We reported previously on the possibility that Nvidia might wheel out a revised version of its popular RTX 4070 graphics chipset with cheaper and slower GDDR6 memory. Now it's been officially announced by Nvidia.
As Nick explained, the reason why this is happening at all is thought to be a short supply of the GDDR6X graphics memory used by the existing RTX 4070. Indeed, Nvidia's announcement implies just that.
"To improve supply and availability to meet strong demand, we’re introducing the GeForce RTX 4070 with extra fast GDDR6 memory," Nvidia said in a conspicuously short entry towards the bottom of a blog post (via Tom's Hardware) that was mostly about the release of a new Game Ready driver with optimizations for Black Myth: Wukong and Star Wars Outlaws.
Immediately, you're probably wondering what impact the shift to ostensibly cheaper and lower-spec GDDR6 will have. After all, if plain old GDDR6 is just fine for the RTX 4070, wouldn't Nvidia have specified that memory from the get-go?
Unfortunately, aside from styling the GDDR6 memory in question as "extra fast", Nvidia isn't providing much by way of details. For now, it is only saying that when it comes to the revised RTX 4070 with GDDR6, "all of the other specs remain the same. It offers similar performance in games and applications."
The OG Founders Edition RTX 4070 and all third-party models so far have come with 12 GB of Micron GDDR6X clocked at 21 Gbps. By way of example, Samsung sells 20 Gbps GDDR6. So, if Nvidia has gone for that particular brand and spec of GDDR6, the total memory bandwidth will drop from 504 to 480 GB/s.
That's a fall of just 5%. Would that hit frame rates? Probably a little bit but typically frame rates aren't directly proportional to memory bandwidth. So, the likely impact would be in the very low single-digit percentiles. Not enough that you'd ever feel it, in other words.
All that said, every little helps when it comes to frame rates and it isn't exactly good news that the spec of the RTX 4070 is effectively being downgraded. It's also not entirely clear if this new 4070 is in addition to the existing 4070, or if it replaces it entirely.
Nvidia likewise makes no mention of the sordid matter of money. So, we don't know if this purported "downgrade" will at least save you some money. However, even if Nvidia doesn't formally lower the price for this revision, if the switch from GDDR6X to GDDR6 means that the RTX 4070 is available in much greater numbers, that itself should help to push real-world pricing down.
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Overall, we suspect that your real-world gaming experience will be barely, if at all, impacted by this change. So, if prices are pushed down by this change, it's probably welcome, overall.
On the other hand, if pricing doesn't budge, we'd still prefer to grab an RTX 4070 with bona fide GDDR6X VRAM if we possibly could. When you're spending circa 500 bucks, it's not nice to think you're getting something that has been compromised by cost-cutting.
Whatever the price and VRAM speed, Nvidia says the new RTX 4070 variant will be available in September. If you're in the market for an RTX 4070 any time soon, keep a weather eye on those VRAM specs so that you at least know what you're getting.
