ZOTAC GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER Trinity Black Edition Review – Small Signs Of Improvement

NVIDIA’s SUPER series is back – however, the chipmaker has given the GPU we’re about to review a rather unsightly name: RTX 4070 Ti SUPER. ‘Ti’ and ‘SUPER’ never co-existed, but here we are. ZOTAC has given us the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUEPR Trinity Black Edition, which features a rather unique look among the sea of GPUs with aggressive, sharp-edge designs. Let’s see how it performs in this review.

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Unboxing

ZOTAC’s packaging for the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER is huge – not very thick, but it’ll certainly dominate a lot of space if you ever see it on store shelves. The packaging sees a very liberal use of foam to house just a few items within – with the documents (and a card) all packed inside a sealed bag once you lift the box open. Further down, you’re greeted with the GPU itself, with a separate cutout housing more items.

The contents you get are typical of any high-end GPU: the GPU itself, 12VHPWR-to-PCIe adapter, and a GPU holder to prevent sagging. There are also regulatory papers and guides, with one of them reminding you how to properly connect the 12VHPWR connector, which we all know is rather temperamental.

Appearance

Most GPU designs pretty much involve aggressive lines, and sharp cutouts – the typical “gamer” look if you will. ZOTAC has gone for a completely different design route for its RTX 40 series GPUs, and the same applies to the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER Trinity Black Edition here. What you get is a shroud that dominantly features curved shapes, housing three axial fans. Speaking of the fans, this card doesn’t use the ring fan design commonly seen in high-end cards these days, and the “ribs” on the fan blades are just for cosmetics.

The top of the GPU reveals heatsinks that are fairly packed to keep the 285W of heat properly dissipated, though I’m not sure if the cables are supposed to be getting in the way like that, given it’s the side that is most visible in conventional install configurations. Perhaps moving the internal fan headers to the bottom edge of the card will improve the look? That aside, the single 12VHPWR connector is located at the 2/3rd length of the card.

On the back, the same design theme continues with curves and smooth edges – with a cutout that partly exposes the PCB (purely cosmetic) and some parts of the heatsink (functional). No Dual-BIOS switch to be found here, this card operates at stock settings. The sub-120mm height should give you plenty of room against the case, which will be important for 12VHPWR connectors.

For the I/O, it’s the standard HDMI 2.1 + 3x DisplayPort 1.4 in line with the RTX 40 GPUs. Stick to HDMI 2.1 if you need to output 4K 144Hz signals – though it’s a bummer NVIDIA didn’t update the silicon to give it DisplayPort 2.0/2.1 capabilities.

At the top of the GPU is the SPECTRA RGB (as ZOTAC calls it) which is a single-zone RGB that can be customized via the Firestorm app. It’s very bright – but you won’t be getting the multi-color option like the rainbow preset that you can find in virtually all products with RGB.

Specifications

ZOTAC GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER Trinity Black Edition

GPU Core & VRAM: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER
GPU Core Variant	AD103-275-A1
Microarchitecture	Ada Lovelace
Process Node	TSMC N4 (5nm)
Transistors	45.9 billion
Die size	379mm²
Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs)	66
CUDA Cores	8448
Tensor Cores	264
RT Cores	66
Cache	48MB L2
VRAM Configuration	16GB GDDR6X 256-bit
Memory Bandwidth	21Gbps, 672GB/s peak
Add-in board: ZOTAC GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER Trinity Black Edition
Base/Boost Clock	2340 / 2610 MHz
TDP	285W
Recommended PSU	700W
Dual BIOS Mode	No
Display Outputs	3x DisplayPort 1.4 1x HDMI 2.1 *Max output resolution: 7680×4320@60Hz
Power Connector	16-pin 12VHPWR connector *Optional 2x 8-pin PCIe adapter included
Bus Interface	PCIe 4.0 x16
Dimensions	2.5-slot, 306.8 x 119.4 x 58.5 mm

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Test System

CPU	Intel Core i9-13900K
Cooling	Cooler Master MasterLiquid PL360 Flux 30th Anniversary Edition Cooler Master MasterGel Maker
Motherboard	ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 HERO
GPU	ZOTAC GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER Trinity Black Edition
Memory	Kingston FURY RENEGADE RGB DDR5-6400 CL32 (2x16GB)
Storage	Samsung SSD 980 PRO 256GB (Boot) Kingston NV1 1TB
Power Supply	Cooler Master MWE Gold 1250 V2 Full Modular 1250W
Case	VECTOR Bench Case (Open-air chassis)
Operating System	Windows 11 Home 22H2

Performance

All benchmarks are done in out-of-the-box settings unless otherwise specified. Games are tested under these settings (upscaling features such as NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, or Intel XeSS are turned off unless otherwise specified):

• Forza Horizon 5 (RT ON)
  Maximum settings (all settings maxed out to EXTREME preset when available, Ray Tracing set to EXTREME).
• Forza Horizon 5 (RT OFF)
  Ultra High preset – Ray Tracing turned off.
• Red Dead Redemption 2
  All settings are set to ULTRA – slightly higher quality over ‘Favor Quality’ from the in-game settings slider.
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider (RT ON)
  HIGHEST preset. RT Shadows set to ULTRA (which overrides default Shadow settings).
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider (RT OFF)
  Same as the previous run – except RT Shadows turned OFF, with Shadow settings set to ULTRA instead.
• F1 2022 (RT ON)
  ULTRA HIGH preset. Ray Tracing is set to HIGH under this preset.

Synthetic Benchmarks

The RTX 4070 Ti SUPER is, for the most part, a minor spec bump from the original RTX 4070 Ti, so here’s how it compares against other GPUs. For the most part, the synthetic benchmarks show a back-and-forth between AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 XT and the ZOTAC RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, however the latter absolutely dominates when it comes to content creation workloads, like the Cinebench 2024 test.

Gaming – 4K (3840 x 2160)

In 4K, the same theme continues – the Radeon RX 7900 XT scores wins on the first three tests, while the latter three go to the ZOTAC card. Given that SOTTR is more optimized for NVIDIA GPUs, and the F1 2022 is heavy on ray tracing (in the setting we use), naturally the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER comes out ahead.

Gaming – 1440p (2560 x 1440)

Again, it’s a continuation of back-and-forth in 1440p. SOTTR with RT Ultra settings continues to heavily favor the ZOTAC GPU, while RDR2 and Forza Horizon 5 maintain the same gap between the two cards, giving the Radeon card a lead.

Gaming – 1080p (1920 x 1080)

Something worth noting here is that the NVIDIA GPU driver we used (551.23) has seemed to significantly improve the performance on SOTTR in particular. With both Team Green GPUs at the latest driver version, the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER still manages to pull a huge gap on all cards in this game, making it the undisputed winner in this match. However, the card continues to trail slightly behind AMD’s second-best GPU in FH5 and RDR2.

Thermals

Since the ZOTAC’s design is relatively on the small side as far as high-end GPUs are concerned, the fans naturally need to work harder due to their smaller sizes which could potentially produce more noise. I’m happy to report that this is not an issue: even under full load, it won’t be noticeable for most people unless you live in an area devoid of any environmental noises. We’re looking at an average of 70°C on both occasions, with the VRAM only slightly above it – pretty good results.

Software

The software for ZOTAC GPUs is called Firestorm – and be sure to pay attention to which version you’re getting from the Internet. You should look for the ones designed for RTX 40 series GPUs, which look like the screenshot above. The software itself is well laid out, though I suspect there are some font scaling issues happening on the tuning sliders under the Performance tab, which made the numbers too big.

Warranty

For ZOTAC, you’ll be getting a 3-year warranty as standard – but there’s a quick way to make that a 5-year warranty. Simply scan the QR code or click this link to register the GPU within the first 28 days of purchase, and you’ll be eligible for 2 more years of warranty for extra peace of mind.

Conclusion

On ZOTAC’s part, we are pretty pleased with the GPU as a whole, given its compact size and solid thermal performance. In a time when GPU gets exceedingly thicker and larger, the sub-120mm tall Trinity Black variant also provides another potential advantage – the 12VHPWR won’t need to bend as hard against the case, meaning it’s less likely to cause a connector meltdown (although if anything, these connectors should likely be altered to the 12V2x6 spec by now, although it’s never clearly communicated).

For the silicon itself, the 16GB VRAM upgrade is highly welcomed. With games getting larger and even hungrier for textures, even 12GB VRAM is going to saturate soon – and this is one part that the original RTX 4070 Ti was susceptible to. It’s not 24GB like AMD’s Radeon 7900 series, but you should be able to ride with it for a good few years unless you’re looking to crank every in-game setting imaginable.

In the RTX 4070 Ti review we did a year ago, we said the pricing is still on the high side for its raw performance, and today based on the RM4,299 price for this ZOTAC Trinity Black Edition card, the value seems to be ever so slightly better than before. That being said, we’ve seen other RTX 4070 Ti SUPER cards priced higher than their vanilla counterparts, so both silicon still more or less compete against each other for value.

We also mentioned that the Radeon RX 7900 XT was its closest competitor in price, and it looks like Team Red’s card has somehow gotten more expensive in the past year. Was it because of stock issues causing price hikes? Likely. In any case, that leaves the Team Green GPU in a bit of a “No Man’s Land” territory in terms of pricing.

The fact is, GPUs are now officially expensive and there seems to be no way of going back. Value-wise, this card seems to be right on top of the list even if what you’re looking at is the $799 MSRP card – remember when RTX 3080 was supposedly a $699 GPU before Covid happened? For what it’s worth, the ZOTAC GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER Trinity Black Edition is a solid card – as long as you can pay for it.

[button type=”link” size=”btn-sm” target=”blank” variation=”btn-success” block=”btn-block” link=”https://shope.ee/7pUltkJEm6″]Click here to purchase the ZOTAC GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER Trinity Black Edition (via Shopee)[/button]

Special thanks to ZOTAC Malaysia for providing the ZOTAC GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER Trinity Black Edition for this review.