NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Max Q

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Max Q

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Max Q: Power and Efficiency in a Compact Form Factor

April 2025


Introduction

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Max Q is a graphics card that combines high performance and energy efficiency, aimed at gamers and professionals who value a balance between power and mobility. Released at the end of 2023 as part of the updated RTX 30 series lineup, it has remained relevant thanks to optimizations in the Ampere architecture and support for modern technologies. As of 2025, this model continues to be an attractive choice for those who do not want to overspend on flagship models but still wish to play at 1440p or work with resource-intensive applications.


Architecture and Key Features

Ampere Architecture:

The RTX 3070 Ti Max Q is built on the Ampere architecture, released in 2020 but refined to reduce power consumption. The manufacturing process is 8 nm from Samsung. The GA104-202-A1 chip includes 6144 CUDA cores, 48 RT cores for ray tracing, and 192 tensor cores for machine learning.

Unique Technologies:

- RTX (Ray Tracing): Realistic lighting, shadows, and reflections in games like Cyberpunk 2077 or Alan Wake 2.

- DLSS 3.5: Artificial intelligence increases FPS by 50-70% while maintaining detail. Supports "Frame Generation" mode for smooth gameplay.

- NVIDIA Reflex: Reduces input lag to 15-20 ms, which is critical for competitive games (Valorant, CS:GO 2).

- FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR): Despite being an AMD technology, NVIDIA partially supports it through drivers.


Memory: Performance and Impact on Performance

Type and Size:

The card is equipped with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory (not GDDR6X like the desktop RTX 3070 Ti), which is related to optimizations for low power consumption. The bus is 256-bit with a bandwidth of 384 GB/s.

Pros and Cons:

- For 1440p gaming, 8 GB is sufficient, but in 4K or when working with heavy textures (e.g., Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024), stuttering may occur.

- GDDR6 consumes less power than GDDR6X, reducing heat generation.


Gaming Performance

FPS in Popular Titles (1440p, max settings):

- Cyberpunk 2077: 65-70 FPS with DLSS (45-50 FPS with ray tracing).

- Horizon Forbidden West: 75-80 FPS.

- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare V: 110-120 FPS.

Resolutions:

- 1080p: Ideal for esports genres (144+ FPS).

- 1440p: Main niche — smooth gameplay in AAA titles.

- 4K: Only with DLSS/FSR (average FPS 40-50 without upscaling).

Ray Tracing:

Activating RTX reduces FPS by 25-35%, but DLSS compensates for losses. In Control 2 with RTX and DLSS enabled, the card delivers stable 60 FPS at 1440p.


Professional Tasks

Video Editing and 3D Modeling:

- In Adobe Premiere Pro, rendering a 4K video takes 30% less time than with the RTX 3060, thanks to CUDA cores.

- Blender (Cycles): The BMW scene renders in 4.5 minutes compared to 6.5 minutes with the RTX 3070 Mobile.

Scientific Computations:

Support for CUDA and OpenCL makes the card useful for machine learning (TensorFlow) and simulations. However, for serious workloads, it is better to consider the RTX 4080 or Quadro.


Power Consumption and Thermal Management

TDP and Cooling:

- TDP: 150W (compared to 220W for the desktop RTX 3070 Ti).

- Recommended cooling system with 2-3 fans or a hybrid (liquid + air).

Case Recommendations:

- Minimum case size: Mid-Tower with 3-4 fans.

- Examples: NZXT H5 Flow (good air circulation) or Lian Li O11 Dynamic Mini (for compact builds).


Comparison with Competitors

AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT (2024):

- Comparable price ($550), but higher consumption (180W).

- Performs better at 4K due to 12 GB GDDR6, but falls short in ray tracing.

Intel Arc A770 (2023):

- Cheaper ($450), but drivers are still less optimized for older games.

Conclusion: The RTX 3070 Ti Max Q excels in energy efficiency and support for RTX/DLSS.


Practical Tips

Power Supply:

- Minimum 550W (recommended 650W with an 80+ Gold rating).

Compatibility:

- PCIe 4.0 x16. Supports AMD AM5 and Intel LGA 1700 motherboards.

Drivers:

- Regularly update via GeForce Experience. Avoid beta versions when using professional software.


Pros and Cons

Pros:

- High performance at 1440p.

- Support for DLSS 3.5 and RTX.

- Low power consumption for its class.

Cons:

- 8 GB of memory limits 4K gaming.

- Price ($599) is close to newer models (RTX 4070 Mobile).


Final Conclusion: Who is the RTX 3070 Ti Max Q For?

This graphics card is an ideal choice for:

1. Gamers looking to play at 1440p with maximum settings and RTX.

2. Designers and Editors needing a mobile PC with performance headroom.

3. Enthusiasts of compact builds where a balance between size and power is important.

If you are not chasing ultra-settings in 4K and value a quiet system, the RTX 3070 Ti Max Q will remain a relevant option even in 2025.

Basic

Label Name
NVIDIA
Platform
Mobile
Launch Date
January 2022
Model Name
GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Max Q
Generation
GeForce 30 Mobile
Base Clock
510MHz
Boost Clock
1035MHz
Bus Interface
PCIe 4.0 x16
Transistors
17,400 million
RT Cores
46
Tensor Cores
?
Tensor Cores are specialized processing units designed specifically for deep learning, providing higher training and inference performance compared to FP32 training. They enable rapid computations in areas such as computer vision, natural language processing, speech recognition, text-to-speech conversion, and personalized recommendations. The two most notable applications of Tensor Cores are DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) and AI Denoiser for noise reduction.
184
TMUs
?
Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.
184
Foundry
Samsung
Process Size
8 nm
Architecture
Ampere

Memory Specifications

Memory Size
8GB
Memory Type
GDDR6
Memory Bus
?
The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.
256bit
Memory Clock
1500MHz
Bandwidth
?
Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.
384.0 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate
?
Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.
99.36 GPixel/s
Texture Rate
?
Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.
190.4 GTexel/s
FP16 (half)
?
An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.
12.19 TFLOPS
FP64 (double)
?
An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.
190.4 GFLOPS
FP32 (float)
?
An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.
11.946 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

SM Count
?
Multiple Streaming Processors (SPs), along with other resources, form a Streaming Multiprocessor (SM), which is also referred to as a GPU's major core. These additional resources include components such as warp schedulers, registers, and shared memory. The SM can be considered the heart of the GPU, similar to a CPU core, with registers and shared memory being scarce resources within the SM.
46
Shading Units
?
The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.
5888
L1 Cache
128 KB (per SM)
L2 Cache
4MB
TDP
80W
Vulkan Version
?
Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.
1.3
OpenCL Version
3.0
OpenGL
4.6
DirectX
12 Ultimate (12_2)
CUDA
8.6
Power Connectors
None
Shader Model
6.6
ROPs
?
The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.
96

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)
Score
11.946 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS
12.603 +5.5%
12.407 +3.9%
11.373 -4.8%
10.965 -8.2%