The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Founders Edition Review: Mid-Range Turing, High-End Price
by Nate Oh on October 16, 2018 9:00 AM ESTOverclocking
Last, but not least, we'll take a look at overclocking. While NVIDIA does support overclocking, they have limited actual overvolting, and instead providing the ability to unlock 1-2 more boost bins and associated voltages. Either way, Maxwell 2 and Pascal certainly have much to thank for high clockspeeds; for Maxwell 2, it was a combination of high efficiency and ample overclocking headroom, while Pascal took advantage of the FinFET process to ramp up the clocks to new heights.
Built on the 12nm "FFN" process, Turing doesn't appear to push the envelope spec-wise, although it does introduce GPU Boost 4 and NVIDIA Scanner, both of which are naturally featured in EVGA's Precision tool. Re-designed into the RTX-oriented Precision X1, the utility succeeds Precision XOC, and we've opted to use that tool for our overclocking today. We adjusted the core and memory clocks, as well as the power/temperature limit and percent 'overvoltage.' For the 185W RTX 2070 Founders Edition, this is a 116% TDP limit (215W). We were unable to fully test the new Scanner functionality as it would not save to a profile and crashed on certain button presses, which is somewhat unsurprising given that Precision X1 is still in beta. But as far as NVIDIA's GPU Boost 4 is concerned, it exposes certain boost algorithms to users so that you can manually modify the voltage-frequency curve.
A total of four different overclocks were tested. First was a baseline, consisting of 100% overvoltage and max power/temperature limits. The second was overclocking the GDDR6 memory by 1Gbps. The third was overclocking the GPU by +100MHz; in practice this resulted in observed clocks between 1900 and 1990 MHz. Lastly, all previous adjustments were combined for an overall overclock.
| RTX 2070 Founders Edition Overclocking | |||||||
| Stock (FE) | Baseline | Memory OC | GPU OC | All OC | |||
| Core Clock | 1410MHz | 1410MHz | 1410MHz | 1510MHz | 1510MHz | ||
| Boost Clock | 1710MHz | 1710MHz | 1710MHz | 1810MHz | 1810MHz | ||
| Max Boost Clock | 2160MHz | 2160MHz | 2160MHz | 2160MHz | 2160MHz | ||
| Memory Clock | 14Gbps | 14Gbps | 15Gbps | 14Gbps | 15Gbps | ||
| Max Voltage | 1.050v | 1.087v | 1.087v | 1.087v | 1.087v | ||
| Power Limit | 185W (100%) | 215W (116%) | 215W (116%) | 215W (116%) | 215W (116%) | ||
Naturally, these results cannot be taken as representative of all RTX 2070 Founders Edition cards, but results here can offer some insight.
Although this is more of a cursory look than anything else, the combined overclock provides the best performance, just like it was for the Pascal based cards like the GTX 1080 and 1070. Given the GDDR6-equipped 2070, we would expect memory overclocking to be less effective, though it appears it's necessary for the best overclock here. Ultimately, the combined overclock can make up some ground, but the extent of its benefits are largely comparable to Pascal cards.
OC Power, Temperature, and Noise
There isn't much to add on the power, temperature, and noise front. The card will heats up a few more degrees, but kept relatively quiet thanks to its open air cooler. The full OC costs about ~30W at the wall in games, bringing it up to 1080 Ti FE levels, though only select games will see an overclocked RTX 2070 surpass the 1080 Ti.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
121 Comments
View All Comments
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.