NVIDIA 2070 CARDS
Is this GPU poised to be the new price performance gaming king? Chris Szewczyk is in the Labs to find out
High end graphics cards have generally trended upwards in size. Triple slot cooling and PCBs protruding well above the PCIe bracket are the norm. With this in mind it’s a real surprise to see just how compact the RTX 2070 Founders Edition is. Small doesn’t mean cheap and ineffective though. We were pleasantly surprised at how much of a jump in quality the RTX 2080 and 2080Ti Founders Edition cards were over their predecessors. At a glance the RTX 2070 Founders Edition looks like a good step forward too.
From the outside, the RTX 2070 Founders Edition looks like a compact version of its big brothers. Gone is the old noisy blower cooler. In its place is a totally redesigned cooler featuring twin 8.5cm axial fans blowing down into a fin array. Users who miss the old blower cooler still have 3rd party options to choose from. The card is surrounded by an aluminium shroud that assists with cooling, as well as providing structural rigidity to the card.
The top of the card features the usual GeForce RTX logo, but of course there’s no NV-link connector available, as the RTX 2070 doesn’t support it. The 8-pin power connector is moved to the side of the card, which helps with cable management and gives a cleaner look if it’s to be shown in a windowed case.
The RTX 2070 Founders Edition offers two DP 1.4 connectors, a single HDMI 2.0b, and somewhat surprisingly in 2018, a DVI-DL port. The PCB is adequate, but nothing more. A basic 6+2 phase VRM powers the GPU and GDDR6 memory. If you’re looking to extract the maximum from the TU106 GPU, then the aftermarket cards with custom PCBs offer a significant step up in component quality. As it is though, the Founders Edition gets the job done and will appeal to users who don’t need their GPU to come with the kitchen sink.
The Founders Edition can’t match the boost clocks of the custom cards but getting within a few percent despite the compact cooler’s handicap is still admirable. It can even game at 4K making it a compelling compact option for a lounge room gaming PC. The card isn’t noisy either.
The RTX 2070 Founders Edition is a good step forward in terms of thermals and acoustics compared to the old blower style cards. While the 2070 is a good card, there’s no doubt that pricing remains a negative and takes away some of the excitement we usually have when reviewing new high-end GPUs. We’ll have to revisit the whole RTX 2000 series once the technology sees widespread use. Here in late 2018, the RTX 2070 is still a very capable gaming card but if you’re playing on a GTX 1080 or higher, the Founders Edition seems like more a of a side-grade. For everyone else, the RTX 2070 is a very fast GPU, perfect for high quality 1440P gaming.