Home - Reviews - ASUS Dual RTX 4070 Super GPU Review: Great Price to Performance Rivaling the RTX 3080 and it’s SFF PC Ready

ReviewsComponentsNewsPC

ASUS Dual RTX 4070 Super GPU Review: Great Price to Performance Rivaling the RTX 3080 and it’s SFF PC Ready

Adrian Rodriguez

February 10, 2025

0

SaveSavedRemoved 0

While waiting for review unit/s of the RTX 50 Graphics card/s to arrive, ASUS sent their Dual RTX 4070 Super for review. The ASUS DUAL series of GPUs are what’s considered the most basic model out of ASUS’ line of graphics cards. This makes it the most affordable line of graphics card coming from the brand. But does the price affect overall performance of the GPU? And how does it stack against the older generation of GPUs (RTX 30 Series, namely the RTX 3080 10GB). While we know where it fits in the current RTX 40 Series.

ASUS DUAL RTX 4070 Super Design

The ASUS GeForce RTX 4070 Super DUAL features a standard dual fan build. It has a mix of metal and plastic for its shroud construction with the plastic making up transparent pieces to cover a modestly dense aluminum heat sink. Its shroud design follows the Intel Z6xx or AMD X/B6xx ASUS Prime series motherboards design language: something close to “NASA punk”. The GeForce RTX and ASUS labels are printed on the side with gray coloring, making it less prominent, a good setup for those seeking a low visibility build. There is no ARGB lighting included in this GPU, all except for the PCIE power LED indicator for the 12HWPR socket.

However, unlike the typical dual fan GPU, it sports a pair of high-quality axial fans to pull in air. The fan design should in effect have better pull of air into the GPU’s heatsink. Size wise, it’s shorter than most RTX 4070 units sold in the market and not as thick at 2.56 slots, while some RTX 4070 Super base model GPUs from other brands keep thickness to 2 slots, the extra .56 slot gives an extra assurance to thermal control.

It makes it a good fit for some SFF builds where a regular sized GPU can be installed snugly. Aside from the twin axial fans, it is controlled by a dual BIOS switch. This is interesting, as other GPUs from other brands offered do not typically come with a dual BIOS switch on their base model card.

ASUS DUAL RTX 4070 Super Specifications

While the specifications show that it is weaker than the RTX 3080 (fewer CUDA Cores, lower memory interface width: 192-bit vs 320-bit), the revamped GPU core using the ADA Lovelace architecture and newer generation RT cores and Tensor cores all offer a better performance as we will see in the next section.

Performance

Let us see how the ASUS DUAL RTX 4070 performs through a set of tests. The test machine is the standard midrange gaming setup I have which consists of:

• Intel Core i5 12600KF running on a modified power setting of 1.2v (but leaving the rest of the CPU settings to Auto in BIOS)
• DeepCool Assassin IV Air Cooler
• DeepCool CH560 Digital
• ASUS ROG Strix Z690A DDR4
• 32GB Kingston DDR4 3600 (8GBx4)
• 2TB Kingston NV3 PCIe Gen4 gaming drive / 1TB Kingston NV2 PCIe Gen4 gaming drive / 500GB Kingston NV1 PCIe Gen4 OS drive
• Seasonic Prime 850W 80+ Gold
• Primary GPU for Test: ASUS DUAL RTX 4070 Super
• Comparison GPU: PNY XLR8 RTX 3080 10GB LHR

Thermals and Power

While the ASUS DUAL RTX 4070 Super runs on a dual fan configuration, temperature’s relatively cool in an airconditioned room with ambient temperature of around 27°C. On idle, the GPU stayed at a stable 46°C on the DeepCool CH560 Digital temperature gauge. Internally with HWInfo it reports a slightly higher 46.7°C on the current reading consistently. The lowest reported is at 39.5°C, this is due to upon start and top of the 3DMark Benchmark test it turns on the ASUS’ GPU’s Fan Start Stop feature. After a while, the fans stop, and we are left with an idle of 43.3°C in HWInfo (and 43°C on the desktop case’s temp gauge.) and will return back to the 46°C range.

To get the Maximum temperature readings. A run on 3DMark would do. Whilst I attempted to use Cinebench 24’s GPU benchmark to try getting a feel on the GPU performance, it wasn’t able to push the system as much as possible. This is a safer approach for me to get the temps and power use of the GPU up without accidentally burning it with Furmark.

The maximum temperature observed through HWInfo nets a 74.7°C which is below the maximum limit for the GPU which is at 84°C. The Dual Fan Cooling setup along with a wider/taller cooling fin design helps in dissipating heat from the card. Bonus points go to the silent operation of dual axial fans, and maybe how ASUS tuned the performance cooling curve.

To get an idea how much power the GPU consumes both on idle and on load, Time Spy is used to get an idea how much power was consumed. A full run nets a maximum power use of 219.952 Watts, just shy below the standard rating provided by NVIDIA at 220W (The RTX 3080 maxes out at around 287.691 Watts). The system running on idle gives a minimum of 6.535 Watts, just around a regular light bulb, but it can change to around 7 Watts depending on any change in Window’s processes.

It is good to know that while we’re not gaming or using the GPU for tasks, it will just be sipping less power and can save on power bills in the long run. Comparing it to the RTX 3080 for base comparison which runs at roughly 40 Watts on idle, we’re definitely saving a lot on the meter.

Gaming Benchmarks

For gaming, I’ll cover the same list of games that I’ve been using for benchmarking for the past few years of reviewing. These cover a range of games with differing graphics APIs used as well as audience and utilization of hardware. Games covered are Cyberpunk 2077, Forza Horizon 5, Tom Clancy’s: The Division 2, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and Counter Strike 2. But in general, the ASUS DUAL RTX 4070 Super was able to surpass the old RTX 3080 on all tests with some games having a higher FPS gap between the two cards.

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk has so far continually fixed itself and added features as years rolled in. Now at almost 5 years old, its graphics prowess continues gamers, especially with the massive update in 2021 which involves improving graphics performance and later updates included revisions to upscaling functionalities for GPUs, namely frame generation. Tests for Cyberpunk 2077 has the most number done due to the wide graphic settings it can have.

The ASUS DUAL RTX 4070 is seen to perform better than the RTX 3080 for all instances from 1080p gaming to 1440p gaming, whether it is running with Ray Tracing or on Ray Tracing with DLSS support.

Interestingly, while retesting the RTX 3080 for the current version, the latest updates of Cyberpunk came in. Now users can toggle the type of DLSS it uses with either the traditional model or the new Transformer Model. Results wise, while the new model does improve image quality greatly by removing the “smudging” effect on certain instances of gameplay like moving objects at distance, or effects in the environment. The downside is there’s a very slight impact on the average frame rate experienced. It’s a bit early to include it to the graphs for review as there might be more improvements down the road for it, but it’s a welcome improvement that’s made available to all RTX Graphics Cards variants.

Forza Horizon 5

Forza Horizon 5 utilizes both CPU and GPU, it is interesting to see if the combination of the 12th Gen Intel CPU is still up to the task with a newer ASUS DUAL RTX 4070 Super and if it does scale to the RTX 3080’s performance. The results show that the ASUS DUAL RTX 4070 Super seems to edge close to the TUF RTX 4080 reviewed years back. This is due to the game relying on CPU performance as well, and it favors a combination of higher performance CPU and GPU combination to pull higher frames.

Tom Clancy’s The Division 2

A game that for its time has withstood time as an open world shooter title. It utilizes the DX12 graphics API to its fullest w/o utilizing any of the modern features like DLSS, Frame Gen, but will surely put the graphics card’s base GPU core to work.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is another open world title running on a different engine and utilizes an older iteration of the DLSS and Ray Tracing. We’ll see how the RTX 4070 Super handles this.

Based on the observations made while running the benchmark, the last section of the test which ran through a panoramic scene of the South American jungle and ruins to zooming into the village had some graphical pop-ups. This can be attributed perhaps to the lower memory bandwidth of the RTX 4070S.

Counter Strike 2

Counter Strike 2 replaced the long running Counter Strike Global Offensive title by directly overwriting it, hence majority of tests needs to be re-based. Also, expect a somewhat lower FPS number of the game because of the utilization of an updated engine that uses more resources. We’ll see how the ASUS DUAL RTX 4070 Super compares to the old RTX 3080.

The RTX 3080 appears to have performance deficiency against the RX 7600XT, but nevertheless, the RTX 4070 Super outperforms all of them in 1080p and 1440p tests.

Synthetic, Productivity and AI Test

3DMark Benchmark Suite

3DMark has been a fixture benchmarking tool for GPUs and as time passes, more benchmark features have been added. Here are the results from the following: TimeSpy, Port Royal, Speedway and the new Steel Nomad.

Time Spy was the older

Cinebench 24

Previous releases of Cinebench only featured CPU testing. Now with version 24 out, they’ve included the GPU into the test. Some observations I found was that the GPUs (RTX 3080 and RTX 4070 Super) were not being pushed as hard compared to the 3DMark benchmark tests. Results however, show that the ASUS DUAL RTX 4070 Super wiped the floor with the RTX 3080.

MLPerf Client AI Benchmark

The MLPerf Client AI Benchmark is new to this review and as I’ve mentioned in a previous post that mentioned existing benchmarking tools for AI work is becoming available, I ran the RTX 4070S on ML Perf Client to see how it performs when doing localized AI work.

The benchmark downloads the necessary information, and it will run the entire process locally and leverage the power of the GPU (it is commanded at the start to pick a specific GPU between either NVIDIA / AMD / Intel. The resulting output is printed out as JSON objects and from there read the Tokens per Second reading which sets the bar how fast the GPU is able to work on AI workloads.

The result of the run found as a JSON file gave me this:

The average TPS for this run is 97.204, giving a tight lead of 1+ TPS against the 95.614 TPS of the RTX 3080

Summary and Verdict

The ASUS DUAL RTX 4070 Super is sort of a v x.5 increment of the 3rd generation RTX 40 series graphics card from NVIDIA, given that the RTX 4070 that preceded it was poised to match the performance of the RTX 3080 then. This half step before the next generation RTX 50 series managed to improve upon the RTX 3080 in all aspects: Price, Performance, Efficiency.

At a price of thereabouts of PHP43,000++ (based on what I found on online stores), it’s a good buy as it’s almost half the price of an RTX 4080, and cheaper than the RTX 3080 when it first released (thanks to the GPU price hike in 2020). It clearly outperforms the previous generation RTX 3070 of its class and even beats the RTX 3080 in performance. And improvements with the GPU architecture with Ada Lovelace made the GPU frugal on power consumption and can save on power bills in the long run. The ASUS DUAL RTX 4070 Super delivers the core experience of having a 1440p gaming GPU and a decent workhorse GPU for AI use.

It may not look cool or flashy for those looking to build a PC with RGB lighting on it, but it works for more compact builds with its shorter length, and thinner profile. It’s slightly taller/wider girth increases the surface area for its aluminum cooling fins. While it’s a budget model bereft of creature comforts like having triple fans and RGB lighting, features some GPUs of this line don’t. It has a Fan-Stop feature, making it run quiet. It has a dual BIOS switch, something other brands’ budget model line-up don’t normally have. And the fan design uses an Axial type of blade design, which is usually reserved for more premium models as it pushes air better.

If you are looking to upgrade from the RTX 20 Series or even jumping from the GTX series, the RTX 4070 Super is a great option to have at the moment, and the ASUS DUAL is a great choice if looking for a stealth build GPU or a straight down to business GPU without the aesthetic features. But if comparing against the upcoming RTX 5070, I can’t say for now how the new GPU would compare against the RTX 4070 Super, so some level of patience may be warranted.