MSI RTX 4070 TI SUPER BIOS issues: “virtually no performance gains over 4070 Ti”
The company acknowledged the issues with new NVIDIA card firmware and apologizes.
The RTX 4070 Ti SUPER launch was overshadowed by MSI review samples issues. The Ventus 3X series were among the most distributed cards to reviewers, which led many to face a dilemma: whether to share the results knowing that the BIOS is not good, or to tell the readers or viewers that MSI card cannot be reviewed at this state.
The MSI RTX 4070 Ti SUPER samples suffered from poor firmware ever since reviewers started testing these cards, some already noticing that the card underperforms showing performance either similar to RTX 4070 Ti or worse. It was supposedly 5% slower than expected, at least that’s what reviewers who tested more models were saying. MSI was aware of these problems and has been working on a new BIOS revision since last week. In the end, the company issued the last BIOS just hours before the review embargo. Naturally, that’s not enough time for comprehensive testing.
NVIDIA has been involved in MSI sampling, first by providing the cards to reviewers and later as a middle man informing reviewers about new BIOS updates. NVIDIA confirmed that the MSI card should serve as a ‘reference baseline’ since it had NVIDIA reference specs (clocks and TDP). In the email sent out on Sunday, the company mentioned that the card is indeed around 5% slower than expected and a new BIOS was ready on Monday morning.
In their email NVIDIA confirmed that performance is “approximately 5% below expected figures” and included a BIOS update (from 95.03.45.40.58 to version 95.03.45.40.DC) that improves performance, but it’s still “approximately 3% below expected figures”. I updated the card immediately and ran a full round of testing, confirming a performance increase, but only +1%.
— Wizzard, TechPowerUP
The new BIOS from Sunday were indeed better, but still not as good as expected. Eventually, MSI distributed new BIOS, but this time was just hours before the review embargo.
RTX 4070 Ti SUPER Ventus 3X from MSI, Source: HardwareLuxx
Today – two hours before this article was published – we were contacted again by MSI and NVIDIA and there is another VBIOS that is supposed to further improve the performance of the MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X. This has the version number 95.03.45.40.F0. Unfortunately, we had no way of updating the values in the article. So our values are based on VBIOS version 95.03.45.40.DC.
— Andreas Schilling, HardwareLuxx
MSI made reviewing the RTX 4070 Ti very difficult by making it more complicated than usual. As a result, some readers might form a biased opinion about the product due to these issues. In our review roundup, as many as 18 reviews were based on this model, the highest number from any other custom variant.
The company has officially acknowledged the problem and publicly expressed regret for the firmware mishap. This wouldn’t be as significant if it weren’t for the fact that MSI has already manufactured these cards, and they are currently available at various retailers. Gamers who bought MSI 4070 Ti SUPER models will need to perform a BIOS update:
- GeForce RTX™ 4070 Ti SUPER 16G VENTUS 3X [BIOS Update]
- GeForce RTX™ 4070 Ti SUPER 16G VENTUS 3X OC [BIOS Update]
- GeForce RTX™ 4070 Ti SUPER 16G GAMING X SLIM [BIOS Update]
- GeForce RTX™ 4070 Ti SUPER 16G GAMING X SLIM WHITE [BIOS Update]
- GeForce RTX™ 4070 Ti SUPER 16G VENTUS 2X OC [BIOS Update]
- GeForce RTX™ 4070 Ti SUPER 16G VENTUS 2X WHITE OC [BIOS Update]
This statement reveals that it’s not only the Ventus 3X model that’s impacted, but almost the entire RTX 4070 Ti SUPER series by MSI (excluding the GAMING TRIO cards). Some gamers may not feel comfortable updating the firmware just minutes after taking the card out of the box. But those who don’t may not experience the SUPER upgrade these cards are intended to give. The good news is that there are several other brands to choose fram who had no such issues at launch.
Source: MSI, TechPowerUP, HardwareLuxx
