The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Founders Edition Review: Mid-Range Turing, High-End Price
by Nate Oh on October 16, 2018 9:00 AM ESTPower, Temperature, and Noise
As always, we'll take a look at power, temperature, and noise of the RTX 2070 Founders Edition, especially considering its atypically large GPU, new cooler design, new fixed-function hardware, and higher TDPs. For the most part, the dual axial fan open air design provide straightforward benefits in lower noise and cooling, though with drawbacks as mentioned earlier.
As this is a new GPU, we will quickly review the GeForce RTX 2070's stock voltages and clockspeeds as well.
| GeForce Video Card Voltages | |||||
| RTX 2070 Boost | GTX 1070 Boost | RTX 2070 Idle | GTX 1070 Idle | ||
| 1.050v | 1.062v | 0.718v | 0.625v | ||
The voltages are broadly comparable to the preceding 16nm GTX 1070. In comparison to pre-FinFET generations, these voltages are exceptionally lower because of the FinFET process used, something we went over in detail in our GTX 1080 and 1070 Founders Edition review. As we said then, the 16nm FinFET process requires said low voltages as opposed to previous planar nodes, so this can be limiting in scenarios where a lot of power and voltage are needed, i.e. high clockspeeds and overclocking. Of course, Turing (along with Volta, Xavier, and NVSwitch) are built on 12nm "FFN" rather than 16nm, but there is little detail on the exact process tweaks.
| GeForce Video Card Average Clockspeeds | ||||
| Game | RTX 2070 | RTX 2070 FE | GTX 1070 | |
| Max Boost Clock |
2160MHz
|
2160MHz |
1898MHz
|
|
| Boost Clock | 1620MHz | 1710MHz | 1683MHz | |
| Battlefield 1 | 1723MHz | 1825MHz | 1787MHz | |
| Far Cry 5 | 1734MHz | 1824MHz | 1784MHz | |
| Ashes: Escalation | 1775MHz | 1853MHz | 1774MHz | |
| Wolfenstein II | 1644MHz | 1719MHz | 1728MHz | |
| Final Fantasy XV | 1690MHz | 1786MHz | 1749MHz | |
| Grand Theft Auto V | 1802MHz | 1881MHz | 1832MHz | |
| Shadow of War | 1669MHz | 1775MHz | 1768MHz | |
| F1 2018 | 1780MHz | 1826MHz | 1787MHz | |
| Total War: Warhammer II | 1743MHz | 1833MHz | 1786MHz | |
In terms of clockspeeds, the RTX 2070 isn't bringing any surprises. Like Pascal and the GTX 1070, the boost clock reading is used liberally, usually boosting beyond, and varies per game/workload. With the +90MHz Founders Edition OC, the RTX 2070 dutifully ramps up. What remains to be seen is how these clockspeeds hold when RT cores or tensor cores are actively and steadily utilized. In any case, at its Founders Edition specs, the RTX 2070 has perhaps another 100MHz or so to push, but otherwise is out of headroom (or power).
The steady TDP creep has taken its toll, and the 2070 is no longer a power-sipper of the likes of the 1070 or 970. At the very least, it is far from the excesses of its older 2080 Ti and 2080 siblings. Of note is its additional power draw over the GTX 1080, which in certain games trades blows with the 2070.
Temperature
The adoption of an open air cooler with dual axial fans has immediate benefits, especially with a lower temperature target.
Noise
In turn, the open air cooler allows for quieter, slower spinning axial fans.
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beisat - Tuesday, October 16, 2018 - link
Thanks for the review, nice as always.Was hoping to upgrade my 970 before Turing was announced, but I feel like I'm getting ripped of with these cards. The review did nothing to change that feeling, but that was to be expected.
Luke212 - Tuesday, October 16, 2018 - link
Please investigate why Turing is slower than Volta for HGEMM. If it was using the tensor cores they should be not that slow.SMOGZINN - Tuesday, October 16, 2018 - link
On the "The Test" page you show that the "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition" is one of the cards being compared, but it does not show up in the benches.Targon - Tuesday, October 16, 2018 - link
From the information, seeing Vega 64 going up to a temp of 86C would put it into thermal throttle range, which would cripple performance. From my own experience, manually adjusting the fan settings in Global Wattman to go up to 4500rpm and with a temperature target of 75C will avoid the throttle issues in the first place and also improving performance significantly, even without tweaking clock speeds or voltages.So, if Vega 64 is getting throttled and still hitting the numbers reported, that implies that with the fan profile adjusted as I suggested, we would be seeing Vega 64 doing a bit better in terms of framerates.
The_Assimilator - Tuesday, October 16, 2018 - link
Let's be honest: Vega isn't here for competition purposes, it's just included as a courtesy.atl - Tuesday, October 16, 2018 - link
Would be good to have some SLI & Cryptocurrency benchmarks includedTEAMSWITCHER - Tuesday, October 16, 2018 - link
These RTX cards are going to be a fantastic value......next summer when they drop the prices.
eva02langley - Tuesday, October 16, 2018 - link
Even there, I don`t know if Navi can really be a 250$ GPU with 1080 GTX performances.sandman74 - Tuesday, October 16, 2018 - link
980 owner here gaming at 1440p. Really wanted to upgrade but when I cost everything up, PC gaming has suddenly become a very expensive hobby.Decided to completely abandon the PC as a future gaming platform mostly thanks to the pricing of the new gpu cards.
2.5yrs since the 1080 for barely better performance. RTX isn’t viable on this card. My own view is the new line up sucks.
Practically all my mates are on consoles these days which is a shame but it’s a sign of the times. Tried the BF5 beta on my xbox one S and was blown away at how decent it was. Had real fun playing with friends which is what matters.
So I can only imagine it’s even better on the Xbox One X which you can buy for the price of just this GPU.
Prices have gone insane, so I’m stepping out. Total respect for those that can justify the prices and carry on PC gaming. I can’t.
The_Assimilator - Tuesday, October 16, 2018 - link
tl;dr rather get a heavily discounted 1080 Ti (which will probably be factory overclocked and have a beefier cooler).