At CES 2024 at the beginning of the month, NVIDIA released three new products: RTX 4080 Super, RTX 4070 Ti Super, and RTX 4070 Super, of which the first to appear is the RTX 4070 Super. We've already released reviews of the RTX 4070 Super Founders Edition, and it's up to third-party vendors to show off their talents: the graphics card we're going to review today is the iGame GeForce RTX 4070 Super Vulcan OC 12GB from Rainbow.
Vulcan, also known as Vulcan, the god of fire in Roman mythology, is positioned at the top end of the igame family. Considering the performance increase brought by the RTX 4070 Super, the performance of the combination of VULCAN and Super is indeed very exciting.
Since it is an OC version of the graphics card, it is naturally worth paying attention to the frequency and power consumption. This time, the iGame RTX 4070 Super Vulcan OC also has a dual BIOS design, the normal BIOS boost frequency is 2475MHz, while the overclocking BIOS boost frequency rises to 2670MHz; The default upper limit of the temperature is 84 degrees Celsius, which can be unlocked up to 88 degrees Celsius; The upper limit of the power consumption of the whole card is 245W by default, and it can be unlocked and increased to 265W.
Unless otherwise specified, our next tests were conducted under the overclocking BIOS, after all, the normal BIOS settings are the same as the RTX 4070 Super FE, so if you want to see it, please refer to our initial review (see the review here).
The iGame RTX 4070 Super VULCAN OC continues the style of the previous VULCAN series on the outer packaging, with the graphics card body on the front and the model number indicated, and a simple introduction of functions and features on the back. Even if we haven't seen the body of the iGame RTX 4070 Super Vulcan OC during the unboxing process, we can feel how much care iGame cares about this card - there are really a lot of gadgets that come with the card, including graphics card holders, screwdrivers, smart screens, lighting components, etc.
The iGame RTX 4070 Super Vulcan has a cyberpunk design and is a weighty graphics card that contains all the elements of a Big Mac: three fans, over the shoulder, and three slots. Considering the power consumption of the RTX 4070 Super, the RTX 4070 Super Vulcan OC is so heavily armed that there is no doubt about its heat dissipation capabilities.
Let's take a closer look, the air shield of this graphics card is angular and very tough. In particular, it is worth mentioning that the air deflector of this graphics card is made of a variety of materials, the main body is plastic, and the silver-gray components on the four sides are metal. These metal components are hollowed out and grooved, which looks quite layered. igame calls it a metal exoskeleton design, and it sounds quite Terminator feel to it. The three fans in the middle are known to be the unique fume scythe fan of the igame series when you look at the fan blade design, and the size is 100mm.
On the back, you can see that there is a large area of hollowing out on the right side of the graphics card, which is also the norm of the current three-fan graphics card, after all, there are few PCBs of RTX 40 series graphics cards that are long. Like the air deflector, the back panel of the graphics card is also made of metal and plastic components, but the metal panel accounts for a larger proportion. Colorful is processed with a wire drawing process, and the texture is in place. The plastic on the right side is connected to the metal middle frame, enclosing the exposed heat dissipation fins. There is a row of contacts on the side, and there is no decoration except for the white GeForce RTX logo, which shows that the essence of the side design is completely dependent on the smart screen and lighting components we mentioned at the beginning.
The ** output interface at the bezel is also the regular three dp 14A and an HDMI 2In the 1A configuration, the Turbo button with iGame features can still be seen on the iGame RTX 4070 Super Vulcan OC.
The measured weight of the iGame RTX 4070 Super Vulcan OC graphics card is 1948g, which is quite weighty in the hand. The overall size of the graphics card is 3369 x 144.5 x 60.At 1 mm, which is almost three slots thick, it is also a little larger than the rest of the RTX 4070 Super.
The iGame RTX 4070 Super Vulcan OC graphics card is equipped with a detachable magnetic iGame "Smart Screen", which supports a variety of display modes, such as boot animation, GPU detection, CPU detection, time, custom content, etc., bringing more novel gameplay and allowing players to fully display their personality.
This long smart screen has a resolution of 800 x 216, which is indeed a very luxurious configuration as a pure appearance component. And it's nice to note that it has a row of contacts on the back and bottom, which means that it can not only be "attached", but also "standing" on the side of the graphics card, which just ensures that gamers have more than enough opportunities to see the screen regardless of whether the card is side-mounted or vertically plugged in.
At the same time, the "VULCAN light board" that comes with the graphics card can also fill the position of the original smart screen to maintain the integrity of the graphics card.
In addition,igame also comes with a smart screen base,After connecting to a USB cable,You can take out the smart screen alone as a desktop knickknack that will light up。 From this kind of detail, it can be seen that igame is quite aware of the player's careful thinking.
The power supply is obviously a highlight of the iGame RTX 4070 Super Vulcan OC, and its core power supply has a total of 14 phases, which is very luxurious. The video memory power supply is still 2 phases. The MOSFETs used are MP87990 of the core source system. The PWM chip is similar to the configuration of the RTX 4070 Super FE, with the core PWM being UP9512R, the video memory PWM being UP9529Q, and a US5650Q for power monitoring.
Although the PCB of the graphics card is over the shoulder, it is still quite compact, and there is basically no large area to be vacated.
After disassembling the iGame RTX 4070 Super Vulcan OC graphics card, you can clearly see the AD104-350-A1 core, which is located in the middle of the PCB. Next to it are six Micron GDDR6X chips, distributed directly above and on the right side of the GPU chip, numbered MT61K512M32KPA-21:U, each with a capacity of 2GB and a bit width of 32-bit, forming a 192-bit 12GB specification.
Since the AD104 is only 192-bit, it will only solder 6 GDDR6X chips, which is two more empty solders. The 12GB size is good for a GeForce RTX 4070 Super, which can handle 2K games.
As mentioned earlier, the iGame RTX 4070 Super Vulcan OC's cooling module can be said to be quite low, as can be seen from the configuration of 4 x 6mm and 2 x 8mm heat pipes, as well as a large area of vapor chamber covering the memory and core area. In addition to the heat dissipation module, the middle frame of the graphics card is also responsible for the heat dissipation of a part of the power supply area.
This time, the RTX 4070 Super FE and the iGame RTX 4070 Super Vulcan OC were tested in tandem, so we used the same test platform. In the first test, it can be seen that the platform with Intel Core i7-14700K as the core, MSI MPG Z790 Edge Ti Max WiFi and Xingu Kunlun MU-850G power supply as the core can indeed give full play to the performance of the tested graphics card.
Let's take a look at the graphics scores in each of the 3DMark tests. Fire Strike, Fire Strike Extreme, and Fire Strike Ultra test the performance of graphics cards in DX 11 at 1080p, 2K, and 4K. While Time Spy and Time Spy Extreme test the performance of the graphics card in DX 12, 2K and 4K. Port Royal is a test of the ray tracing performance of a graphics card. Speed Way tests the performance of the graphics card on the DX 12U, including DXR ray tracing.
You can see that the iGame RTX 4070 Super Vulcan OC has an average higher score than the RTX 4070 Super Fe3%, which is nearly 20% higher than the RTX 4070 Super. Among them, in the Time Spy series test, the iGame RTX 4070 Super Vulcan OC has a bigger lead. If you compare it with graphics cards like the RX 7800 XT, the iGame RTX 4070 Super Vulcan OC is also significantly stronger. Compared to the higher-level RTX 4070 Ti, the RTX 4070 Super Vulcan OC is within 3% of it.
We'll start with 2K and further test their performance at 4K. There are a total of 12 games, including 8 raster games and 4 ray tracing games. The application for recording the frame rate is capframex.
Gaming** and image quality settings remain the same, with full-screen exclusive, 100% rendering resolution, unlimited frame rate, V-Sync, and Super Resolution off, respectively, with the highest preset image quality. In the case of ray tracing games, the corresponding ray tracing options are turned on on the basis of the raster game settings. To be clear, since Cyberpunk 2077 and Alan Wake 2 have path tracing enabled at the highest level, we didn't max out the ray tracing options in the first two tests, as the game's frame rate is not playable if path tracing is enabled at native resolution. The specific ray tracing presets for these two games are indicated in the chart.
It can be seen that with the blessing of the overclocking BIOS, the iGame RTX 4070 Super Vulcan OC has achieved good performance in various games.
2K raster games are on average about 4% faster than the RTX 4070 Super FE, and can maintain a more than 15% advantage over the RTX 4070 FE. In terms of frame rate, games like Forza Horizon 5 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 have run at 140+ fps, which can feed the current mainstream high-brush monitors. And for those triple-as that require more requirements, a higher average frame rate can also obviously improve the player's experience. As for ray tracing games, the iGame RTX 4070 Super Vulcan OC also performs a little better than the RTX 4070 Super FE, but the difference is not too big in terms of frame rate, and it is about 15% ahead of the RTX 4070 FE.
In fact, judging from the RTX 4070 Super's 12GB video memory configuration, 4K gaming is a bit beyond its capabilities, but compared to the RTX 4070, it is still 15% to 20% higher. We can see from the test. The iGame RTX 4070 Super Vulcan OC still achieves a smooth frame rate in some games like Assassin's Creed: Mirage. As for other games, including ray tracing games, you will definitely need to enable DLSS to play.
In this DLSS performance test, we used NVIDIA FrameView to record the frame rate and latency of the game. The test items are Cyberpunk 2077 and Alan Wake 2, two games with path tracing and full DLSS 3 support5 games, all with a resolution of 2k. Because this test focused on the performance gains that DLSS brings, we pushed the ray tracing options to the limit: Cyberpunk 2077 had a preset of "Ray Tracing: Overdrive", while Alan Wake 2 had "Ray Tracing: High" and path tracing enabled. From the vastly different native resolution and DLSS 35 If you look at the frame rate after enablement, DLSS 35 has a crucial impact on the smoothness of ray tracing games.
Even if only normal DLSS is enabled, the frame rate of the game has been greatly improved. If you add DLSS 3 frame generation, you can experience a fairly high frame rate without much higher latency. At native resolution, both Cyberpunk 2077 and Alan Wake 2 struggle to run smoothly at the frame rate, while DLSS 3After 5 is fully opened, it has exceeded the smooth operation standard of 60fps, and "Alan Wake 2" can reach the level of 100+ fps.
TensorRT is NVIDIA's SDK dedicated to high-performance deep learning inference, previously TensorRT was mainly used in industry and professional users, and now TensorRT began to be used for Windows individual users, not long ago NVIDIA launched TensorRT-LLM for Windows, which is a free and open-source software to improve AI inference performance, used to improve the inference performance of large language models on personal PCs. It can be seen that with the support of TensorRT, the output efficiency of the iGame RTX 4070 Super Vulcan OC has been greatly improved, especially in the generation of high-resolution**.
D5 Render is a renderer built on Unreal Engine, and it also supports DLSS for RTX graphics cards for increased efficiency. In DLSS 3With 5 Full ON (Super Resolution + Frame Generation + Ray Reconstruction), the iGame RTX 4070 Super Vulcan OC achieves a very noticeable playback frame rate increase.
We tested the temperature of the graphics card on an open platform, and the room temperature at the time of the test was 25 degrees Celsius. The standby temperature was recorded 10 minutes after entering the system, and the temperature at full load was recorded after 10 minutes of running the Time Spy Extreme stress test in 3DMark with GPU-Z recording software. From this test, you can also see how powerful the iGame RTX 4070 Super Vulcan OC's thermal design is: the average full-load GPU temperature is only 595 degrees, and the peak is only 624 degrees only.
Our power and temperature tests are performed simultaneously, so the settings are consistent with the above. It's just that the recording software and hardware we use are pcat suites, and due to the large amount of data, we show the last minute data in the chart. The average standby power consumption of the iGame RTX 4070 Super Vulcan OC is around 18W, which is slightly higher than the FE version. Its average full-load power consumption is 242W, and the peak power consumption is 291W. In terms of power selection, it is better to pick a power supply of more than 750W.
The iGame GeForce RTX 4070 Super Vulcan OC graphics card supports fan standby stalling, so the standby temperature is the temperature under passive cooling, which will slowly rise, starting from 308 rises to a maximum of 366℃。When fully loaded, the average temperature is only about 60 degrees Celsius on average, and the maximum temperature is 624℃。Overall, the performance was satisfactory.
We put the graphics card in an anechoic chamber with an ambient noise of only 18 dba, set the fan to the same speed, and then tested its noise level at a distance of 50 cm. Since the fan of the graphics card is stalled when it is in standby, there is no need to test the noise during standby.
In the anechoic chamber, the noise measured by the iGame GeForce RTX 4070 Super Vulcan OC graphics card is at a good level of 362 dba, quite quiet in actual use.
The graphics card can be overclocked using MSI Afterburner, and after some attempts, the final graphics card can be boosted by 250 MHz; 1000 MHz increase in memory frequency; And passed the 3DMark Time Spy test, showing that the graphics card scored 23463 points, compared to the default frequency of 22182, the performance is improved by about 58%, the increase is still good.
The iGame RTX 4070 Super VULCAN OC is a more powerful and cooler RTX 4070 Super. The increased core specs and higher frequencies make it accessible in 2K games, especially ray tracing games, even with path tracing turned on, in DLSS 35 supports and still has a smooth frame rate. For higher-level 4K gaming, the RTX 4070 Super Vulcan OC can still fight, but at least DLSS Super Resolution must be enabled.
In addition to performance, I believe that the iGame RTX 4070 Super Vulcan OC is attractive because of its excellent cooling design, which does not perform at 65 degrees on full load, which makes it hard to believe that this is a temperature that a mid-spec GPU can perform. Coupled with the iconic smart screen design, it can be said that it is eye-catching inside and out. At present, the price of iGame GeForce RTX 4070 Super Vulcan OC 12GB on e-commerce platforms such as JD.com is 5999 yuan. As the flagship model in the RTX 4070 Super, it's really worth the price.