 This is real footage captured outside a Micro Center computer store in Dallas, Texas. And you might think that Twitch streamer Preston A. Lewis was filming a Black Friday shopping rush or something. But no, no one in this crowd of people was hoping for a discount at all. The shortage of GPUs has gotten so dire that this is how desperate people are just to buy a graphics card at an MSRP that has already been twice inflated since the release of Nvidia's 30 series. Once by component shortages, then again by tariffs on US imports from China. Which makes Nvidia's pricing for the new 3070 Ti really confusing. Because 599 for this much raw power, that would have been a decent deal even before the shortage. And what makes it especially unexpected is that last week's 3080 Ti was also competitively priced, but only in the context of the current landscape where this untested 2080 Ti on eBay sold for a thousand US dollars. Is Nvidia trying to start street brawls? Or did they travel to an alternate timeline and bring this thing back for the good of all gamers? And if they did, just how good is it? And who's our sponsor? Antlion Audio, their ModMic wireless microphone delivers best in class audio quality, 12 plus hours of battery life, and it magnetically mounts to almost any pair of headphones. Get 15% off the ModMic wireless and other ModMic products at the link in the video description. Five 99 puts the 3070 Ti smack dab in the middle of the RTX 3070 and RTX 3080, both in terms of price and product positioning, which in itself makes sense because unlike the RTX 3080 Ti, which was pretty much a watered down RTX 3090, the RTX 3070 Ti is more of a beefed up RTX 3070. It shares the same GA104 GPU as the RTX 3070, but it's also got a lot of features that are not as good as the RTX 3070 Ti. The RTX 3070 Ti is a 4.4 GPU with about 4% more cores with the same eight gigs of GDDR6 memory on the same 256 bit bus. Pretty unexciting. Or I'm sorry, did I say the same GDDR6 memory? What I should have probably mentioned is that it is much faster. Clocking in at a good 2.5 gigahertz higher, we are looking at an effective bandwidth boost of 160 gigabytes per second, which is a 10% increase. Consequently, the rated graphics power is a hefty 70 watts higher, and the cooler is a new, embiggened design that looks something like a cross between the RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 with the same totally necessary and very industry standard 12 pin connector. Though at least to Nvidia's credit, they were kind enough to angle it instead of having it stick straight out like the old 3070. So the hope then, both for Nvidia and for the rest of us, is that if the cooler is in between the two cards, the RTX 3070 Ti's performance will be as well, despite it having just 4% more cores than its namesake and a whopping 29% fewer cores than the RTX 3080. Now, since the testing is happening so soon after our RTX 3080 Ti review, we're gonna be using the same bench in the same patch date, and we'll even be wearing the same shirt and the same underwear from lttstore.com. Freshly washed, of course, though. Starting with Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, the story is already looking pretty interesting for the 3070 Ti. It managed an average frame rate 12% higher than the 3070, which is good, but then that also puts it a good 19% lower than the RTX 3080, which is, hmm. F1 2020 tightens the spread somewhat though with a 10% lead over the 3070 and a 12% loss against the 3080 and Forza Horizon 4 actually continues along this trajectory, giving us the best result yet. So it appears that high frame rates favor the 3070 Ti's additional memory bandwidth, while lower frame rates really want for more cores. And this appears to bear out in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, where frame rates dip way back down to earth, and actually AMD's RX 6700 XT manages to eclipse not only the 3070 and 3070 Ti, but even the 3080. CSGO is another chance for the 3070 Ti's lightning fast memory to make up ground, but while it manages to get close to the middle of the 3070 and 3080, it ends up closer to the former. Not gonna lie though, given that we're looking at a handful of extra cores and a hefty memory overclock, I'm pretty impressed, but how much are those gonna help if you wanna do anything other than gaming? As it turns out, not much. The RTX 3070 Ti doesn't manage much in the way of an improvement over the RTX 3070, and loses badly to the RTX 3080 in rendering with both Blender and V-Ray, while Creative Cloud doesn't really show enough variation between the cards to warrant picking up one over the other. OctaneBench is a little better than Blender, but we're still looking at a much closer result to the 3070 than to the 3080, and this trend continues pretty hardcore into SpecView Perf, where the RTX 3080 stomps all over both of its GA104 equipped competitors. The only thing that could be considered a win here is the energy benchmark, where the 3070 Ti's additional memory bandwidth pushes it far enough away from the 3070 to find that middle ground again. So what have we learned then? It turns out that fast memory on a GPU can be good, very good, but that it's also very situational, and we also learned that fast memory with more cores is better than just fast memory in every conceivable way. Okay, we didn't really learn either of those things, but it's always nice to get a refresher, isn't it? And on that subject, let's talk cooling. The bigger heatsink on the RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition meant that it didn't get all that much hotter than the RTX 3070, and with a peak of just a little higher than 78 degrees and an average of 64 degrees across our spec view perf test, we're looking at a respectable result, all things considered. Power consumption, however, is less so. The 3070 Ti ends up sitting much closer to the 3080 than its performance would suggest, at 311 watts peak and 151 watts average. That's about 20% more power draw than its non-Ti cousin, and most of this appears to come from the up-clocked memory considering how few additional GPU cores there are, and the fact that when we look at core clocks, the 3070 Ti consistently runs about 100 megahertz lower than both the 3070 and the 3080. At the end of the day though, our recommendation, like with the RTX 3080 Ti, is going to be to immediately buy this card at MSRP if you can. And I know that not everyone agreed with our conclusion last time, but the truth is I stand behind what I said 100%, because no matter who you are, are you a filthy scalper looking to make a quick buck, or are you a gamer who happens to have that much money to spend on a graphics card? Whichever one you are, both of the new Ti variants, at MSRP of course, are going to be a much better deal than anything that you're getting on the secondary market. And sure, you can compare these cards to suggested pricing from a year ago, but the reality of the situation is that outside of the handful of cards that Nvidia sells through their web store, those cards at those prices, they don't actually exist. And that might make you mad, but shooting the messenger isn't gonna get you anywhere. And besides, I did warn you after all. So yeah, it's a great GPU with great Nvidia features like DLSS, high quality hardware video encoding, and more, and 599, it's an absolute bargain for this class of GPU in the current conditions. Will the 37ETI still make sense when the dust settles? Honestly, my money's on, not really, but I suppose only time can tell for sure. And by the look of things, it's going to be a long time. But it won't be a long time until I tell you about our sponsor. Drop's Alt Mechanical Keyboard is based on their top-selling control keyboard and features fully programmable keys so you can assign macros or keybinds to whatever you want. They removed the function row to reduce it to 67 keys instead of 87, and it's created with a solid aluminum frame and a hot swap switch plate, making it super easy to change out your switches. It's both portable and rock solid and features a customizable RGB backlight and undergliding, as well as two USB-C connectors with one on each side of the keyboard, whatever works best for your cable management. So pick up your own Drop Alt Keyboard at the link down below, and you'll get a free set of Skylight keycaps today using promo code freecaps at the checkout. So thanks for watching, guys. Go check out our recent video where we got verified actual gamers to compete against yours truly for a chance to get a GPU at that elusive MSRP. Actually, some of them even ended up with discounts. They beat me.