ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3070 Ti OC Edition Review

1. Introduction
2. Everything You Need to Know About Ampere
3. RTX 3070 Ti Tech Specs
4. Detailed Look
5. Test System Specs
6. Benchmarks - Synthetic
7. Benchmarks - 1080p
8. Benchmarks - 1440p
9. Benchmarks - 4K
10. Overclocking
11. Power Consumption & Temps
12. What's Hot, What's Not
13. Final Thoughts

TweakTown's Rating: 91%

The Bottom Line

ASUS expands its ROG Strix GPU family with the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, rocking 8GB of super-fast GDDR6X memory and ready to game in 2021 and beyond (if you can find it).

Introduction

ASUS is back again with a new custom ROG Strix graphics card, this time with the new GA104-powered ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3070 Ti graphics card.

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The new ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is the usual ROG Strix affair with a 2.9-slot design and triple-fan cooler, near-identical to the just-released ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card. Underneath is the Ampere GA104 GPU on Samsung's custom 8nm node, with 8GB of super-fast GDDR6X memory.

NVIDIA's own GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition graphics card is a much smaller dual-slot affair, so ASUS is going mega-chunky with its ROG Strix RTX 3070 Ti. We have the same trimmings on the ROG Strix RTX 3070 Ti as the higher-end RTX 3080 Ti, with an additional HDMI 2.1 port that enables single-cable 4K 120/144Hz and 8K 60Hz.

• Read more: ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 OC Edition Review
• Read more: ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Review
• Read more: ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3080 OC Edition Review
• Read more: ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3070 OC Edition Review

Right now I'm driving the new ASUS ROG Strix XG43UQ which is a 43-inch 4K 144Hz gaming monitor, which is plugged into HDMI 2.1 on the ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3070 Ti. Next to that I have the ASUS ROG Strix XG438Q, the previous-gen model of this monitor -- still 4K and 144Hz but it's over DisplayPort 1.4.

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A nice little family photo of NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 30 series Founders Edition graphics cards, and my reviews on each of the separate cards.

• Read more: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition Review
• Read more: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition Review
• Read more: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition Review
• Read more: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition Review
• Read more: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition Review

For the entire time testing the ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3070 Ti OC Edition graphics card, I was using their new ASUS ROG Strix XG43UQ monitor... a huge 43-inch 4K 144Hz monitor with HDMI 2.1 connectivity. I used HDMI 2.1 directly into every GeForce RTX 3070 Ti that I've tested here today and will continue from this day onward.

Everything You Need to Know About Ampere

• Ampere GPU architecture: NVIDIA has so much going on under the Ampere GPU hood, with the GA104 GPU packing 17.4 billion transistors (that's 17.400,000,000) on the Samsung 8nm node. We have 6144 CUDA cores on GA104, over double the 2560 CUDA cores on the GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER.
• RTX improvements: NVIDIA has effectively doubled everything when it comes to RTX, where it will rips and tears your games and delivers them to your eyeballs faster than ever before with Ampere. If you want to run any RTX-powered games, you'll want a new GeForce RTX 3080.
• GDDR6X memory: The new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti has 8GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit memory bus, with 608GB/sec of memory bandwidth.

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• PCIe 4.0 connectivity: NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards are now PCIe 4.0 compatible, so if you're building a new AMD Ryzen 3000 series system with an X570 motherboard -- you will be ready to rock and roll with PCIe 4.0 connectivity.
• HDMI 2.1: 4K 120Hz + 8K 60Hz = single cable: If you are buying a new TV in the coming months or years, HDMI 2.1 is going to be something you want. It opens up the bandwidth floodgates to 4K 120Hz and 8K 60Hz over the single HDMI 2.1 cable.
• RTX IO: NVIDIA's introduction of RTX IO with Ampere is very similar to the ultra-fast game load times on the next-gen Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 consoles. You can read all about RTX IO right here, which is something we'll see build more foundation in 2021 and beyond.

RTX 3070 Ti Tech Specs

NVIDIA has made some rather big improvements with Ampere over the previous-gen Turing GPU architecture, with the new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti rocking 6144 CUDA cores against the 2560 CUDA cores found inside of the GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER.

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We have the new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti packing 48 SMs, 192 Tensor Cores (3rd Gen) and 48 RT Cores (2nd Gen) against the 40 SMs, 320 Tensor Cores (2nd Gen), and 40 RT Cores (1st Gen) inside of the GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER.

GPU boost clocks are close to the same between the two GPUs, with the new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition with a base GPU clock of 1575MHz and boost GPU clock of 1770MHz -- the base clock on the RTX 2070 SUPER is slightly higher.

But the major improvement here with the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is the use of GDDR6X memory, with NVIDIA using the same 8GB framebuffer... the new GDDR6X clocked at 19Gbps (up from 14Gbps on GDDR6) on the same 256-bit memory bus results in 608GB/sec of memory bandwidth (up from 448GB/sec on the GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER).

Detailed Look

ASUS is back with great retail packaging as usual for its new ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3070 Ti graphics card.

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Both of the ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3070 Ti and GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics cards look virtually identical, where if you walked past a gaming PC with one of them inside of it... you wouldn't be able to guess which GPU it would be.

In saying that, I'm a big fan of the ASUS ROG Strix style here.

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ASUS provides an additional HDMI 2.1 port on the ROG Strix RTX 3070 Ti (and RTX 3080 Ti) which is handy if you've got 2 x 4K 120/144Hz monitors that you wanted to plug into the card with HDMI 2.1 and not DP 1.4 connectors.

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ASUS is once again using a 2.9-slot design with a triple-fan cooler, it's a mammoth card in your hands, and inside of your motherboard and gaming PC.

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You'll need a pretty crazy triple 8-pin PCIe power connector setup for the ASUS ROG Strix RTX 3070 Ti, that's an entire additional 8-pin PCIe power connector over the dual 8-pin PCIe power requirements on the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition and MSI RTX 3070 Ti SUPRIM X graphics cards.

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There's dual BIOSes on the card as well, Power and Quiet modes for GPU boost.

Test System Specs

Latest upgrade:

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ASUS provided a rather large upgrade to my GPU testing lab -- or rather, I kept the ASUS ROG Swift PG43UQ gaming monitor after my review on it. The 43-inch 4K 144Hz panel is just glorious to look at -- it's huge, the DPI for Windows 10 when set perfect for your viewing distance is kiss-fingers-emoji good. It's just amazing -- for work, and gaming.

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Sabrent sent over their huge Rocket Q 8TB NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 SSD, which will be my new Games install SSD inside of my main test bed.

I'll be making some changes over the coming months to the GPU test bed here for TweakTown, to both the Ryzen 9 5900X and then Intel's new Core i9-11900K to do some proper PCIe 4.0 testing between the chipsets for GPUs + super-fast load times into games on these new super-fast Sabrent SSDs.

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Sabrent helped out with some new storage for my GPU test beds, sending over a slew of crazy-fast Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 SSDs. I've got this installed into my GPU test bed as the new Games Storage drive, since games are so damn big now. Thanks to Sabrent, I've got 2TB of super-fast M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD storage now.

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Anthony's GPU Test System Specifications

I've recently upgraded my GPU test bed -- at least for now, until AMD's new Ryzen 9 5950X processor is unleashed then the final update for 2020 will happen and we'll be all good for RDNA 2 and future Ampere GPU releases. You can read my article here: TweakTown GPU Test Bed Upgrade for 2021, But Then Zen 3 Was Announced.

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3800X (buy from Amazon)
• Motherboard: ASUS ROG X570 Crosshair VIII HERO (buy from Amazon)
• Cooler: CoolerMaster MasterLiquid ML360R RGB (buy from Amazon)
• RAM: G.SKILL Trident Z NEO RGB 32GB (4x8GB) (F4-3600C18Q-32GTZN) (buy from Amazon)
• SSD: Sabrent 2TB Rocket NVMe PCIe 4.0 M.2 2280 (buy from Amazon)
• PSU: be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 1200W (buy from Amazon)
• Case: InWin X-Frame 2.0
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Professional x64 (buy from Amazon)
• Monitor: ASUS ROG Swift PG43UQ (buy from Amazon)

Benchmarks - Synthetic

3DMark Fire Strike

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3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.

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3DMark TimeSpy

Heaven - 1080p

Heaven is an intensive GPU benchmark that really pushes your silicon to its limits. It's another favorite of ours as it has some great scaling for multi-GPU testing, and it's great for getting your GPU to 100% for power and noise testing.

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Benchmarks - 1080p

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Assassin's Creed: Valhalla is the latest game to be inserted into our benchmark suite, with Ubisoft Montreal using its AnvilNext engine to power the game. It scales really well across the cards, and has some surprising performance benefits with AMD's new Big Navi GPUs.

You can buy Assassins Creed: Valhalla at Amazon.

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Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

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Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.

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Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

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1080p Benchmark Performance Thoughts

1080p gaming is definitely something NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti dominates in, with 60FPS+ easily on AAA games with maxed out graphics for the most part. You should also be able to crank ray tracing in games like Cyberpunk 2077 and nail 60FPS average thanks to DLSS technology.

If you're playing esports games then you'll want 120-144FPS which is something the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti can easily do. Games like Overwatch, League of Legends, CS:GO, Rainbow Six: Siege and many others will enjoy those huge triple-digit frame rates.

The new ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3070 Ti OC Edition will have no problems carving through 1080p games of yesterday, today, and tomorrow at 60FPS and beyond.

Benchmarks - 1440p

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Assassin's Creed: Valhalla is the latest game to be inserted into our benchmark suite, with Ubisoft Montreal using its AnvilNext engine to power the game. It scales really well across the cards, and has some surprising performance benefits with AMD's new Big Navi GPUs.

You can buy Assassins Creed: Valhalla at Amazon.

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Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

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Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.

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Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

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1440p Benchmark Performance Thoughts

The same goes for 2560 x 1440 on the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, with its 8GB of super-fast GDDR6X memory enough to handle everything you throw at it at 1440p. You'll be getting 60FPS+ with ray tracing + DLSS in AAA games, or 120FPS+ in esports titles without a problem.

Benchmarks - 4K

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Assassin's Creed: Valhalla is the latest game to be inserted into our benchmark suite, with Ubisoft Montreal using its AnvilNext engine to power the game. It scales really well across the cards, and has some surprising performance benefits with AMD's new Big Navi GPUs.

You can buy Assassins Creed: Valhalla at Amazon.

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Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

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Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.

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Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

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4K Benchmark Performance Thoughts

For the 4K gamers I would recommend getting the new flagship GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card, first off it's much faster -- and it has 12GB of GDDR6X memory which makes it better equipped for 4K and 4K 120FPS gaming.

Still, the RTX 3070 Ti will give you 4K 60FPS gaming without a problem either.

Overclocking

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Out of the box my sample of the custom ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3070 Ti was ticking along at 1950MHz boost GPU or so, about 100MHz higher than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition graphics card.

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When it comes to overclocking I did expect big things out of the card, with the GPU sitting at 2055MHz comfortably for a while before I pushed it up to 2100MHz nice and stable.

Great to see out of the card, but the MSI GeForce RTX 3070 Ti SUPRIM X has similar results (you wouldn't tell the difference in terms in-person as there's only a few FPS between the two cards) but requires one entire less 8-pin PCIe power connector.

Power Consumption & Temps

Update: ASUS has been in communication with me between the review and now, as they queried my GDDR6X temps below. After I sent my sample back, it was confirmed that it was an issue with my card -- and that the GDDR6X temps through torture testing at ASUS had the GDDR6X memory temperatures at a much, much more chilly 70-71C.

The original testing and my notes are below.

Out of the box the GPU is running at around 65-70C which is considerably hotter than its flagship competitor from MSI in the form of the RTX 3070 Ti SUPRIM X -- which has the GA104 GPU running at 63-65C under load. The GPU hotspot on the ASUS ROG Strix RTX 3070 Ti is 73-75C (MSI SUPRIM X = 71-73C) meanwhile the GDDR6X is toasty AF at 92C compared to the chilly lows of 74-76C on the SUPRIM X.

What's Hot, What's Not

What's Hot

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• Ridiculously fast RTX 3070 Ti: ASUS will always provide some of the very best performance you can get out of a GeForce GPU with its flagship ROG Strix line of graphics cards -- and the new ROG Strix RTX 3070 Ti is no exception.
• ROG Strix style: Another deniable thing about ASUS ROG Strix graphics cards is that they look good, and the new ROG Strix RTX 3070 Ti looks identical to the ROG Strix RTX 3080 Ti and that's already a damn good looking card.
• 2100MHz boost GPU: 2085-2100MHz or so, but it couldn't quite crack 2100MHz+ meanwhile the MSI RTX 3070 Ti SUPRIM X did. Still, you wouldn't tell the difference between the two in the middle of a game at 120FPS versus 122FPS.

What's Not

• Triple 8-pin PCIe power connectors: ASUS requires 3 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors, meanwhile the MSI GeForce RTX 3070 Ti SUPRIM X requires 2 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors and has virtually identical performance across the board (and it even runs cooler).

Final Thoughts

ASUS always delivers when it comes to flagship ROG Strix graphics cards and for the most part, that is same deal with the new ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3070 Ti OC Edition. It has great thermal performance, those same ROG Strix design feels you've come to know and love, and more.

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NVIDIA is positioning the new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti at a replacement to the GeForce GTX 10 series cards, especially the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti -- giving gamers RTX real-time ray tracing, DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) and so much more with Ampere.

The new RTX 3070 Ti is combating the AMD Radeon RX 6800 with its 16GB of GDDR6, more VRAM (16GB versus 8GB on the RTX 3070 Ti) but non-X versus the GDDR6X memory NVIDIA is using on the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti. The regular RTX 3070 has the same 8GB framebuffer, but just GDDR6 -- the new RTX 3070 Ti fixes that and better competes with the 16GB GDDR6 + Infinity Cache on offer with the Radeon RX 6800.

NVIDIA just announced that a bunch more games will be getting RTX ray tracing and DLSS upgrades soon, where during its virtual Computex 2021 keynote the company announced that huge games like DOOM Eternal, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Rainbow Six: Siege would be getting RTX and DLSS technologies (some both, some just DLSS).

• Read more: DOOM Eternal receives ray tracing + NVIDIA DLSS update in June
• Read more: Red Dead Redemption 2 to get NVIDIA DLSS tech update soon
• Read more: Rainbow Six: Siege joins the NVIDIA DLSS train, update coming soon

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If you are building a new PC and can find needles in haystacks -- or should I say, the ASUS ROG Strix RTX 3070 Ti and any new RTX 30 series card -- and you're happy to pay whatever price you see it for, you know what to do: buy it.

RTX + DLSS make the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti a game-changer if you're playing the right games, giving you 4K 60FPS when you would otherwise play at 1440p 60FPS or below. ASUS gives you everything you need, and crams it into the ROG Strix RTX 3070 Ti OC Edition.