By Brady Betzel

After reviewing the Nvidia RTX 4090 Founders Edition and the Asus TUF Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti, some readers were left wanting a much cheaper alternative. If you found the $799 price tag for the 4070 Ti a little pricey, then the Nvidia RTX 4070 Founders Edition, at the price of $599, just might be for you.

On the surface, Nvidia is selling the 4070 Founders Edition as a 1440p GPU at 100+fps with raytracing, DLSS 3 and AI-powered content creation. But for editors, colorists and graphics artists, the Nvidia 4070 Founders Edition may hit the sweet spot between form and function.

For Comparison

– RTX 4090 – CUDA cores: 16,384, Memory: 24GB ($1,599)

– RTX 4080 – CUDA cores: 9,728, Memory: 16GB ($1,199)

– RTX 4070 Ti – CUDA cores: 7,680, Memory: 12GB ($799)

– RTX 4070 – CUDA cores: 5,888, Memory: 12GB ($599)

Tech Specs

Nvidia CUDA cores: 5,888

Boost clock (GHz): 2.475GHz

Base cock (GHz): 1.92GHz

Memory size: 12GB

Memory type: GDDR6X

Memory interface width: 192-bit

Power connectors: 2x PCIe 8-pin cables (adapter in box) or a 300W or greater PCIe Gen 5 cable. (Certain manufacturer models may use one PCIe 8-pin power cable.)

If you are building a new Windows-based computer system, you will need a minimum power supply of 650 watts. The 4070 has three DisplayPort outputs and one HDMI port. The PCIe card itself is much smaller than the 4090 and 4070 Ti but still takes up two PCI slots.

Testing
The Nvidia 4070 Founders Edition is promoted as the most logical upgrade to users who own the RTX 3070 Ti. It’s the same retail price but with upgraded Ada Lovelace AD104 architecture. There are many more technical upgrades, but most importantly, an AV1 encoder, 12GB GDDR6X memory (versus 8GB), 36MB L2 memory subsystem (versus 4MB L2) and, finally, lower overall power consumption. The average video playback power is 16W (versus 20W).

In addition to the upgraded third-gen raytracing cores and DLSS 3, improved AI-powered workflows are what’s keeping me an Nvidia fan. It seems that every day there is some new AI-powered workflow that can embrace the power of the Nvidia 40 Series GPUs, from Magic Mask in Blackmagic Resolve to ChatGPT to Stable Diffusion. I am not doom and gloom about AI, thinking that everyone will be out of a job because of it. I do think that embracing the fluidity and time-saving functions of AI is where the power users will soar.

Resolve
First up, testing inside of Resolve 18.1.2 where I take clips from different cameras and do a basic color correction in a 3840×2160 timeline. I use these same sequences and effects in a lot of reviews. The clips include:

• • ARRI RAW: 3840×2160 24fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
  • ARRI RAW: 4448×1856 24fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
  • BMD RAW: 6144×3456 24fps – 15 seconds
  • Red RAW: 6144×3072 23.976fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
  • Red RAW: 6144×3160 23.976fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
  • Sony a7siii: 3840×2160 23.976fps – 15 seconds

I then add Blackmagic’s noise reduction, sharpening and grain. Finally, I replace the noise reduction with Neat Video’s noise reduction. From there I export multiple versions: DNxHR 444 10-bit OP1a .MXF file, DNxHR 444 10-bit .mov, H.264 MP4, H.265 MP4, AV1 MP4 (Nvidia GPUs only), and then an IMF package using the default settings.

Comparing the results between this Nvidia RTX 4070 Founders Edition and the Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti in Resolve is very interesting. Only color-corrected clips export about 30% faster on the 4070 Founders Edition. Once we add built-in Resolve noise reduction, sharpening and grain, the 4070 Ti wins out with a slight 10%-14% speed advantage.

Finally, the most interesting comparison is that in using a third-party OFX plugin like Neat Video, the 4070 and 4070 Ti are essentially tied. I spoke with Neat Video a while ago via email, and they were very excited about the big increase in L2 memory and what speed increases the added bandwidth allows for… and they weren’t wrong. It’s an exciting result to see for colorists and online editors who may not want to invest in a 4090 but still want speed when rendering and exporting clips with Neat Video applied.

Speaking of the Nvidia RTX 4090 Founders Edition, here are the results for the same tests in Resolve for comparison:

In Adobe Premiere Pro, I use the same sequences that I exported in Resolve but with Premiere built-in noise reduction, sharpening and grain. (I don’t have an Adobe Premiere Pro Neat Video license.)

Here are the results from Premiere:

And for comparison, here are the results from the Nvidia RTX 4090:

Premiere is not very consistent in its export times, so I performed these exports a few times with each GPU to get a general sense of where the times should be. Unfortunately, each export was different by a minute or two sometimes. Either way, for the most part the Nvidia RTX 4070 was right around where it should be in comparison to the 4090 — about half with only color correction and various quicker timings when I added noise reduction, sharpening and grain.

Benchmarks
Blender Benchmark CPU samples per minute:

1. Monster: 185.098690
2. Junkshop: 128.839125
3. Classroom: 88.104209

Blender Benchmark GPU samples per minute:

1. Monster: 3138.191595
2. Junkshop: 1534.448876
3. Classroom: 1540.772698

Neat Video HD: GPU Only 64.5 frames/sec

Neat Video UHD: GPU Only 15.8 frames/sec

OctaneBench 2020.1.5: Total score – 653.37

PugetBench for Premiere 0.95.6, Premiere 23.3.0:

• Extended overall score: 913
• Standard overall score: 983
• Extended export score: 89.6
• Extended live playback score: 100.8
• Standard export score: 89.7
• Standard live playback score: 121.8
• Effects score: 83.5
• GPU score: 86.8

***Note: PugetBench for Resolve and After Effects errored out during testing.

Stable Diffusion using the Automatic1111 web UI:

Test Configuration
Stable Diffusion CheckPoint: v2-1_768-ema-pruned.ckpt

Sampling method: Euler_a

Sampling steps: 50

Batch count: 10

Batch size: 2

Image width: 768

Image height: 768

Prompt: beautiful render of a Tudor-style house near the water at sunset, fantasy forest. photorealistic,cinematic composition, cinematic high detail, ultra-realistic, cinematic lighting, depth of field, hyper-detailed, beautifully color-coded, 8K, many details, chiaroscuro lighting, ++dreamlike, vignette

Total: 20 images per minute

V-Ray – CPU: 19885 vsamples

V-Ray – GPU RTX: 2546 vrays

V-Ray – GPU CUDA: 1872 vpaths

Summing Up
The $599 price tag for the Nvidia RTX 4070 Founders Edition GPU is right on point. The 4070 is a good replacement for the RTX 3070 Series GPUs with added bells and whistles. Will it knock your socks off like the 4090 does? Not really, but in some of my testing, the results weren’t far off. And if you want a little bump in speed, the Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti might be the happy medium at $799.

Physically, the 4070 is about one-third the size of the 4090 and only requires two PCIe 8-pin cables instead of four like the 4090 does. And if you are worried about your carbon footprint, the 4070 is much less of a draw than the 4090. The 4070 would be a great assistant station GPU, where you could offload renders or exports that you don’t necessarily need in a hurry.

Brady Betzel is an Emmy-nominated online editor at Margarita Mix in Hollywood, working on shows like Life Below Zero and Uninterrupted: The Shop . He is also a member of the Producers Guild of America. You can email Brady at bradybetzel@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @allbetzroff.