EVGA GeForce RTX 2070 XC Gaming Graphics Card Review
RTX 2070 – Turing For The Masses
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 graphics cards starts shipping tomorrow and we are allowed to post our benchmark review today. This is NVIDIA’s newest mid-range enthusiast graphics card that should be widely available in the $499 to $599 price range. Just like more expensive NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti cards, the RTX 2070 again features the NVIDIA Turing GPU and supports new Turing technologies like real-time ray-tracing as well as DLSS. This card is going to be exciting to take a look at since it is the most affordable RTX series card on the market.
When it comes to performance, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 is based on the Turing TU106 GPU with 10.8 Billion transistors and should not disappoint. NVIDIA says that the RTX 2070 is faster than a GeForce GTX 1080 in all games at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K display resolutions. The GeForce RTX 2070 features 2304 CUDA Cores, 36 RT Cores, 288 Tensor Cores, a GPU Boost clock speed of 1620 MHz and a TDP of 175 Watts. The NVIDIA Founders Edition version of the RTX 2070 ships with a 90 MHz overclock, bringing the GeForce RTX 2070 Founders Edition GPU Boost clock speed up to 1710 MHz. Of course, the NVIDIA add-in board partners will also offer their own stock and factory overclocked graphics cards based on the GeForce RTX 2070 GPU.
| RTX 2080 Ti FE | GTX 1080 Ti | RTX 2080 FE | GTX 1080 | GTX 2070 FE | GTX 1070 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPU | TU102 | GP102 | TU104 | GP104 | TU106 | GP104 |
| GPU Cores | 4352 | 3584 | 2944 | 2560 | 2304 | 1920 |
| Base Clock | 1350 MHz | 1408 MHz | 1515 MHz | 1607 MHz | 1410 MHz | 1506 MHz |
| Boost Clock | 1545 MHz/1635 MHz | 1582 MHz | 1710 MHz/1800 MHz | 1733 MHz | 1710 MHz | 1683 MHz |
| Texture Units | 272 | 224 | 184 | 160 | 144 | 120 |
| ROP Units | 88 | 88 | 64 | 64 | 64 | 64 |
| RT Cores | 68 | — | 46 | — | 36 | — |
| Tensor Cores | 544 | — | 368 | — | 288 | — |
| Ray Tracing Speed | 10 GRays/s | — | 8 GRays/s | — | 6 GRays/s | — |
| Memory | 11GB | 11GB | 8GB | 8GB | 8GB | 8GB |
| Memory Clock | 14000 MHz | 11000 MHz | 14000 MHz | 10000 MHz | 10000 MHz | 8000 MHz |
| Memory Interface | 352-bit G6 | 352-bit G5X | 256-bit G6 | 256-bit G5X | 256-bit G6 | 256-bit G5 |
| Memory Bandwidth | 616 GB/s | 484 GB/s | 448 GB/s | 320 GB/s | 448GB/s | 256 GB/s |
| TDP | 260 W | 250 watts | 225W | 180 watts | 185 watts | 150 watts |
| Peak Compute (FP32) | 13.4 TFLOPS / 14.2 TFLOP | 10.6 TFLOPS | 10 TFLOPS / 10.6 TFLOPS (FE) | 8.2 TFLOPS | 7.9 TFLOPS | 6.5 TFLOPS |
| Transistor Count | 18.6 B | 12.0 B | 13.6 B | 7.2 B | 10.8 B | 7.2 B |
| Process Tech | 12nm | 16nm | 12nm | 16nm | 12nm | 16nm |
| MSRP (current) | $1199 | $699 | $800 | $549 | $599 | $379 |
Our good friends over at EVGA sent over their EVGA GeForce RTX 2070 XC Gaming video card to review. This model will be available starting October 17th, 2018 with an MSRP of $549.99 under part number 08G-P4-2172-KR. It has a boost clock of 1710MHz, which just happens to be the same as the 2070 Founders Edition mode that costs $50 more.
The RTX 2070 XC Gaming is a dual-slot card that measures in at 10.6-inches (269.2mm) and features a custom PCB design and iCX2 GPU cooler. EVGA is using their latest Hydro Dynamic Bearing (HDB) fans that are said to produce less noise and have a longer a lifespan than traditional axial fans. EVGA also re-designed the fan blades and tweaked the hub assembly for quieter operation on the RTX-20 series cards. This particular model has a 10 power phases, one BIOS, and the default trim color is white.
When it comes to power connectors, the EVGA RTX 2070 XC Gaming comes with an 8-pin and 6-pin headers along the top edge of the graphics card. Many of the base RTX 2070 models on the market have just one 8-pin PCIe power connector, so its nice to EVGA beefing up the XC Gaming model.
The back of the cards is just as beautiful as the front with a stylized full coverage back plate. Notice that the backplate has a notch along the top side for an NVLink multi-GPU connector, but there is nothing there. SLI is not supported on this model, so if you want to run two graphics cards together for more performance you’ll need to move up to the RTX 2080 series.
When it comes to display support there are three DisplayPort 1.4,one HDMI 2.0b connector and the new VirtualLink port (USB Type-C) that you can use. The VirtualLink port provides four high-speed HBR3 DisplayPort lanes, USB 3.1 Gen 2 connectivity, as well as 27W of power delivery.
The EVGA GeForce RTX 2070 XC Gaming also comes with RGB LED lights that you can configure with the all new EVGA Precision X1 software. The RGB LED lights worked great on our review sample and helps this card look good no matter the time of day.
Let’s take a look at the test system and then see the benchmarks!