Power and Temperature
To test the power and temperature we perform a manual run-through in Cyberpunk 2077 at “Ultra” settings for real-world in-game data. We use GPU-Z sensor data to record the results. We report on the GPU-Z sensor data for “Board Power” and “GPU Chip Power” when available for our Wattage data. For temperature data, we report the GPU (Edge Temp of the GPU or Package Temp) as well as Hot Spot (Junction Temperature) when available for our temperature data.
The NVIDIA reference TDP for the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is 285W, and that is the same for the MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti GAMING SLIM 12G video card. In our testing, the board power actually ran below this at 258W maximum power draw while gaming. That is just an incredibly efficient power draw, and also consider that the Boost Clock was running above the Boost clock spec by default as well.
When we pushed the overclocking with +100 to Voltage, the highest overclock we achieved with Voltage added, the Board Power increased by 14% to 292.8W. This is also due to the GDDR6X being overclocked from 21GHz to 23GHz as well, which increases board power. When we did not push the Voltage, and only overclocked to the maximum without adding Voltage, the board power was 272.6W! So even with an overclock, we were still under the TGP of 285W, when you don’t add Voltage.
If we compare these board power numbers to the Radeon RX 7900 XT then we find that at default the MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti GAMING SLIM uses 19% less power. Even when overclocked to the max with Voltage the MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti GAMING SLIM uses 8% less power. Without Voltage, it uses 14% less power.
Naturally, we were curious about how well the TRI FROZR 3 cooling works on the MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti GAMING SLIM considering it is a slimmer and smaller video card. Well, it apparently still works very good! At default, the MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti GAMING SLIM hit only 67.7c GPU temp and 79.2c Hot Spot temperature. It’s about the same on GPU temp as the Radeon RX 7900 XT, but the Hot Spot temp is a couple of degrees cooler.
When we overclocked it, WITH Voltage added, and set the fans to 50% fan speed the temperatures decreased to 64.4c GPU and 75.3c hot spot temperatures. Therefore, the fans on automatic do run a little slower, and only increasing them a small bit to 50% brings temps down that much WITH a Voltage increase and full overclock! The TRI FROZR 3 cooling is working extremely well.
GPU-Z Sensor Data
In the GPU-Z screenshots above, we are comparing the Default (Left) with the Overclock with NO Voltage added (Middle) to the Overclock with MAX Voltage (Right) to see the differences. One of the important parts we need to mention is that on the Default Screenshot (Left) and the Overclock with NO Voltage (Middle) the fans are left on default Automatic. However, in the Overclocked with Voltage Added (Right), we have set the fans to 50% fan speed.
What we learn from this is that at default the fans spun up to 39% for max rotation while gaming. When we overclocked the video card but did not add Voltage the fans did spin up a little faster to 41%, but not a whole lot faster, and temperatures were still acceptable, but a bit higher. When we turned the Voltage up, and increased fans only to 50% (which is not far from 41%) temperatures dropped a healthy amount, and that is with +100 Voltage. That shows that this cooler can handle the heat well, we don’t have to spin the fans up to loud noise levels to keep it cool with Overclocking at all, whether you add Voltage or not.