It’s been months since NVIDIA released their Turing based GeForce RTX 20 series graphics cards. Taking a complete departure from traditional GPU design and creating a hybrid architecture that includes a range of new technologies to power the next-generation immersive gaming experiences.
The key highlight of the GeForce RTX 20 series was the enablement of real-time raytracing which is the holy grail of graphics and something NVIDIA spent 10 years to perfect. In addition to raytracing, NVIDIA also aims to place bets on AI which will play a key role in powering features such as DLSS or Deep Learning Super Sampling, a unique way of offering the same quality as the more taxing MSAA AA techniques at twice the performance.
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I’ve looked and compared the performance of several GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and GeForce RTX 2080 custom variants and consider them to be a good gain over their predecessors, the GTX 1080 Ti and GTX 1080. When it comes to pricing, the GeForce RTX 20 series are some of the most costly cards NVIDIA has offered to consumers. Today, I will be taking a look at the GeForce RTX 2070 graphics card which is the $500 US solution and the less expensive of the initial Turing RTX 20 series family which was announced last year.
Featuring the same Turing GPU architecture, the RTX 2070 can be seen as the high-performance mainstream option which is meant to replace the GTX 1070 Ti for just about the same price point which is illustrated in the table below.
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NVIDIA GeForce GPU Segment/Tier Prices
In this review, I will be tested two fully custom GeForce RTX 2070 designs. The reference variants are great with their new cooling design and good looking shrouds but AIBs have some really great custom solutions out there, several of which I have already compared next to each other and with the reference variants.
With just a few bucks of asking price over the reference models, the custom variants offer a range of features such as triple fan coolers, bulky heatsinks, and custom PCBs allowing for better heat dissipation, higher air flow and more overclocking performance and clock stability at their respective boost clocks which will be higher compared to the reference variants. The main barrier with overclocking on Turing GPUs is by far the power limit and those that offer the highest power limits out of the box are generally the ones with the best overclocking potential and performance output.
The models I will be testing today are the MSI GeForce RTX 2070 ARMOR OC and the ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 2070 OC Edition. The MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Armor retails for $570 US while ASUS’s ROG GeForce RTX 2070 STRIX retails for $600 US. I will be comparing both cards next to each other to find out which offers a better value proposition based on performance, overclock capabilities and cooling performance.
In case you want to read our full NVIDIA Turing GPU architecture deep dive, head over to this link.
