Today we’ll be looking at the ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 4070 AMP AIRO.
Much like with the previous 4070 Ti review here, my system contains a Ryzen 5 5600, which will bottleneck the ZOTAC RTX 4070. As a result for some of the benchmarks, you may see diminishing returns or even lower frames at lower resolutions. So again, I will be seeing how the Graphics Card fares as a mid-range GPU.
Overview of The RTX 4070
The ZOTAC RTX 4070 can be purchased at around the £650 mark, at the time of writing. That is about bang in the middle for a 4070. So while it’s still considerably more than XX70 Graphics Cards of the past, it isn’t the most expensive for the current gen. Especially considering this is ZOTAC’s top-end 4070, offering their highest factory clock boost.
Visually, it looks identical to the 4070 Ti we looked at previously. Well, except for all the Spider-Man-themed customisations, of course. There is a sleek pearlescent panel with waves, ZOTAC GAMING and their logo down the side, which are all RGB and can be customised through ZOTACs Firestorm software. The backplate is a clean gunmetal grey, with “LIVE TO GAME_” at the bottom and the minimal colour coming from the purple-to-blue gradient of the ZOTAC Logo.
The 2.5-slot card, at 307 x 125 x 58mm, isn’t the smallest, but it should fit in most ATX and above cases. But you should still ensure that your case can accommodate this card before buying. The card utilises a 2 x 8-pin to 12-pin connection to help with your cable management and gives a more clean aesthetic to the finished build.
Specifications
The ZOTAC RTX 4070 is built on NVIDIA’s Lovelace architecture, resulting in much better clock speeds (roughly 800 MHz) when compared to the previous generation, due to the 4nm process as opposed to Ampere’s 8nm process. Additionally, it’s also less power-hungry. So this card should even help keep your bills down a bit.
| CUDA cores | 5888 |
| Video Memory | 12GB GDDR6X |
| Memory Bus | 192-bit |
| Engine Clock | Boost: 2535 MHz |
| Memory Clock | 21 Gbps |
| PCI Express | 4.0 16x |
| Display Outputs | 3 x DisplayPort 1.4a (up to 7680×4320@60Hz) 1 x HDMI® Connector* *Supports 4K 120Hz HDR, 8K 60Hz HDR, and Variable Refresh Rate as specified in the HDMI 2.1a Specification |
| HDCP Support | 2.3 |
| Multi Display Capability | Quad Display |
| Recommended Power Supply | 600W |
| Power Consumption | 215W |
| Power Input | 1 x 12VHPWR |
| DirectX | 12 Ultimate |
| OpenGL | 4.6 |
| Cooling | IceStorm 2.0 |
| Slot Size |
2.5 slot
|
| SLI | N/A |
| Supported OS | Windows 11 / 10 (64-bit, v1809 November 2018 or later) |
| Card Length | 307.7mm x 125.2mm x 58.5mm / 12.1″ x 4.9″ x 2.3″ |
| Accessories | GPU Support Stand 1 x 2×8-pin-to-12VHPWR cable User Manual |
Performance
Next up, we’ll talk performance.
The system used to test the GPU:
- AMD Ryzen 5 5600
- Team T-Force Vulcan Z DDR4 2 x 8 GB 3200 MHz
- Gigabyte X470 AORUS ULTRA GAMING-CF
- WD_BLACK SN750 1 TB NVMe SSD
- Seasonic FOCUS PLUS Gold 1000FX
- Windows 11 Home 64-bit
Getting Down To Brass Tacks
Much like with my review of the RTX 4070 Ti, the ZOTAC RTX 4070 was very much bottlenecked by my processor. In turn, this has resulted in 1080p and 1440p performances being, at times, close to indistinguishable. Though at least this time 1080p isn’t lower. This is due to the RTX 4070 not being as fast as the 4070 Ti, so the CPU doesn’t struggle quite as much to keep up. Even our outlier last time, GTA V, shows a notable difference from 1440p to 4k.
I think it’s fair to say that the ZOTAC RTX 4070 is a 1440p card. That is where you’ll get the best performance for resolution. But that doesn’t mean that this card doesn’t fair well in 4k either, with most games still above a very playable 60fps. Even more so if you utilise Nvidia’s DLSS technology. And why wouldn’t you?
While we’re talking about performance, it should also be noted that ZOTAC’s Firestorm technology really does do wonders here. While idle, the ZOTAC RTX 4070 sat at ~34°c. And under load? After running FurMark Stress Test for around 60 minutes, I never saw the temp go above 68°c. Sure, you could bring those numbers down more, but it means that this card shouldn’t overheat and should even have some headroom should you decide to overclock it.
Final Thoughts
So, in the end, is the ZOTAC RTX 4070 the mid-range king? Probably not, but it is a fantastic little card. It performs well and stays cool under load. It’s certainly a lot more budget-friendly than its Ti counterpart. But an RTX 4060 or RX 7600 would cost even less and would be better utilised by a mid-range CPU.
So while, yes, the ZOTAC RTX 4070 probably isn’t necessary for a lot of people, it’ll be an excellent card for those that can utilise it. The 4070 will give you solid gaming performance at 1440p and should even see you playing at 60fps or more in most titles at 4k.
The ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 4070 AMP Airo clocks a Thumb Culture Gold Award for itself.
Disclaimer: A sample was received in order to write this review.
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