NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 “Gaming King” Graphics Card Announced For $499 US – 8 GB GDDR6, 5888 Cores & Faster Than An RTX 2080 Ti

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3070 is officially announced and it takes the throne not only of the flagship GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards but also the fastest gaming graphics card on the planet. The GeForce RTX 3070 makes use of the Ampere GPU architecture which is making its official debut on the consumer PC gaming segment today.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 is a force to be reckoned with. It takes the throne of the fastest PC gaming graphics card with nothing coming even close to it. It's surprisingly much faster than the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti which is its Turing based predecessor.

NVIDIA designed the GeForce RTX 3070 is designed to be the gaming champ, powering the next generation of AAA gaming titles with superb visuals and insane fluidity. It's not just the FPS that matters these days, its visuals, and a smoother frame rate too and this is exactly what the GeForce RTX 30 series is made to excel at. There's a lot to talk about regarding NVIDIA's flagship Ampere gaming graphics cards so let's start off with the specifications.

Marvels of NVIDIA Ampere Architecture - 2nd Generation RTX Enabling the blistering performance of the new RTX 30 Series GPUs and the NVIDIA Ampere architecture are cutting-edge technologies and over two decades of graphics R&D, including:

At the heart of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 graphics card lies the GA104 GPU. The GA104 is one of the many Ampere GPUs that we will be getting on the gaming segment. The GA104 GPU is the second-fastest Ampere chip in the stack. The GPU is based on Samsung's 8nm (N8) process node. The GPU measures at 392.5mm2 and features 17.4 Billion transistors which are almost 93% of the transistors featured on the TU102 GPU. At the same time, the GA104 GPU is almost half the size of the TU102 GPU which is an insane amount of density.

For the GeForce RTX 3070, NVIDIA has enabled a total of 46 SM units on its flagship which results in a total of 5888 CUDA cores. In addition to the CUDA cores, NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3070 also comes packed with next-generation RT (Ray-Tracing) cores, Tensor cores, and brand new SM or streaming multi-processor units.

In terms of memory, the GeForce RTX 3070 features 8 GB of GDDR6 memory. The GeForce RTX 3070 comes with memory at speeds of 14 Gbps. That along with a full uncut bus interface of 256-bit will deliver a cumulative bandwidth of 448 Gbps.

Unlike the new front and back cooling system that the GeForce RTX 3090 and GeForce RTX 3080 incorporate, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 makes use of a dual-fan cooling system which blows air towards the central heatsink.

The Founders Edition cooling makes use of a full aluminum alloy heatsink which is coated with a nano-carbon coating and should do a really good job at keeping the temperatures in control. The design is interesting in the sense that not only does it goes all out with a fin and heat pipe design.

The Founders Edition cooling makes use of a full aluminum alloy heatsink which is coated with a nano-carbon coating and should do a really good job at keeping the temperatures in control. The design is interesting in the sense that not only does it goes all out with a fin and heat pipe design.

The GeForce RTX 30 series Founders Edition cards will be featuring the 12-pin Micro-Fit 3.0 power connectors. These connectors don't require a power supply upgrade as the cards will ship with bundled 2x 8-pin to 1x 12-pin connectors so you can run your latest graphics card without any compatibility issues.

The placement of the 12-pin connector on the PCB is also noteworthy. It is placed in a standard horizontal position but right in the middle of the shroud which does help with better electrical signaling to the GPU and judging by the PCB design, we can tell why NVIDIA moved to a single 12-pin plug instead of the standard dual 8-pin design. There's limited room on the PCB to do stuff and as such, it was necessary to go for a more small and compact power input.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 is being announced today and will be launching to consumers in the month of October. The first wave of graphics cards to hit the market would be the reference Founders Edtion variant which will cost $499 US. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 will feature a price of $499 (MSRP) however custom models will vary depending on their design and the extra horse-power that they have to offer.

There aren't any performance numbers that NVIDIA is sharing right now but from what has been showcased, the GeForce RTX 3070 is faster than an RTX 2080 Ti, the RTX 3080 is a good bit ahead of the RTX 2080 Ti and the RTX 3090 is about as much as 50% faster than the RTX 2080 Ti which is very impressive for the full lineup stack.

The GeForce RTX 3070 is an insane little beast that features a 60% performance uplift over its RTX 2070 predecessor powering the next-generation AAA titles at smooth frame rates at even the most demanding resolutions of 4K.