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Nvidia has finally pulled the wraps off the industry’s worst-kept secret, a “new” RTX 4070 with GDDR6 memory. The previous version came with GDDR6X memory, but due to a shortage, Nvidia has swapped it out for slightly slower memory, although it says performance will be “similar.” Everything else about the GPU is the same, including its $549 price tag. Nvidia launched the 4070 at $599, then lowered the price when the Super version debuted at $599.
Nvidia tucked the announcement of the revamped RTX 4070 into a blog post about new products it was revealing at Gamescom in Germany. The company says it decided to swap out the memory for the more plentiful GDDR6 to “improve supply” and “meet strong demand.” The original card included 21Gb/s GDDR6X memory, whereas the updated version backs that down to 20Gb/s GDDR6, which admittedly is a very small change. According to Videocardz, the change will reduce available memory bandwidth from 504GB/s to 480GB/s.
RTX 4070 shoppers will have to be extra careful when shopping and pay close attention to the spec sheet.
Credit: Nvidia
Nvidia says the two versions offer the same specs besides the memory and that the new card will offer equivalent performance in games and applications. The revised GPU will be available from Nvidia’s partners starting in September, and it’ll be interesting to see if there is any way for consumers to know which version they are buying before they pull the trigger. We doubt it would matter to most people since we expect performance similar to the previous version. Hopefully, discerning gamers will be given a heads-up prior to purchase.
For now, this will likely be the swan song for the RTX 40 series. We thought Nvidia was done with the series when it launched the RTX Super cards in January, so this move by the company is somewhat out of left field. However, it seems like demand for these GPUs is still high enough to precipitate this curious maneuver by Nvidia. Given the alleged high demand, the RTX 4070 series has likely become the high-end sweet spot for this generation since both the 4060 and 4080 series were panned since launch.