The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Founders Edition Review: Mid-Range Turing, High-End Price
by Nate Oh on October 16, 2018 9:00 AM ESTAshes of the Singularity: Escalation (DX12)
A veteran from both our 2016 and 2017 game lists, Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation remains the DirectX 12 trailblazer, with developer Oxide Games tailoring and designing the Nitrous Engine around such low-level APIs. The game makes the most of DX12's key features, from asynchronous compute to multi-threaded work submission and high batch counts. And with full Vulkan support, Ashes provides a good common ground between the forward-looking APIs of today. Its built-in benchmark tool is still one of the most versatile ways of measuring in-game workloads in terms of output data, automation, and analysis; by offering such a tool publicly and as part-and-parcel of the game, it's an example that other developers should take note of.
Settings and methodology remain identical from its usage in the 2016 GPU suite. To note, we are utilizing the original Ashes Extreme graphical preset, which compares to the current one with MSAA dialed down from x4 to x2, as well as adjusting Texture Rank (MipsToRemove in settings.ini).
For Ashes, the 20 series in general fare a little worse in their gains over the 10 series, with an advantage at 4K around 14 to 22%. Here, the Founders Edition power and clock tweaks are essential in avoiding any performance regression. For the RTX 2070, Founders Edition specs ensure that it is close enough to virtually tie the GTX 1080 and RX Vega 64, as opposed to lagging behind. The situation is largely similar to the RTX 2080 FE, which needs the tweaks to stay neck-and-neck to the 1080 Ti.
In other words, this scenario is exactly what the RTX 2070 needs to avoid, where it is slightly slower against both GTX 1080 and RX Vega 64. The card is already coming in with a price premium so it's important to firmly faster.
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.