GeForce RTX 3070: Review Roundup
The GeForce RTX 3070, the last of the previously announced Ampere cards, will be released this week. The reviews of the Founders Edition show: The part actually delivers performance at the level of an RTX 2080 Ti, which until recently cost more than twice as much.
With the Ampere graphics cards, Nvidia delivers an enormous performance boost compared to the predecessor architecture Turing. The first benchmarks of the Founders Edition show that the manufacturer has not promised too much, even with the currently smallest model, the RTX 3070.
The card
The centrepiece of the GeForce RTX 3070 is the GA104 graphics processor. The GA104 is the second-fastest Ampere chip. It is manufactured by Samsung using the 8nm production process. The graphics processor is 392.5 mm² in size and has 17.4 billion transistors. That is almost as many transistors as on the TU102, on which the 2080 Ti is based. At the same time, however, the GA104 is only around half the size.
| Specs | GeForce RTX 3070 | GeForce RTX 2080 Ti | GeForce RTX 2070 Super |
|---|---|---|---|
| CUDA cores | 5888 | 4352 | 2560 |
| Tensor cores | 184 (3rd generation) | 544 (2nd generation) | 320 (2nd generation) |
| RT cores | 46 (2nd generation) | 68 (1st generation) | 40 (1st generation) |
| Boost clock | 1.725 GHz | 1.54 GHz | 1.77 GHz |
| Base clock | 1.5 GHz | 1.35 GHz | 1.6 GHz |
| Memory | 8 GB GDDR6 | 11 GB DDR6 | 8 GB DDR6 |
| Memory Clock | 14 Gbps | 16 Gbps | 14 Gpbs |
| Memory interface | 256 bit | 352 bit | 256 bit |
| Memory bandwidth | 448 GB/s | 616 GB/s | 448 GB/s |
| TGP | 220 watts | 250 watts | 215 watts |
The GeForce RTX 3070 has 46 SM units activated, which means a total of 5888 CUDA cores. In addition to the CUDA cores, the card is also equipped with second-generation ray tracing cores, third-generation tensor cores and the new streaming multiprocessor units.
In terms of memory, 8 GB GDDR6 with a speed of 14 Gbps is on board. Coupled with the 256-bit bus interface, this results in a bandwidth of 448 Gbps. The TGP is 220 watts.
In contrast to the two larger models, the RTX 3080 and 3090, the Founders Edition does not have a push/pull cooling solution, but the familiar one with two axial fans.
What does it do?
Computerbase writes that the card offers a decent performance boost at the level of an RTX 2080 Ti. The German internet portal emphasises that the card offers high frame rates at maximum settings, especially in WQHD. At 2160p resolution, however, it is not enough for a constant 60 FPS. The settings would have to be turned down for this. The only point of criticism mentioned by Computerbase is the memory: 8 GB is likely to be in short supply in the coming years. Apart from that, however, the 3070 does everything right and at a price of 500 euros (for the Founders Edition) it is actually a no-brainer. However, the portal advises users to wait until tomorrow, Wednesday, when AMD presents its Radeon RX 6000 series.
Igor'sLab comes to the conclusion that the RTX 3070 is even faster than the RTX 2080 Ti, costs less than half as much and is significantly more efficient. But he also advises waiting to see what AMD brings. In addition to pure performance, the feature set is also important, but Nvidia is usually ahead in this respect.
Wccftech mentions that DLSS 2.0 should also be activated for games with ray tracing so that the games also run smoothly in 1440p resolution.
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