nVidia has recently released three refreshed cards, the RTX 4070 Super, RTX 4070 Ti Super, and the RTX 4080 Super.
That is a lot of Supers! Let us take a look at each, in brief.
RTX 4070 Super
+ Pros: This is a proper refresh, with a 10-15% performance increase for the same price as the non-Super version. It remains a good card, with great power efficiency.
– Cons: $600 is still quite a lot of money to throw at a card. It gets worse with the other Supers though.
RTX 4070 Ti Super
+ Pros: The performance increase over the non-Super is roughly 5-10%, at the same price point. All other factors that made the non-Super a good card still remain.
– Cons: Officially the worst named card yet, and priced at a hefty $800. Plus, 5% is quite a small increase.
RTX 4080 Super
+ Pros: The only card that gets a price cut, being $1000 instead of $1200 like the non-Super.
– Cons: Negligible performance increase (1%!). $1000 is still the same as buying a full PC, with peripherals, so this remains a very expensive card.
Going Forward
Taken altogether, the three new cards are a modest improvement over the options of last year. You get a small performance increase, or a small discount, when choosing any of these three over the non-Super versions. As such, we are replacing the older models in the Exceptional, Enthusiast, and Extremist tiers of our main chart with the Super versions of these nVidia cards.
The outlook for graphics cards remains somewhat bleak. If you have $500, which is a substantial amount of money to sink into a single component, you are still limited to mid-range cards. Maybe this year we will get better competition in the mid-tiers and low-end segments. Intel, are you cooking anything?
Sources
