RTX 3070 Ti review: Nvidia leaves the GPU fast lane (for now)

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  The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition, going on sale this week for $599. [credit: Sam Machkovech ]

In a normal GPU marketplace, Nvidia's new GPU—the RTX 3070 Ti—would land either as a welcome jump or a power-per-watt disappointment. In the chip-shortage squeeze of 2021, however, both its biggest successes and shortcomings may slip by without much fanfare.

The company's RTX 3070 launched eight months ago at an MSRP of $499, and it did so at an incredibly efficient power-to-performance ratio. There's simply no better 220 W GPU on the market, as the RTX 3070 noticeably pulled ahead of the 200 W RTX 3060 Ti and AMD's 230 W RX 6700XT. That efficiency, unsurprisingly, isn't repeated with the new model released this week: the RTX 3070 Ti. This device's MSRP jumps 20 percent (to "$599," but mind the scare quotes), and its TDP screams ahead at 32 percent. We've been here before, of course. "Ti"-branded Nvidia cards aren't usually as power-efficient as their namesakes, and that's fine, especially if a mild $100 price jump yields a solid increase in performance.

But the RTX 3070 Ti spec sheet doesn't see Nvidia charge ahead in ways that might match the jump in wattage. And while the 3070 Ti's performance mostly increases across the board, the gains aren't in any way a revolution. That may be less about Nvidia's design prowess and more about squeezing this thing between the impressive duo of the RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 ($699) on an MSRP basis.

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