Zotac has been well known to make cards of different sizes, but are the most known of all add in partners to go almost as small GPUs as possible. It's not the first time using a Zotac card considered short, small and compact. I used the GTX 750 Low Profile, a GTX 1070 Mini, and now this card that is considered small. Here's a new one by Zotac, and with a quick unboxing video of the card.
What came with the card is the simple documentation including Warranty, which is tied to Aftershock. The Double PCI-E 8-pin to 12VHPWR Adapter for it if your PSU doesn't have these types of cables right out of the box.
Bear in mind, the 4070 that I pulled out is 25cm long, still short in modern standards though not as short as the Zotac 4070 Super.
One thing I find absolutely hilarious that the Zotac 4070 Super was cute to say the least, being short and all while the PNY 4070 that came out of my Aftershock looks more aggressive.
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| Zotac's RTX 4070 Super, with the attached adapter above the PNY RTX 4070 |
At just over 23cm long, the Zotac Twin Edge variant is one people would go for in a small form factor. Especially in a case, that added space you get can be beneficial for air flow.
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| The RTX 4070 Super upgrades my Aftershock PC Level 4X to a Level 5 System. |
GRAPHICS CARD SPECIFICATIONS
7168 Cuda Cores
224 Texture Mapping Units and Tensor Cores
80 Render Output Units
56 Ray Tracing Cores
1980 to 2475 Mhz (Zotac is at 2490MHz)
12GB of 1313 MHz GDDR6X RAM at 21GHz Effective Memory
220W TDP
The specs of the card are universal across all common RTX 4070 Supers. The only slight difference which may not sound a lot is that this GPU comes with a teeny tiny bit of overclock right out the box. Only 15Mhz but it is almost as good as stock already.
Should be noted that boost clock speeds will vary depending on application. Most typical it will hit around 2915MHz, but I do get a rare 3Ghz flat on couple occasions, especially on Fire Strike.
As you can see specs-wise, the 4070 Super has a good bump in the number of CUDA Cores over the 4070 (5888). A 20% increase is what gives the 4070 Super its muscle, which is well worth the slight TDP increase and power consumption increase of 20 Watts.
TEST RIG: Aftershock PC's AMD Level 4X System (Now unofficial Level 5)
AMD Ryzen 5 7500F
32GB DDR5 - PNY MAKO 6000 MHz DDR5 RGB
1TB nVMe Lexar NM790 PCIe Gen 4.0 SSD
Gigabyte B650M Gaming Wifi
Zotac RTX 4070 OC Twin Edge
750W FSP Hydro GD2 PSU
This Computer is powered by the excellent budget friendly Ryzen 5 7500F which is perhaps one of the best value for money CPUs in 2024. It is a mid-ranged to high performance 6 Core Aftershock Level 5 AMD PC that promises on performance at a reasonable budget, with most of it, I would assume, to be spent on your GPU. Some gaming benchmarks from other reviewers places it about as good as even the Ryzen 7 5800X3D. If anything, bottlenecks will be more apparent on 1080p resolution. In which case, pairing a high power GPU with low res monitor is a very stupid idea to begin with. Therefore, most titles are tested on UHD / 4K resolution when applicable using some of the highest presets to be completely GPU bound rather than CPU bound.
The card will be tested overclocked at 125 MHz OC on core, and 300 MHz Memory on MSI Afterburner and any comparisons will be up against the PNY 4070 that was also overclocked. Any higher and the card will not be stable.
DIABLO II RESURRECTED STRESS TEST
Maximum Settings Possible: 4K Upscaled to 8K.
The 4070 non Super pushed 24-25FPS. This card now is able to give me a more console like experience at 30-32fps which is the way to play although granted, 24-25FPS is passable if you're coming from the classic D2 experience.
DIABLO IV
Maximum Settings Possible: 4K
The latest iteration of Diablo does bring it's graphics to almost as dark a palette as Path of Exile. Diablo IV brings about some new features to your graphical settings including Frame Generation which requires a 40 series card. I don't have results of the 4070 as I sold it to buy this card even though it was brand new when I sold it.
The only time where FPS really tanks is when exploring in snowy weather. That is when the GPU really gets pushed very hard, which is not common for an RPG. So even with a card as powerful as a 4070 Super is not guaranteed to give 60 fps. So recommend switching DLSS on, at highest Quality control to kind of smooth things out just a bit which does help quite a lot. Although resolution scale can be brought to 200% like Diablo 2, the game is too demanding to making increasing past 100% worth it.
SKULL AND BONES (BETA, EARLY ACCESS)
Maximum Settings Possible: 4K no DLSS
Made in Singapore, guaranteed with their offices located over at Fusionopolis, Buona Vista area. Skull and Bones is an open world genre that also comprises of Real time Naval ship to ship combat. This Ubisoft early access title was only just announced for demo from Feb 8-11th February. So it gives me an idea on how it will fare for games in their early stages. Clocking at 2910MHz boost, I left all the settings at maximum as is, while turning off any scaling and leaving it at Temporal Anti Aliasing. I tested on the Naval Combat opening Chapter. And truth be told, it looks impressive. 50 FPS is good enough at this demanding section of the game.
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| Skulls and Bones blends a mix of open world and old school naval gunnery combat. |
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| RTX 4070 Super Clocks in at 2910 MHz |
THE FINALS
Maximum Settings Possible: 4K with Dynamic Ray Tracing at Epic
The Finals is resembles a present day version of Overwatch. A lot more demanding than the latter game as the Finals uses the Unreal Engine 5. It looks mighty impressive to say the least and extremely well optimized to be run on budget hardware. As for graphics performance, the Super Variant can do around 55 fps without any dynamic scaling applied. However as a fast paced E-Sports title, it can do with some. 40 series GPUs have a distinct advantage with Frame Generation and notebookcheck has covered that when they benched the Finals. nVidia DLSS set to quality and Frame Generation coupled with nVidia Reflex Low Latency mode on, makes playing even at 4K extremely responsive and snappy.
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| 4K Maximum settings are possible... |
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| though I'd recommend turning on DLSS Quality and Frame Generation. |
90-100 FPS is very doable at this settings. Yes these screens are from the Practice range but I've already played a round at 4K Max with DLSS Quality and Frame Generation and Ray Tracing Epic which I won and it was plenty smooth and snappy yet still look beautiful and gorgeous at these settings, especially for a free to play game. That would be the settings I would go for.
Unigine Superposition:
1080p Extreme
Definitely a CPU bottleneck as the Guru3D net a 97 fps average compared to my 89.5. But I'll take the hit, and besides I game on 4K more often than not.
3DMark Fire Strike
Graphics Score: 53230 vs 44724
Comparing GPU score, a score of 53230 is the first time I have ever hit past 50,000. This is a nice bump compared to 44724 of my PNY regular 44724, overclocked mind you.
A close to 20% performance increase is nothing to scoff at.
3DMark Time Spy
Graphics Score: 21115 vs 17592
Again a 20% bump over the 4070 in scores is quite noticeable. A score 21115 puts it inline with a RTX 3090 Ti which is weirdly pleasant and a whopping 60% above my RTX 3070 I just sold. A significantly better bump than Guru3D review's 7% increase from the 4070 Ti to the 4070Ti Super, and 2% from the 4080 to 4080 Super. I'm using Time Spy to compare since Guru3D uses it as standard. Therefore you can look this up yourself.
THERMALS:
The short cooler does limit the cooling slightly but not to the point I would consider as a concern. Sure, 78 to 82 Degrees C while gaming is not great, let's face it, it's what you'd expect from one of the smallest 4070 Supers in the market. To be fair though, that's because I maxed the power limit and overclocked it quite a bit without touching the fan curves. It is not that all bad all things considered, and fan is not annoying at load. Noise is never an issue for me as I always have a fan blowing above me that drowns out any noise and potential coil whine. Speaking of which, it's not really anything to speak of or anything noticeable.
Cooling is therefore adequate to say the least, good enough considering its size.
BOTTOMLINE: 4070 Super, the only saving grace of the 40 Supers release. Performs more like a 4070 Ti and a 3090 than a 4070.
If you ask me, the Super Series I would say it's.... meh. However doesn't hide the fact that the best step up from the regular to the Super Variant is the 4070 line, which is this series' only saving grace. It feels a lot more bang for the buck compared to the 4070 Ti and 4080 Supers even though the latter is meant to make the 4080 cheaper by a noticeable amount.
The extra cores allows the 4070 Super to make up a lot of ground as far as performance goes. It is nearly as fast as the RTX 3090 and even the 4070 Ti and it is nice to see that it is much closer to that than to the base 4070. It nets a good 40-60% jump in performance from a 3070 depending on the title while keeping the same power envelope as a 3070 and a full 140W less than a 3090 which is crazy efficient. Although aimed at 1440p, it is 4K ready. While the 4070 does provide an acceptable 4K gaming experience, the increased power from the Super is a difference between passable and smooth / fluent.
Power Supply-wise, if you have been chugging a PSU that handled a 3070 without stability problems, you don't need to upgrade the former to run a 4070 Super. As long as you have at least 2 8-pin PCI-e pins on your cables (needed to use the 12VHPR adapter include), then it should be fine.
I don't think you need to worry so much about bottlenecking if you're on a Ryzen 5 7500F as that basic 7000 series chip pairs very well with this card. However, if I was to nitpick or complain about one thing, is that it should have come with 16GB of VRAM instead of 12 especially if you're upgrading from a last gen 3070 and you intend to game at 4K UHD like I usually do. 12GB for now is gonna cut it a little close but if I need fluid gameplay down the line I'll just lower the resolution to 1440p.
In all though, it is as powerful enough as it needs to be and also a powerful and mid-high end GPU for a mid range pricing. It still has to fend off competition from the Radeon 7800XT but I think we can cut the 4070 Super some slack here since it is performing so well in a bracket of GPUs that are not much more powerful than it for a lot more money.
