Conclusion
In today’s overclocking review of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER, we took the Founders Edition video card and pushed it to the max, to find the highest stable overclock and performance potential it has in games. We refreshed all the game benchmarks with it, using the latest drivers and games as of May 2024 to get a brand new fresh look at performance. In addition, we were able to pit it against the new Radeon RX 7900 GRE which launched after our initial launch review of the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER, also using the latest drivers in May of 2024.
Using a PowerColor Hellhound Radeon RX 7900 GRE, which is a factory overclocked video card for $579, we were able to more closely price match this comparison with the $599 MSRP of the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER Founders Edition. As we recall, the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER replaces the price point of the previous GeForce RTX 4070 at $599 and gives us the full AD104 die with improved specifications for better performance. In today’s overclocking review, we pushed it hard, and tested it at 1440p, with Ray Tracing and DLSS.
Overclocking Experience
The overclocking headroom we experienced on the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER Founders Edition was not bad at all. Given that this is the full AD104 die, with full SMs and CUDA Cores, it could have meant that the overall potential or headroom would be narrow, since it does take better binning to achieve the full die. However, we found that there was indeed some headroom left for overclocking both the GPU core frequency and the memory frequency.
One thing to keep in mind in regards to how NVIDIA GPUs operate is that GPU Boost already overclocks, or ‘clocks up’ the frequency past the Boost Frequency as the thermal and power delivery allows. The default clock boost on the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER is 2475MHz, and in our testing by default, it already boosts 10% up to 2719MHz out-of-the-box. That right there would be a good reason for it not having much headroom. However, it managed to overclock even higher from our manual overclocking efforts.
Through a lot of trial and error, we found we could either overclock without Voltage and hit a +200 GPU clock frequency offset, or apply Voltage and go up even higher to +225. This resulted in a GPU frequency overclock of 2978MHz average, or 10% over the already GPU-boosted default clock speed. We even saw peaks of 3GHz, briefly. This did eat into the TDP though, by having the Voltage increased, which meant we had to keep the memory clock a little bit lower at 22.5GHz compared to 21GHz default speeds. However, if we opted to not overvolt, then the memory could hit 23GHz. At any rate, we settled in with a Voltage increase on the GPU at 2978MHz average and 22.5GHz memory frequency.
Overclocking Performance
In our performance testing, this overclock yielded an average of a 7% performance uplift and 8% at its highest. There were some scenarios though where it was just 5%, but it honestly depends on the game, quality settings, and what’s happening in the game. Overall, you can expect a 5-7% performance boost over the default clock frequency from the Founders Edition GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER. While this did not change the highest playable settings, it did help smooth out the experience and allowed more playable Ray Tracing especially with DLSS Upscaling enabled.
When compared to the factory overclocked Radeon RX 7900 GRE, the results are quite interesting. There are many games where the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER is faster than the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER, but there are also games where the Radeon RX 7900 GRE is faster. Keep in mind that the PowerColor Hellhound Radeon RX 7900 GRE we are using is a factory-overclocked video card, so a stock video card would run slightly slower.
In that scenario, we could see the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER and Radeon RX 7900 GRE breaking even in the games where the Radeon RX 7900 GRE had an advantage in this review. That is until you overclock the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER which then edges out performance over the Radeon RX 7900 GRE while gaming. The major advantage also still lies with Ray Tracing performance, in which the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER dominates and does allow playable gameplay experiences at 1440p, especially with DLSS Upscaling.
Final Points
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER Founders Edition has proven to be a competitive video card, though it is more expensive than the Radeon RX 7900 GRE. However, if you opt for a factory overclocked Radeon RX 7900 GRE the price difference narrows quite a bit, and you will want a factory overclocked Radeon RX 7900 GRE to extract the most from it and compete with the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER on performance. In terms of features, the Radeon RX 7900 GRE offers greater VRAM with 16GB compared to the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER with 12GB. The GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER offers strong feature advantages such as DLSS Upscaling quality, DLSS 3 Frame Generation, and DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction.
Overall, we found that the Founders Edition is capable of overclocking, and there is headroom to gain a bit more performance in games with it, though not mind-blowing, it does allow enthusiast and DIY tweaking to find the right balance. The GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER Founders Edition also maintains a more efficient power delivery, and even when overclocked, consumes less power than the competition. Given the right power target tables and Voltage adjustments, the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER seems to be a competent overclocker.