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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FreckledTrout - Wednesday, October 17, 2018 - link
That pretty much sums it up.Doesn't this entire generation seem like it should have been made on 7nm to keep die sizes and costs down along with the heat?
Wwhat - Wednesday, October 17, 2018 - link
in games*You forgot to add.
Personally I'm curious about what non-gaming software will use those tensor and RT cores and what that will bring. I mean if for example Blender traced 3 times faster it would be quite a thing for Blender users. Same for video editing software users I imagine.
And then there's the use for students and scientist.
And the whole wave of AI stuff that people are now getting into.
It's funny because I would have thought that Anadtech would the site that was the one with not exclusively gamers and people using graphics cards exclusively for gaming, but going through the comments you'd think this was a gamer-oriented site - and a gamers site only.
althaz - Wednesday, October 17, 2018 - link
So that's a solid "no" then? You can get better performance for significantly less. This card isn't targeted at me (a 1080 owner), but until the ray tracing stuff starts to be worth anything, this card seems just too overpriced for a reasonable person to consider.ballsystemlord - Wednesday, October 17, 2018 - link
Spelling and grammar corrections.I did not read through the whole thing, but this is what I did find.
"The card is already coming in with a price premium so it's important to firmly faster."
Missing "be".
"The card is already coming in with a price premium so it's important to be firmly faster."
"For the RTX 2070, 4K and 1440p performance once agani settles near the GTX 1080." Right letters, wrong ordering
"For the RTX 2070, 4K and 1440p performance once again settles near the GTX 1080."
Also, I am of the opinion that you should focus your reviews on the performance of the cards vs. price/speed positioning/slot. For example, you could note that the 20 series tends to have better 99th percentile frame rates. This was a big win for the Vega when it first came out. I have not actually crunched the numbers to see if the Vega is better or worse than the 20 series. The calculation would be (minimum*100)/average == % a lower value being a larger discrepancy (worse).
FullmetalTitan - Thursday, October 18, 2018 - link
Certainly makes me feel better about pulling the trigger on a $525 overclocked 1080 with a free game last weekend. 2070s are certainly less abundant, and definitely not for $525. The premium only buys 5-10% performance at base clocks, not worth another $100lenghui - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
Dear AT, please stop auto-playing your "Buy the Right CPU" video. Pleeeeeeeeeeeze. It's driving me away from your site. I am on my last thread.DominionSeraph - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
Unfortunately the design makes it look like a terrible XFX AMD card.rtho782 - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
2070 incurs less of a perf hit in HDR? Ryan seems to think it has no impact: https://twitter.com/RyanSmithAT/status/80115626506...Luke212 - Thursday, October 25, 2018 - link
Nvidia gimped the tensor cores on consumer RTX, that’s why tensor core benchmarks are half a titan V or Quadro RTX. It can’t do FP32 accumulate full speed.dcole001 - Friday, October 26, 2018 - link
I currently have GTX 1070 and just can't justify upgrading due to the fact that Ray Tracing is currently not being used in any games right now. yes there is 15 - 25 FPS performance boost running 1440P still not worth $499 - $599 cost. Wait a year and this Video Card will drop and there actually might be some games taking advantage of Ray Tracing.