GeForce RTX 4070 With A Bigger AD103 GPU Spotted In The Wild

With the recent influx of new NVIDIA GeForce RTX Super GPUs that hit store shelves, you’d be mistaken to think that the original GeForce RTX 4070 is old news. Apparently there has been a few interesting developments with this older, but still-relevant model. TechPowerUp recently found that some RTX 4070 graphics cards were using the much larger 5nm AD103 GPU, in lieu of the expected (and smaller) AD104 GPU. 

The specific NVIDIA specimen in question is an MSI RTX 4070 Ventus 3X E 12GB OC, which shows up accurately under current NVIDIA drivers. It appears that almost half of its shaders have been disabled on the larger AD103 GPU, for it to slot in as a typical RTX 4070. 

This does not mean that this RTX 4070 carries with it any further performance or advantages over an AD104 GPU, however. It still maintains the same performance specs, such as 12GB of VRAM, as the original RTX 4070. 

The reasons NVIDIA may choose this configuration to outfit the RTX 4070 are varied, but there are some potential hints. Different levels of silicon also mean that there are varied scales of demand. Due to the current AI market, they can be more flexible in what gets used most efficiently. This may mean moving more available silicon over to GPUs that may still sell well, such as the more affordable RTX 4070. 

While the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Super has been taking up the $599 market position, the RTX 4070 has slotted underneath and enjoyed various sales to bring its pricing down further. This allows NVIDIA to better compete with the likes of AMD’s Radeon RX 7800 XT, which has a sub-$500 price point and has done well in performance versus the RTX 4070. 

While it is of interest to note that the larger AD103 GPU is being used in the RTX 4070, the result is basically the same. It remains to be seen if they will adapt this to the RTX 4070 Super, but once again that will depend on demand and availability of certain silicon.