Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Review: Is It Really As Fast As 2080 Ti?

rtx 3070 ampere is back and this time it's more affordable we're assuming there's stock available to purchase that is but nvidia's availability challenges aren't really our concern in this review it's all about the product what it is what it delivers the picture man video going into this one is really simple just two years ago rtx 2080 ti was released raising the bar for gpu performance but doing so at a price 1 000 of your us dollars for the most basic of cards if you could find one rtx 3070 is apparently as fast or faster for half the price starting at 499 bucks a compelling proposition then and here it is a card that has much in common with the 3080 and 3090 we've already looked at but also somewhat different in key aspects rtx 3080 blasted its ga102 silicon with 320 watts of power meaning that although more efficient than 2080 ti in terms of performance per watt powered vort was obviously rather high very high judged by nvidia's previous standards 30 70 tdp or tgp total graphics power much lower at 220 watts by extension this means that the cooling assembly need not be as elaborate so we have the same design language but the dual sided fan arrangement gives away to a more conventional dual axial fan setup it's also a much much smaller card than the 3080 in fact let's take a look at a three-way comparison between 3070 2080 ti and 3080 effectively the more power hungry the card is the bigger it gets and 3070 is the smallest of the bunch with a form factor closer to the last gen 2070 although actually it's around a centimeter or so longer 220 watts is still more power than the 185 that the 2070 founders pulled meaning that there is more refinement in the cooler nvidia says that it's 16 dba quieter than 2070 and has 44 percent higher thermal performance in my experience it's just as discreet as the 3080 which is to say i've got no issues with noise on this one the design retains the apple-like fit and finish seen in rtx 3080 but is simpler and lighter overall we're still using the new nvidia design power input connector there but only half of the pins are actually present in the interface simply because 3070 doesn't need any more power you can see that with the adapter cable you get in the box rather than taking two standard pcie eight pin power inputs there's just one specs wise the new ga104 silicon delivers 5888 cuticles up against the 2304 in the 2070. clock speeds are very similar and the memory interface is basically identical you get eight gigs of gddr6 here spread out over a 256 bit memory interface meaning 448 gigabytes per second of throughput memory speeds are identical as well but 7 000 megahertz perhaps more interesting is the comparison up against 2080 ti it is designed to match in performance terms the cuda core has been revamped but regardless thanks to the eight nanometer process you're still getting more of them in rtx 3070 clocks are a touch higher but the 3070 has to get the job done with a lot less memory bandwidth at its disposal plus a reduction of 40 watts in power now let's look at how efficient the new card is using nvidia's pcat system here an interposer pci express board that also measures pcie power from the power supply we get a fully accurate reading of power consumption compare that to performance in a game and essentially you get a watts per frame metric we measured the power and the performance first of all in gears 5 across a range of cards the 3070 is the most efficient card of the bunch 2080 ti delivers broadly similar performance but requires 18.4 percent more power to do it 3080 and 3090 are less efficient but let's remember the sheer amount of power blasting through the ga102 silicon there finally performance per watt over rx 5700 xt is hugely improved it takes the old navi card 50 percent more power to deliver a frame the power efficiency metrics obviously vary from game to game and titles that favor amd will obviously get a better efficiency rating and so it is with death stranding some interesting results here the 2080 ti founders is again broadly similar actually it tends to be a touch faster than 3070 as we shall discover but it needs 22 percent more power to deliver a frame 10 and 15 more on the power hungry 30 90 and 3080 but small navi is still some way behind it requires 32 percent more juice per frame big navi really doesn't need that big performance for what efficiency boost that amd says it has clearly so i said that 2080 ti is a touch faster overall than 3070 which obviously doesn't quite tie in with nvidia's marketing but before we go deep on actual performance one thing we need to remember is that we're benching the founders edition which actually ships with a 19 megahertz factory overclock and a small bump to tdp over the reference specs so it's not quite apples to apples but my philosophy on benchmarking in most scenarios is that we measure performance out of the box on an actual product not a set of reference specifications so obviously this will skew the results in favor a touch for 2080 ti but i'm sure nvidia would have known that we'll start with the quartet of games that showed the biggest gains for ampere when we looked at 3080 and 3090 and that starts with borderlands 3 which has become something of an unlikely standard bearer for the new line of gpus the red and green lines are the ones you'll be wanting to look at here most specifically and you'll see that despite the 2080 ti is factory overclocked they're pretty much on par in fact across the whole run there is a 0.1 differential so yeah borderlands 3 holds up to nvidia's claims interestingly though at 1440p and 1080p there is a touch more variance one or two points ahead for the 2080 ti still though a strong start for the new card going back to 4k 3080 really shows its strength here delivering an average of 38 percent more performance across the run so yeah an extra 200 for a significant chunk of extra speed i've also included 2070 super here nvidia's last card to sit at the 499 price point but it's a big big increase a 46 point uplift for the new ampere offering of course before 2070 super there was 2070 and before that 1070 and we'll be looking at jen on gem on jen improvements a bit later on in this video control next a run-through of the game's initial area repeatable cutscenes beyond the intro section or pixel for pixel matched gameplay not really possible here and there is no benchmark so there is a slightly larger margin for error here but regardless again it's the red and green lines to consider where the 2080ti founders has a small but noticeably consistent lead over 3070 our numbers give the 2080 ti a 1.8 lead overall a lead that would likely be gone if the factory overclock was removed but yeah we're not doing that again it's interesting to see the grouping here the 2080ti and 3070 in the middle 3080 well well ahead by our reckoning we're seeing a 36 point boost for the 3080 in this scenario likewise though looking at the 2070 super nvidia's last 500 card you're doing great with 30 70. it's a 44 point uplift on to shadow of the tomb raider then and something interesting here a consistent lead across the board for rtx 2080 ti up against 30 70 here so i think at this point it's worth pointing out that we're talking about two cards with similar performance profiles but where the underlying technological makeup is very very different 3070 has a compute advantage but the 2080 ti has a relatively monstrous memory bandwidth by comparison plus the tweak over reference clocks and speaking of clocks we clock 2080 ti founders as having a five point lead over 30-70 and it's there or thereabouts but in a couple of points at 1080p and 1440p as well now our focus is on 4k in this video review but we did bench at 1080p and 1440p2 all of those results are in our eurogamer text review with the fancy interactive bar charts link in the video description below do we turn on next and a benchmark of two halves really in the internal section of the bench 3070 is a bit slower than 2080 ti in common with everything we've seen so far and yes remember that factory overclock once we move outside though 2080 ti has a 9 to 10 frames per second leap which is not insignificant at 4k now doom's ult for nightmare textures are somehow finding the limit of frame buffer memory the actual visual return you get from ult for nightmare textures is not a big deal but it is an example of 8 gigs of memory finding its limit at 1440p the issue goes away but regardless there it is now i'm going to touch on this a bit later on moving on to assassin's creed odyssey and i actually found a win for the 30-70 here over 2080 ti i mean not colossal around three percent to the better across all three tested resolutions 4k 1440p and 1080p there can be some variants run to run on this title mostly because ult for high quality clouds a hugely taxing on the gpu and yes more clouds means more gpu load we aim to bench with clear skies which does take some time interestingly the good performance here drops the 3080 advantage to 28 lower than the norm but yeah up against 2070 super you are getting a good 37 point slice of extra perf again though that is lower than the usual so look i could carry on but i think at this point we have a handle on what the 3070 offers and that is performance that's going to be broadly on par with a reference 2080 ti with the overclocked founders card running up to eight percent faster now far cry 5 i noticed the 2080 ti take a seven point lead and it is more evident on the graphing here than in the other titles we've looked at so far also the case here in metro exodus where again there's a seven point advantage for the 2080 ti the differential can get wider yet so here's the miami benchmark for hitman 2 where 2080 ti founders gets its biggest win over 30 70 at eight percent now at the risk of repeating myself yes the 2080 ti founders has a factory overclock but i don't think these three examples show performance boosts that can be explained by the factory overclock alone a word now on gen on gen on gen comparisons which is likely to be far more relevant to proceedings than 2080 ti comparisons i suspect suffice to say 3070 versus 2070 versus 1070 comparisons are only going to end in one conclusion that the new ampere card annihilates its predecessors i've also included gtx 1080 in these comparisons too because gen on gen head to heads can be comparisons by naming convention only when i think pricing is just as important if not more so 3070 launches as a 500 card just like 2070 but 1070 was just 380 dollars pricing wise 3070 actually sits between 1070 and 1080 both of which are represented here and either way it's no contest board lands 3 first gtx 1070 delivers just 43 of the 30 70s output which rises to 55 with gtx 1080 yup the 1080 was a standout gpu back in the day and now a lower ticket price is giving you almost twice as much performance rtx 2070 is still a good card to this day actually but here well it's delivering just 61 of 3070s performance remedies control next which tends to set fire to older 10 series pascal cards and here 1070 gives you just 36 percent of the 30 70's power rising to 43 with gtx 1080. yeah we are benching at 4k here but again if you look at our text review with 1080p and 1440p metrics you'll see that while the gap lessens at full hd it still doesn't change too much it's still a whitewash 2070 yes 62 of the 3070s performance this thing is looking like a very very nice upgrade option gen on gen and indeed on jen looking at shadow of the tomb raider which dropped pace against rtx 2080 ti if you recall well the uplifts to frame rates are still impressive 1070 and 1080 deliver 44 and 54 of the 30 70s performance while you're still getting a 65 leap in frame rate over rtx 2070 so look these numbers are all looking good those running 10 series cards will get a vastly improved experience plus new features like dlss and raid facing but even 2070 owners might be looking at this offering and considering an upgrade as we move into a transitionary period for gaming where extra performance is really going to matter rate facing performance next well with the new rt core design in place for ampere this is where i'd expect 3070 to match or exceed rtx 2080 ti founders edition factory overclock or not so let's take a look at some results starting with remedy's control in alex batalia's now infamous corridor of doom specifically chosen for favoring rt performance in this hybrid rendered game the result there's a small notional win for 30 70 here but essentially it's like for like in turn though our results show the 2070 giving just 62 of the 30 70's throughput metro exodus with ult for class rt global illumination i still have the 3070 failing the 2080 ti but it's within margin of error and of course factory overclock etc etc perhaps not surprisingly 2070 yields 61 of the 3070s throughput moving on quickly to battlefield 5 this hybrid renderer is a fairly early utilization of rate facing technology enhanced over time but still very much first gen 2080 ti's lead is once again just two percent overall but curiously 2070 fares better here delivering 68 of the 3070s performance level still clearly a decent upgrade though we'll end with quake 2 rtx which is the ultimate late faced workout in that everything here is generated with rt there's little to no traditional rasterization here whatsoever there's a 3.5 percent lead for the 3070 over 2080 ti but once again rtx 2070s coffee up 62 percent of the 3070s output it's interesting to see that in raid faced applications the rtx 3070's relationship with turing cards is a lot more stable than it is with rasterization and i'd say puts it in a pretty good place overall especially since basically all new raid face titles coming with the multiplier effect of dlss which can produce some remarkable results in all cases by battlefield 5 3080 still delivers way more performance anything up to 40 odd percent 3080 it really is a beast which leads me on to the wrap up at 500.3070 is great value but curiously with 3080 you're getting extra performance pretty much in line with the extra money you're paying but there's something else to consider here too which is the this price point the card is more likely to be used for 1440p gameplay where uh the 3080 is rather more likely to have some of its potential limited by the cpu now bear in mind here that we're actually benching with the core i9 10 900k which is the fastest gaming cpu on the planet for how much longer we don't know but in the here and now it is what it is now i do have concerns about the 30s 70s 8 gigs of memory but fewer concerns if you're gaming at 1440p where the vram requirement drops significantly so yeah i'm inclined to think that what 3070 and 3080 deliver are top tier solutions for 1440p and 2160p respectively but clearly i mean this is a 2080 ti class product it'll still be pretty awesome for 4k the thing is though these results can't be seen in a vacuum amd's big navi may well spoil the party but that's a discussion for another day bottom line though rtx 3070 it is what it is rtx 2080 ti class performance at a much cheaper price point give or take a few percentage points overclocking though now i didn't put a huge amount of time into this and i don't profess to be any kind of overclocking expert but on my sample adding 150 megahertz to the core was an insta crash but plus 100 seemed okay and seemed to take core clocks to around 1.96 to 2.07 gigahertz here's how borderlands 3 looks like a stock then with plus 100 of the core and then with plus 600 added to the g6 memory on top of that the core overclock adds four percent of performance with ram on top of that taking that up to 6.4 percent maybe with some more time and effort better results could be possible but suffice to say the 3080 won't be troubled by any 30-70 anytime soon anyway that's all for me 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Channel: Digital Foundry

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Keywords: rtx 3070 benchmarks, rtx 3070 review, rtx 3070 vs 2080 ti, 3070 vs 2080 ti, 3070 vs 2070, digital foundry, review

Id: ul8F0MmRpmY

Length: 19min 32sec (1172 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 27 2020