The first batch of Nvidia RTX 4070 GDDR6 graphics cards are now out in the wild, but they bizarrely have the same price as the existing models with GDDR6X memory. That makes these cards ones to avoid as things stand, so you’ll need to check exactly which card you’re buying if you’re looking to pick up an RTX 4070 right now.
Until recently, the Nvidia RTX 4070 was our top choice as the best graphics card for most people, thanks to its decent ray tracing performance and sub-$600 price. It’s since been usurped by the new Nvidia RTX 4070 Super, but it remains a solid choice if you’re looking for a mid-range graphics card right now. That is, of course, if you buy one with a decent memory configuration.
As standard, the RTX 4070 comes with 12GB of GDDR6X VRAM running at 1,313MHz (21Gbps effective), giving you a total memory bandwidth of 504.2GB/s with this GPU’s 192-bit memory interface. However, that changes once you swap the memory. There isn’t a massive difference here, but the new Asus Dual RTX 4070 OC GDDR6 effectively runs at 20Gbps, rather than 21Gbps, reducing the total memory bandwidth to 480GB/s.
We first heard about the new RTX 4070 GDDR6 in August, when we speculated that these cards should have a cheaper price than their GDDR6X counterparts, thanks to the reduced memory bandwidth. However, the Asus Dual RTX 4070 OC GDDR6 has exactly the same $569.99 price as the GDDR6X model of the same card on Newegg, meaning you need to make sure you look for “GDDR6X” in the description if you want to buy this RTX 4070 card now.
While there’s only a small drop in memory bandwidth with this GDDR6 card, it’s disappointing that it has the same price as the GDDR6X version, especially as the latter is supposed to command a premium. Of course, $569.99 is quite a lot to spend on an RTX 4070 card now too, especially with slower memory. You can get an RTX 4070 Super for around $599.99, with its extra 1,280 CUDA cores giving it a substantial performance boost over the standard RTX 4070 for just an extra $30, plus it comes with GDDR6X VRAM as standard.
You can read our Nvidia RTX 4070 Super review to see why this sub-$600 GPU is now our mid-range gaming graphics card of choice.