MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Gaming X TRIO review - Introduction

MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Gaming X TRIO 12G 

MSI has stepped up with their Gaming TRIO GeForce RTX 4070 Ti. It is factory-tweaked (slightly) but looks great. It comes with whisper-quiet cooling, and is quite impressive in all respects. MSI's GAMING TRIO RTX edition retails for an expected $849~899 and is fitted with MSI's TRI FROZR 3 thermal solution. Join us as we review the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti 12GB. Yeah no surprises here, that would be the product that was 4080 12GB that NVIDIA got cancelled en renamed into the 4070 series. The new graphics card provides greater performance at all fronts, more extensive raytracing features, and DLSS 3.0 thanks to upgraded Tensor cores.

While we all had a reasonably dull year in terms of technology, 2022 is loaded with new releases. Among them were NVIDIA's ADA GPU architecture graphics cards for the consumer market. The company has unveiled its new GPU design for next-generation gaming PCs. In the short term, two or three variants of GPUs are expected in the first launch wave, each one will outperform the Ampere 3000 series somehow. NVIDIA's RTX 4000 GPUs will provide impressive performance, but next-gen graphics cards may have to contend with alternatives like AMD's rDNA3 and Intel's Arc Alchemist. Where GeForce RTX 4090 is Nvidia's flagship model in the new series, the GeForce RTX 4080 16GB took a step down. We're now in the first days of 2023 and NVIDIA released its 4070 Ti.  The AD104 GPU powers the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti's 7,680 shader cores, which can generate an impressive 40 FP32 Shader-TFLOPS for rendering rasterized graphics, 240 Fourth Generation Tensor Cores, which can generate 641 Tensor-TFLOPS (with Sparsity) for AI processing and DLSS, 60 Third Generation Ada RT Cores, which can generate 93 RT-TFLOPS for driving next-generation ray-tracing The GeForce RTX 4070 Ti, like the rest of the GPUs in Nvidia's RTX 40 Series, features Ada technologies like Shader Execution Reordering (SER), the new RT core engines, and DLSS 3. The RTX 4070 Ti is the best graphics card for high-end gaming and content creation. Enjoy advanced RTX accelerations in the most popular creative software, premium NVIDIA Studio drivers designed for optimum stability, and a set of unique tools that tap into RTX's potential to facilitate AI-assisted creative workflows. First things first, NVIDIA is not launching a reference design (founder edition) ergo, only the board partners will release this card. The GeForce 4070  Ti thus. Initially, NVIDIA wanted to release two distinct GeForce RTX 4080 versions. A GeForce RTX 4080 12GB with GDDR6X RAM. Nvidia however first announced a 16GB model of the RTX 4080. Due to market reception and confusion, NVIDIA removed that 12GB version from its deck of cards (which is now the 4070 (Ti)). The reference boost frequency is 2.610 GHz. This card has a 192-bit memory bus, 12Gb at 21 Gbps and a relatively okay tgp (total graphics power) of 285W.

Today's review will examine NVIDIA's 4070 Ti, not a reference model, but the MSI Gaming X TRIO  version, MSI's second-best series. MSI designed the card to be semi-passive; once the GPU warms up, the three fans start spinning and cooling. The card has been strengthened and fitted with a stand to prevent it from sagging. The GAMING TRIO is also available in a non-X variant with a lower factory overclock but otherwise equal specifications. MSI's SUPRIM and SUPRIM X models, which sit above the GAMING X TRIO, feature high factory overclocks and custom enthusiast builds. It employs the latest 12 GB of GDDR6X graphics RAM and a shader count of 7680. The card is sturdy, there are two BIOS modes, one optimised for gaming and the other for silent performance. The performance is identical to within 1% regardless of the BIOS settings used, although there are small temperature and noise tradeoffs. This card's 2745 MHz clock speed (boost) is a little average for a factory tweak. When we tweak it, we breach speeds of roughly 2.9-3.0 GHz. The memory can reach speeds of about 22~23 Gbps.  With these numbers and other high-end parts in mind, please use this graphics card with at least a ~700 Watt PSU. This newborn is big. It weighs close to 2kg and is 336 x 140 x 71mm. But, hey, make your own decision and let us start this review, shall we?