We all know it's coming. But Nvidia's RTX 4070 graphics card hasn't actually been announced let alone released. And yet it appears in a new official slide from Nvidia detailing latency performance in Counter-Strike 2 courtesy of its Reflex anti-lag technology.
The no-longer-rumoured RTX 4070 is shown against the RTX 3060 and elderly GTX 1060. While frame rates are what you'd really want to see for an overall picture of performance, latency is in part derived from frame rate. So, this does constitute the first official, if infinitesimally narrow, snapshot of the RTX 4070's performance.
You can add that to the avalanche of 'leaked' information, which at this point is giving a pretty clear indication of what to expect from the 4070.
In pure raster performance terms, the rumours suggest the RTX 4070 will slot in at about the same level as the last-gen RTX 3080. But it will supposedly retail at $599, $100 less than the RTX 3080's MSRP, albeit the 3080 typically sold for multiples of that during much of its lifespan thanks to the GPU craze during the pandemic.
We're also expecting the RTX 4070 to be fitted out with 12GB of VRAM, an extra 2GB over that basic 3080. If so, that could be a handy upgrade given the hideous propensity of some recent titles, including The Last of Us, to hoover up ludicrous amounts of video memory. That game can hit 11GB of VRAM at 1080 Ultra settings. Ouch.
Anyway, why Nvidia chose to highlight an unannounced GPU in the Counter-Strike 2 Reflex performance slide is anyone's guess. Arguably the equally unannounced RTX 4060 would have been a better fit given the other two GPUs were both '60 series boards.
But maybe that was a step too far into Nvidia's future plans. The consensus is currently that the RTX 4070 will be launched later this month, with the RTX 4060 and its 4060 Ti sibling arriving in may.
Whatever, the fact that Nvidia is happy to stick the RTX 4070 in an official slide does rather imply the GPU is set to launch very, very soon. Here's hoping it's at least as good as the rumours suggest.
