Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Review

The arrival of next-gen Ampere graphics in the grade of the GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 had us testing and showing you lot benchmarks of these incredibly fast new GPUs. Unfortunately, very few of yous have been able to buy them half-dozen weeks after the release of the RTX 3080, and availability is expected to be low for some fourth dimension to come. Whether this is deliberate action (unlikely), demand miscalculation, or manufacturing issues -- as so often happens in the industry -- time is running out for Nvidia to hit the holiday flavor.

This situation has put more than force per unit area on the more affordable GeForce RTX 3070. The card's launch was pushed to October 29, allowing Nvidia to build up a larger stockpile for release day. Hopefully your chances of buying a new RTX 3070 in 2 days' fourth dimension when they striking shelves are much higher. Moving on from availability woes, the GeForce RTX 30 series is jump to remain an attractive choice for gamers for months and even years to come.

Now let'due south talk most the RTX 3070 GPU.

The GeForce RTX 3070 is based on the GA104 dice which is most forty% smaller than what's used on the 3080 and 3090 (GA102). The GPU packs 32% fewer CUDA cores and TMUs, with the same 96 ROPs. The cores are clocked slightly college, about 4% for the base clock and ane% for the boost clock.

GeForce	RTX 3090	RTX 3080	RTX 3070	RTX 2080 Ti
Price MSRP	$1500	$700	$500	$1200
Release Date	September 2020	September 2020	Oct 2020	September 2018
Process	Samsung 8N			TSMC12FFN
Transistors (billion)	28.3		17.4	xviii.6
Die Size (mm2)	628.four		392.5	754
Core Config	10496 / 328 / 112	8704 / 272 / 96	5888 / 184 / 96	4352 / 272 / 88
Core Clock Frequency	1400 / 1700 MHz	1440 / 1710 MHz	1500 / 1730 MHz	1350 / 1545 MHz
Memory Chapters	24 GB	10 GB	8GB	xi GB
Retention Speed	19.5 Gbps	nineteen Gbps	14 Gbps
Memory Blazon	GDDR6X		GDDR6
Bus Blazon / Bandwidth	384-bit / 935.eight GB/s	320-fleck / 760 GB/s	256-flake / 448 GB/due south	352-bit / 616 GB/s
TGP	320 watt	320 watt	220 watt	250 watt

The memory subsystem has too been downgraded, moving away from 10GB of high speed GDDR6X memory to 8GB of standard xiv Gbps GDDR6 on a narrower 256-bit wide retention coach. This allows for a peak bandwidth of 448 GB/s. Despite those changes, Nvidia claims that the RTX 3070 is on par with the RTX 2080 Ti (with 3GB less VRAM), but at a $500 MSRP, seriously, who tin can complain.

A natural reward of the cut-downwards pattern is the much lower TDP rating of 220 watts, that's 100 watts lower than the 3080 and thirty watts lower than the outgoing 2080 Ti. This means RTX 3070-based graphics cards will be cool, quiet and easy on your ability supply.

Just enough about all that, it's time to get into the blue bar graphs. For testing we're using our Ryzen 9 3950X test organisation, featuring four sticks of depression latency DDR4-3200 memory...

Benchmarks

Boot off the benchmarks with Death Stranding at 1440p we immediately find 2080 Ti-similar performance from the new RTX 3070, pumping out 134 fps on average. When compared to the similarly-priced 2070 Super, we see a thirty% performance heave and a 24% increase from the 5700 XT.

Even at 4K, the RTX 3070 is seen matching the 2080 Ti with 83 fps on average, making it merely shy of 30% slower than the 3080. A proficient overall consequence for a GPU expected to cost just $500.

Microsoft Flying Simulator 2020 has the RTX 3070 matching exactly the formerly super-loftier-finish 2080 Ti at 1440p.

The 3070 does drop off a little at 4K, probable due to but having 8GB of VRAM. The performance hit isn't massive but Flight Simulator 2020 will be pushing beyond the 8GB capacity with the ultra quality settings at 4K and equally a result the RTX 3070 pays a small performance penalization.

Nosotros're starting to sense a trend here. Very similar performance to the 2080 Ti at 1440p, this time in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. That means we're looking at a ~30% operation increment from Nvidia at the $500 toll signal when compared to the 2070 Super and 55% from the vanilla 2070.

The 3070 is at a disadvantage at 4K, here VRAM usage hits up around 7.5 - 8GB, then it'southward possible we're on the edge of VRAM capacity limitation, or the tiny operation hit could be due to retentiveness bandwidth, either manner the 3070 is merely a few frames down on the 2080 Ti.

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege makes heavy utilise of compute and this hands the Ampere architecture an advantage. It'southward not a huge heave over Turing but it does assist, as a issue the RTX 3070 is 5% faster than the 2080 Ti at 1440p, and 44% faster than the 2070 Super.

The 3070 also remained strong at 4K, edging out the 2080 Ti by a few frames, making information technology 21% slower than the 3080 just 47% faster than the 2070 Super.

Moving on to F1 2020, once again we're looking at 2080 Ti-like performance from the 3070, making it 34% faster than the 2070 Super, or 19% faster than the Radeon 5700 XT.

The RTX 3070 slips a few frames behind the 2080 Ti at 4K, but nosotros're talking a mere 2 fps margin, so let's simply call information technology fifty-fifty. That ways the new RTX 3070 is virtually xl% faster than the 2070 Super, and 30% faster than the 5700 XT.

In Gears 5 the RTX 3070 matches and very slightly outdoes the 2080 Ti, though it'south basically the same functioning. A smaller 27% boost over the 2070 Super is seen, and even less over the 5700 XT.

At 4K the RTX 3070 is 33% faster than the 2070 Super and nearly 40% faster than the 5700 XT.

Interestingly, the RTX 3070 was 8% faster than the 2080 Ti at 1440p in Horizon Zero Dawn, delivering 96 fps on average and that made it 45% faster than the 2070 Super and 37% faster than the 5700 XT, then a solid result here.

Performance for the 3070 remained very stiff at 4K every bit it was x% faster than the 2080 Ti and a whopping 51% faster than the 2070 Super.

Moving on to Assassin'southward Creed Odyssey, and yous guessed information technology, 2080 Ti-like performance at 1440p.

The gains over the 2070 Super are weak in this title, at least when using a 3rd-gen Ryzen processor, about a 14% increase.

There's no CPU bottleneck at 4K and equally a consequence the 3070 was 39% faster than the 2070 Super and even managed to beat the 2080 Ti by a 9% margin, quite an impressive upshot.

Nosotros're seeing a small performance heave over the 2080 Ti at 1440p with 4% more frames on average, though interestingly nosotros did come across an eight% increase to the i% low result. Anyway, that meant the 3070 was 38% faster than the 2070 Super and 36% faster than the 5700 XT.

Jumping up to 4K sees the 3070 running just a single frame ahead of the 2080 Ti, so one time once more we're looking at 2080 Ti-like performance. This meant that while the 3070 was 25% slower than the 3080, it was almost 40% faster than the 2070 Super.

Side by side upwards we take Metro Exodus and the results here are a piffling unexpected as the RTX 3070 trails the 2080 Ti by a 7% margin. We oasis't seen a similar result and then far, even if the margin is not huge, that means the 3070 is just 16% faster than the 2070 Super at 1440p.

The 4K data follows the aforementioned pattern where the RTX 3070 gets close to the boilerplate framerate of the 2080 Ti, but the 1% low performance only matches the 2080 Super.

The Resident Evil 3 results are more what we've come to expect, the RTX 3070 is seen delivering performance at the 2080 Ti level.

The RTX 3070 drops off a piffling further at 4K, here it was 6% slower than the 2080 Ti, only that's still far from a terrible event and it was 39% faster than the 2070 Super.

The Doom Eternal results sees the 3070 offering seven% slower performance than the 2080 Ti at 1440p, which is a trivial surprising to see. We're nevertheless talking nearly a ~40% functioning heave over the 2070 Super and 35% over the Radeon 5700 XT.

Now at 4K, using the ultra nightmare textures which telephone call for 9GB of VRAM we find that the RTX 3070 falls farther backside the 2080 Ti, trailing past a xiv% margin. But other 8GB graphics cards like the RTX 2070 Super as well endure here and as a upshot the higher retentivity bandwidth of the RTX 3070 plays a more crucial part, assuasive information technology to beat the 2070 Super by a 52% margin.

Nosotros also tested with lower texture quality (downwards to 'ultra') which requires 7GB of VRAM. The 3070 is able to lucifer the 2080 Ti in this scenario, rendering 141 fps on boilerplate.

In Wolfenstein: Youngblood we're seeing the 3070 match the 2080 Ti to a T, making it 21% slower than the RTX 3080 and 38% faster than the 2070 Super.

Then at 4K the RTX 3070 was 3% slower than the 2080 Ti and 26% slower than the 3080, but also 37% faster than the 2070 Super.

Last upwards, we have Hitman 2 and yous guessed it, 2080 Ti-similar performance at 1440p. We do see the 3070 drop off slightly at 4K, but information technology was just 4% slower than the old 2080 Ti flagship and 55% faster than the 2070 Super.

Performance Summary

All those benchmark runs later, we think it's safe to say the RTX 3070 is very much a match for the RTX 2080 Ti as promised by Nvidia. Here's a look at the average data across our 14 game sample in both resolutions.

Power Consumption, Operation per Watt

Here's a expect at total system consumption using our Ryzen 9 3950X test system. The RTX 3070 pushed total organisation usage to 371 watts. Nether the aforementioned conditions the 2080 Ti reached 433 watts, which means the 3070 consumed 14% less power. It also used almost 30% less ability than the RTX 3080. Nosotros're looking at a similar ability describe to the RTX 2070 Super, so a very efficient GPU indeed.

Using PCAT to measure the power depict of just the graphics carte we see that the 3070 consumes just 6 watts more than or 3% more power than the RTX 2070 Super and 10% less than the 5700 XT.

We're likewise looking at a 31% reduction when compared to the RTX 3080, and 14% less than the 2080 Ti.

In terms of performance per watt, the GeForce RTX 3070 is the most efficient graphics card we've ever tested, delivering 9% more performance per watt than the 3080 and 17% more operation per watt than the 2080 Ti.

It's also 59% more efficient than the 7nm Radeon RX 5700 XT, and so it will be interesting to run across how AMD tin can improve on that shortly.

Taking a wait at how the GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition graphics card ran afterwards an hour of Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the GPU peaked at merely 72C with a fan speed of 1650 RPM, which is very reasonable and the card was very quiet. The boilerplate clock speed in this test was 1890 MHz, just shy of 1.ix GHz, with the retentivity operating at 14 Gbps.

Cost Per Frame

Brace yourselves. Here's a look at cost per frame, starting with the 1440p data.

As yous tin see the RTX 3070 is now the best value graphics carte in terms of toll per frame, coming out 7% cheaper compared to the standard RX 5700 and 25% more cost effective than the 2070 Super.

Of class, you're at present getting RTX 2080 Ti performance for well under half the toll.

The cost per frame data is arguably a trivial more reliable at 4K where we remove whatever and all organisation bottlenecks.

The RTX 3070 remains on top, but chirapsia the RTX 3080 which is still pretty sweet for such a powerful GPU. This means the new GeForce is 27% cheaper per frame than the 2070 Super, and a much improved value proffer at the $500 price point.

What We Learned

Overall, Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3070 is a great high-performance value product. Upcoming competition aside, in today'south market place the RTX 3070 is as proficient every bit it gets in terms of toll per frame and even performance per watt.

The RTX 3070 is the new and much more affordable 2080 Ti. In making that comparing, y'all go 3GB less VRAM, just make up for that with improved power consumption, shaving off virtually lx watts. That means information technology'll be possible to make more compact graphics cards, or larger models that run libation and quieter. Oh yea, did we mention this menu volition run y'all $500 instead of $1,200?

Compared to the GPU it is replacing, the GeForce RTX 3070 is well-nigh 40% faster than the 2070 Super. Now, information technology'southward going to be extremely important that Nvidia addresses supply and makes sure those base of operations models hit the MSRP.

While nosotros lookout man that happen (or not), AMD is set to prove off 'Big Navi' this week, and no doubt we'll be able to provide reviews of Radeon RX 6000 serial cards within a reasonable time frame. Nvidia will see direct competition for almost of its GeForce 30 range, including the RTX 3070, which means it may no longer be the best value option at $500. We'll learn that soon enough, and of course, nosotros are counting on AMD to bring some competition that volition ultimately benefit gamers and consumers alike.