Nvidia’s RTX 4070 Ti rumors have been the subject of more leaks, again from the graphics card maker. This time around, we’ve been treated to spilled PNY card images and the full specs of the 4070 Ti – which will come as a relief to those who have been concerned about the recent talk of a major CUDA core count cut.
This latest rumor was broadcast by VideoCardz (opens in a new tab) – and let’s remember that this is just a rumor, although supported by a whole lot of photos of PNY’s RTX 4070 Ti models – it shows its Verto boards, which have the same specifications as the previous leak from Colorful: 2310 MHz base clock, 12 GB GDDR6X VRAM (192-bit bus ).
The PNY leak additionally tells us that the boost clock is 2610MHz and we get that crucial CUDA core load of 7680.
This is all exactly the same specs as the canceled RTX 4080 12GB down to the last detail including the exact same clock speeds so to put it another way – this again underscores that Nvidia has slapped the RTX 4070 Ti badge on the abandoned graphics card Lower end RTX 4080.
Analysis: optimistic signals – let’s just keep our fingers crossed for prices
It’s not like we didn’t expect it, but we also expected that Nvidia might make a difference somewhere, just to show that it did at least something to tune and make this GPU a bit different than the one that got booted unceremoniously. You know, improve the clock speed, maybe just a little bit.
Or as some have suggested, reduce the number of CUDA cores a little or even a lot, because as we mentioned at the beginning, there was a recent rumor that the 4070 Ti will reduce the number of cores to 5888 cores, which is a big drop from the full 7680. However, this does not mean that it will not happen – perhaps the earlier rumor is correct. But this new one is heavier, comes from the seller and has some pictures to give it more substance; although we still need to be careful about both possibilities.
It may be that the person who leaked the idea for 5888 cores heard information that is actually about the RTX 4070, the vanilla version – but here we are in pure conjecture territory.
If you’re thinking: why would Nvidia upgrade the RTX 4070 Ti to make it different from the banished 4080 12GB? Well, it’s mostly about the price. The previous thinking was that if Nvidia drops the 4070 Ti just below the $899 price tag for the 4080 12GB, people will be asking – why on earth was the latter unveiled with such an asking price, then if the 4070 Ti is pretty much the same card?
It looks like Nvidia may instead drop the price of the existing RTX 4080 16GB which is needed for a number of reasons, fueling faltering sales as one of them and better competing with the freshly released AMD RX 7900 XTX which (mostly) outperforms the RTX 4080 in lower price (at least for gamers, apart from ray tracing). With the 4080 16GB costing less, the cheaper price of the 4070 Ti compared to the canceled 4080 12GB obviously makes sense even if it has the same specs.
Clearly, Nvidia needs to do something to counter the strong initial impression the 7900 XTX made and make the RTX 4080 more competitive, and then introduce higher-end ammunition in the form of the more affordable 4070 Ti. plan. On the other hand, in the GPU world, sometimes sanity goes out the window, so we just have to wait and see. The RTX 4070 Ti’s release date is rumored to be January 5, so theoretically the graphics card is just a few weeks away.