The Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 was announced with the GeForce RTX 20-series to the excitement of gamers all over the world. The new Nvidia RTX series are well-packed with lots of amazing features to attract buyers but we must state it out-rightly here, the new GPU is high priced! But we’ll come back to that.
The GeForce RTX 20-series comes in two predominate Editions; the Founders Edition Models and the reference models like the EVGA RTX 2070. The Founders Edition Models like the RTX 2070 FE remains superior with better performance standards but with a whopping $100 to $200 premium higher than the reference models.
Nvidia generally supplies the same TU106 GPUs to all its add-in-board (AIB) partners. These AIB partners then bin the GPUs and sell the overclocked models. The binning helps the GPUs run slightly cooler than the average GPU in the market.
Features, chipset and price range of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070
Spec. for spec. the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 is better than its predecessors the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti and GTX 1080 with its impressive transistor count. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 also includes 20% more CUDA cores and a 6Gbps faster GDDR6 video memory than its predecessors. However, it has fewer Ray Tracing (RT) and AI-powered Tensor cores compared with Nvidia’s other Turing line up. Also, if you’re looking to link multiple GPUs, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 doesn’t support pairing via SLI. If you really need this feature you’d have to go for the higher Nvidia GPUs.
The 4k gaming performance of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 was tested with the Forza Horizon 4, Strange Brigade and Destiny 2 game respectively. For the previous two, it performed well at 60 frames per sec. (FPS) to 70 FPS. For the Destiny 2 game, it played at 40-70 FPS range. It beats the GeForce GTX 1070, GTX 1070 Ti and GTX 1080 4k gaming performance test. Only the GeForce RTX 2080 and the AMD Radeon Vega RX 64 rivaled its performance amongst the mid-range GPUs.
The tests were done on a system specs of;
- CPU: 3.7Ghz Intel Core i7-8700K (hexa-core, 12MB cache, up to 4.7GHz)
- RAM: 32GB Vengeance LED DDR4 (3,200MHz)
- Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix Z370-E Gaming
- Power Supply: Corsair RM850x
- Storage: 512GB Samsung 960 Pro M.2 SSD (NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4)
- Cooling: Thermaltake Floe Riing 360 TT Premium Edition
- Case: Corsair Crystal Series 570X RGB
- Operating system: Windows 10
When we reviewed the best graphics cards earlier in the year, we mentioned that the huge interest in cryptography mining contributed so much to the rising cost of the GPUs. The high demand for high-performance GPUs has put these GPUs almost out of reach for most gamers.
Conclusion
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 comes with some amazing nice features and improved performance when compared with other GPUs in the market. Its 4k gaming performance is impressive and exciting for gamers considering the price. However, at $499, the GPU is still considerably expensive for the average user.
If you are already using a graphics card like the Nvidia 1070 Ti or the AMD Vega or others within that range of specs, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 won’t bring many upgrades to you. From the available data, the most flaunted feature of this RTX 20-series is its Ray Tracing and DLSS which is yet to be fully utilized. So for now, it’s wise to hold on to the GPU you have while we expect further improvements.