NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070, AI & Machine Learning Comparison
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 wins 18 of 29 benchmarks, averaging 26.2% faster.
Both cards' numbers are anchored estimates calibrated against our measured cards, pending first-party measurement. Treat small gaps as ties.
What the numbers say
The gap is widest in Stable Diffusion XL, where NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 leads by 117% (3.04 vs 6.6 images/min); the closest fight is Ornith 1.5 9B (15% apart); VRAM decides part of this one: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 runs 20 of our 12 AI workloads while the other card runs 18, models that don't fit score zero.
Benchmark results head-to-head
| Benchmark | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| MiniCPM5 2B tok/s | 204.42 | 244.68 | -16% |
| LFM2.5 2.6B tok/s | 197.4 | 230.17 | -14% |
| Granite 4.1 3B tok/s | 143.74 | 170.86 | -16% |
| Nemotron 3 Nano 4B tok/s | 124.92 | 145.5 | -14% |
| Qwen3 4B tok/s | 126.36 | 149.68 | -16% |
| DeepSeek Coder 7B Instruct v1.5 tok/s | 91.37 | 105.21 | -13% |
| Llama 3 8B tok/s | 81.07 | 93.2 | -13% |
| Llama 3.1 8B tok/s | 80.95 | 93.16 | -13% |
| Qwen3 8B tok/s | 78.92 | 90.94 | -13% |
| Nemotron Nano 9B v2 tok/s | 57.4 | 66.16 | -13% |
| Ornith 1.5 9B tok/s | 70.34 | 80.73 | -13% |
| Gemma 4 12B tok/s | 50.4 | 58.51 | -14% |
| Qwen2.5-Coder 14B tok/s | 0 | 50.74 | n/a |
| Qwen3 14B tok/s | 0 | 51.46 | n/a |
| Gemma 4 26B A4B tok/s | 0 | 0 | n/a |
| Qwen3 30B A3B tok/s | 0 | 0 | n/a |
| Gemma 4 31B tok/s | 0 | 0 | n/a |
| Qwen3 32B tok/s | 0 | 0 | n/a |
| Llama 3.3 70B tok/s | 0 | 0 | n/a |
| Stable Diffusion 1.5 images/min | 25.15 | 35.36 | -29% |
| SDXL Turbo images/min | 206.36 | 286.04 | -28% |
| Sana 1.6B images/min | 0 | 16.6 | n/a |
| Stable Diffusion XL images/min | 3.04 | 6.6 | -54% |
| Z-Image Turbo images/min | 0 | 0 | n/a |
| FLUX.1 Kontext dev images/min | 0 | 0 | n/a |
| FLUX.1 dev images/min | 0 | 0 | n/a |
| Qwen-Image-Edit images/min | 0 | 0 | n/a |
| LTX-Video (distilled) frames/s | 0 | 0 | n/a |
| Wan 2.2 5B (720p) frames/s | 0 | 0 | n/a |
Cost to rent
| Card | Per hour |
|---|---|
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition | $0.095 |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 | $0.136 |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition is 1.43x cheaper per hour. Cheapest on-demand rate we see across RunPod and Vast.
Specifications compared
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 | |
|---|---|---|
| VRAM | 8GB | 12GB |
| Transistors | 17,400M | 35,800M |
| Die size | 392.5 mm² | 294.5 mm² |
| Process node | 8 nm | 4 nm |
| Transistor density | 44.3 M/mm² | 121.6 M/mm² |
| Architecture | Ampere | Ada Lovelace |
| Memory bandwidth | 448 GB/s | 504 GB/s |
| Boost clock | 1,725 MHz | 2,475 MHz |
| TDP | 220 W | 200 W |
| Launch MSRP | $499 | $599 |
| Release | 2020-10-29 | 2023-04-13 |
FAQ
- Which is better for ai & machine learning: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition or NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070?
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 performs better for ai & machine learning, winning 18 of 29 benchmarks in our suite with an average 26.2% advantage.
- What are the main hardware differences between NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070?
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition has 8GB VRAM and a 220W TDP, while NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 has 12GB VRAM and a 200W TDP.
- Does VRAM matter more than speed between NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070?
- For AI, yes, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 fits 5 more of our 12 workloads than NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition. A model that exceeds VRAM doesn't run slower, it doesn't run at all, so the card that fits the model wins that workload outright.
- Where is the biggest performance difference between NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070?
- Stable Diffusion XL: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 leads by roughly 117% (3.04 vs 6.6 images/min) in our testing.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition full review · NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 full review · All AI & Machine Learning rankings