Nvidia’s RTX 4000 SFF Ada Generation graphics card targets compact workstations, so it’s unlikely to be on the list of best graphics cards for gaming. But that doesn’t mean your graphics card is bad.Recent reviews from Japanese publications Harusaku Hibi (opens in new tab) shows that the RTX 4000 SFF performs very close to the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti while consuming 65% less power.
The RTX 4000 SFF comes with AD104 silicon that powers the GeForce RTX 4070 and GeForce RTX 4070 Ti. However, the RTX 4000 SFF die only has 48 fully enabled streaming multiprocessors (SMs) out of 60. This brings his CUDA core count on the Ada Lovelace graphics card to 6,144, which is 4.5% more than the GeForce RTX 4070 but 20% less than the GeForce RTX 4070. GeForce RTX 4070 Ti. Additionally, the RTX 4000 SFF is a small form factor workstation graphics card. So gaming is not the top priority.
The 70W RTX 4000 SFF has a very modest clock speed. The graphics card runs at a base clock of 1290 MHz and can be boosted up to 1565 MHz. However, the RTX 4000 SFF has the most powerful amount of memory. The graphics card has a whopping 20GB of GDDR6 memory.
Unfortunately, memory bandwidth doesn’t take full advantage of graphics cards. Limited to a 160-bit memory interface, the RTX 4000 SFF’s 14 Gbps GDDR6 memory chips can only deliver up to 280 GB/s of memory bandwidth.
In Harisaku Hibi’s gaming-focused review of the RTX 4000 SFF, Ada-based graphics cards are showing their pace in the following 15 titles. Cyberpunk 2077, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Death Stranding, others. In this publication, we tested the RTX 4000 SFF across three resolutions using different image fidelity settings.
Nvidia RTX 4000 SFF Ada Generation Benchmarks
| graphics card | 1920×1080 game | 2560×1440 game | 3840×2160 game |
|---|---|---|---|
| GeForce RTX 4070 | 155% | 164% | 170% |
| GeForce RTX 3070 | 121% | 126% | 133% |
| GeForce RTX 3060 Ti | 110% | 113% | 0% |
| RTX 4000 SFF Ada generation | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| GeForce RTX 3060 12GB | 83% | 86% | 0% |
| GeForce RTX 3050 (~ RTX A2000) | 61% | 62% | 0% |
The GeForce RTX 4070 significantly outperformed the RTX 4000 SFF. His GeForce RTX 3070 of the last generation also easily outperformed Ada-powered workstation graphics cards. The GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, a SKU rumored to be discontinued by Nvidia, was slightly faster than the RTX 4000 SFF by a margin of less than 15%. This shows the brilliance of Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace architecture.
Note that the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is a 200W graphics card. So it’s quite impressive that the margin between the RTX 4000 SFF and the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti wasn’t that big, despite his 65% lower TDP for the former.
The 170W SKU of the GeForce RTX 3060 is also not a pushy one. Nevertheless, the RTX 4000 SFF outperformed the Ampere graphics cards by a comfortable margin (20% average). When it comes to generational improvements, the RTX 4000 SFF was on average around 70% faster than the RTX A2000, which has performance parity with his GeForce RTX 3050 in the mainstream.
The RTX 4000 SFF has a MSRP of $1,250, so no one will buy it for gaming purposes. Nevertheless, if a professional needs to split his R&R time between jobs, it’s good to know that the RTX 4000 SFF is a capable gaming graphics card.
