Mid-Range Hardware: RTX 4070 review (Part 2)

Last time, I looked at the relative performance between the RTX 4070 and an RTX 3070 on an Intel-based system. This time, I've chucked these two cards into my AMD system and compared them with my RX 6800 to see the performance scaling on a mid-range system.

The Power Scaling of the RTX 4070

Literally, again, exactly what happens...

As is my wont, I have decided to poke and prod at any and all hardware within my nefarious reach. Since I've picked up the RTX 4070, why should this particular product be spared? Because it's small and cute? 

"NO!", says the wise man. "They should be subject to the woes and wiles of mortals as much as any other product!"

And so the story goes, again and again... Join me within these pages* where I will outline the limitations of the new sacrificial lamb.

*Technically, no pages are present given the format of this blog...

Mid-Range Hardware: RTX 4070 review

The RTX 4070 is an interesting card. $100 more expensive than the 3070 on paper but cheaper than most people were probably able to purchase their 30 series card during the period of late 2020 through to just before the release of the 40 series in 2023.

Certainly, I paid slightly less than MSRP on the base model and that was around €50 cheaper than I paid for my 3070 when, in desperation, I just bought the first card I could get my hands on because I didn't have a graphics card.

However, the 40 series cards are almost literally languishing on store shelves due to their high prices and lacklustre performance increases over their 30 series counterparts, with the notable exception of the RTX 4090.

With that in mind, I want to focus on that step forward in performance and look at how the RTX 4070 improves on the 3070 on a mid-range system.

Analyse This: The Technical Performance of Last of Us Part 1...

Where we're going, we don't need roads...

Although I'm fairly sure we do... The Last of Us Part 1 (from here on in: TLOU) has had a rocky start on its PC release. Problems have been reported far and wide, and players have complained, and complained, about performance issues on this PS3 port of a game.

But is this really a fair comparison? Does TLOU really have the performance problems that people ascribe it? Let's find out!

There will be no spoilers here, today, because I have barely played ten minutes of this release. However, I think I know enough to have a very short post on the demands of this game.

So, without further ado:

We Need to Talk About FPS Metrics Reporting...

Recently, I've been on a bit of a tear, running around trying to get people to listen to me about what I believe is a better way to analyse the performance of individual games, as well as the hardware used to run those games than is currently being performed by the vast majority of hardware reviewers in the tech space...

As with all new ideas, things are still developing and I'm still choosing what to keep and what to drop - what works, and what doesn't. Today, I'm going to summarise the conclusions I've come to, thus far, and also introduce a new concept that I feel like everyone in the tech space should be doing. However, some are getting it wrong: wrong to SUCH an extent that it literally took me a while to double check the concept because I can't be the only person to have realised this over the last ten years...