, which was able to deliver similar performance to the RTX 3080 at 1440p. Although it remains on the same 192-bit memory bus and 12GB of G6X memory, Nvidia is increasing the number of CUDA cores to give it a performance boost.
The RTX 4070 Super will ship on January 17 at the same $599 price point as the original, which could make it a more tempting upgrade for existing RTX 3070 or 2070 owners. Nvidia also claims that there will be an approximately 15 percent performance increase from the original RTX 4070 to the RTX 4070 Super.
Both the RTX 4080 Super and RTX 4070 Super will be available on Nvidia’s Founders Edition cards. They look mostly identical to the original releases, but Nvidia chose a slightly darker shade of the alloy frame to make these cards stand out. If you’re not interested in Nvidia’s own Founders Editions, there will be plenty of options from third-party manufacturers like Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, PNY, and many more.