the graphics card to buy urgently

Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3070 graphics card has been officially on the market for a big week. Good luck finding it, it’s still very complicated. It might remind you a bit of what’s going on with its big sisters, the RTX 3080 and 3090. They too were an immediate success and, although Nvidia delayed the arrival of the 3070 for 15 days, that didn’t. was not enough to sufficiently fill the stocks.

But the restocking was underway at the beginning of the week, and others must intervene on a regular basis until the end of the year. In any case, this is what the French spokespersons for the brand have assured us and repeated.

After having offered you the first tests in the middle of last week, we are now in a position to reveal our conclusions to you. But, before I tell you, let’s be clear on one point: if you want to play full 4K, the RTX 3070 is not going to give you satisfaction. You will then have to turn to the 3080.

Read also – Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 review: the powerful graphics card to play perfectly in 4K on a PC

On the other hand, if you are still equipped with a recent Full HD or 1440p screen, compatible or not G-Sync, whose screen climbs to more than 120 Hz, and you have not planned to switch to 4K in 12 months to come, here is the card you need.

However, this RTX 3070 must be associated with a recent technical platform to give the best of itself.

Our own testing machine sometimes struggled to satisfy its appetites. Still, she’s no small gamer: a 10-core Intel Core processor (Extreme, the 7900X), 32GB of overclocked DDR4 memory, and a 1TB Samsung 960 Pro SSD sometimes struggled to keep up.

Full HD: a walk in the park

Nvidia made no secret of this when launching the new RTX Serie 30s. The RTX 3070 is unquestionably made for gamers who love Full HD without compromise. It offers the same performance as the RTX 2080 Ti and is even much more comfortable than this juggernaut. And for good reason: she is not a victim of the “bottleneck syndrome (CPU bottleneck) ”That can be found with the 2080 Ti.

The amount of GDDR6X memory (8 GB on the 3070 versus 11 GB on the Ti) and the size of the bus (256 bits versus 352 bits) are much better proportioned to the speed with which information can pass between the CPU and the GPU when this is to limit the polygons to 1080p.

The proof ? Here it is, below.

The RTX 3070 manages to hold its own against the RTX 2080 Ti and even surpasses it. Exceptionally, for Full HD tests, we have introduced the RTX 2060 Super instead of the RTX 3080. The former is much better suited to this definition than the latter.

Moreover, even today, the RTX 2060 Super is an excellent card for Full HD and 1440p, know it. Betting on it is not at all a losing bet for your next gaming adventures on PC.

Moreover, if we take all of our tests, not shown below, the RTX 3070 is:

• 39,4% faster than the RTX 2060 Super
• 18% faster than the RTX 2070 Super
• 1,5% more comfortable than the RTX 2080 Ti

The introduction is brutal but revealing: the RTX 3070 has nothing to envy to the RTX 2080 Ti in 1080p. If the Ti is clearly disproportionate for this definition of image, the 3070, it is in its little shoes and is clearly a hit. Note, if you add ray tracing to the recipe, the two cards continue to play a game almost all the time.

The 1440p, it was designed for that and excels at it

For the 1440p tests, the RTX 2060 Super is fired and the RTX 3080 is reintroduced into the landscape. This is the minimum definition for this monster to start showing its fangs. Two Serie 20 RTXs, two Serie 30 RTXs and always our Radeon RX 5700 XT to represent AMD’s colors until the Radeon RX 6800, 6800 XT and 6900 XT arrive between mid-November and mid-December.

It’s hard not to see that the RTX 3070 holds its own against the RTX 2080 Ti in almost all of the tests above. Sometimes she’s ahead, sometimes bumper to bumper, but never left behind.

On all of our tests, not shown below, and 1440p in games without DLSS or RTX, the RTX 3070 is, on average,:

• 43% more efficient than the Radeon RX 5700 XT
• 27,5% more efficient than the RTX 2070 Super
• 3,3% more efficient than the RTX 2080 Ti
• 13% less powerful than the RTX 3080

Since we tell you it’s made for that, do you believe us now?

No more comfortable than the RTX 2080 Ti in 4K

Compared to the old top of the Serie 20 range, the youngest in Serie 30 has nothing to be ashamed of here again. Despite the difference in the amount of memory and a reduced memory interface, two elements that weigh heavily when addressing the issue of 4K, the 3070 remains in the race. Without being perfectly at ease there.

The architects of this success are the new CUDA units, the increasing frequency of video memory, but also the management of resources and the way in which information is managed by the Ampere architecture.

As our graphics above show, the RTX 3070 is only really comfortable in 4K in competitive FPS type games (Rainbow 6 Siege) and in car racing games (Power).
In the same vein, the MOBAs (DoTA 2, LoL) or sports games (FIFA et al) will run smoothly, fear not. But for adventure games, open world games, whether new or not, it’s going to be a bit tight.

The 30 frames per second (fps) threshold is exceeded, but few games reach the sacrosanct bar of 60 fps, which guarantees both fluidity, beauty and responsiveness to the title, in all circumstances.

In 2160p, in all of our events, the RTX 3070 is, on average,:

• 35,2% more efficient than the RTX 2070 Super
• 2% more efficient than the RTX 2080 Ti
• 21% less powerful than the RTX 3080

With the RTX 3070 in 4K, it is better to revise the details downwards or add a little DLSS so that CUDA units and Tensor Cores can help each other.

Flexible DLSS and RT

We have used games and applications capable of highlighting the performance of Nvidia RTX cards when it comes to powering all engines. Below are the scores when only ray tracing or DLSS are activated or when the talent of both technologies is combined.

Read also – Nvidia RTX: what results for games and, above all, for gamers?

We have not graphed the performance of the RTX 3070 in 4K with ray tracing and / or DLSS enabled on compatible games.

Note, however, that depending on the game engines, the RTX 3070 is doing more or less well. An example: in Wolfenstein Young Blood, by combining DLSS and ray tracing, it manages to stay between 80 and 100 fps. Conversely, in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, it oscillates between 50 and 60 fps.

The results, in 4K, under these conditions of use are as follows:

• 37,9% better than the RTX 2070 Super
• 0,6% less than the RTX 2080 Ti
• 27% less comfortable than the RTX 3080

At the take, she puts everyone in agreement

Impossible to finish this test without talking about consumption first and heating and noise then.

Let’s start by clarifying that the location of Nvidia’s proprietary 12-pin plug is really not ideal on the Founders Edition model.
To make clean assemblies without too many visible cables, it is missed since the adapter 12 pins to 1 socket 8 pins PCI-E will come crashing right in the middle of the scene. Hopefully partner brands soon offer more discreet and efficient solutions.

Now let’s move on to consumption. The graph below is clear enough: the RTX 3070 swallows less than the RTX 2080 Ti while offering similar benefits, as we have seen. It’s impressive.

According to our evaluation criteria, she picks up easily the card title with the best value for money and the best performance-watt consumption ratio on the current high-end market.

On the heating side, on the other hand, we are quite disappointed with the services of the card. Neither the chip nor the memory are overcooked, rest assured. But the way this RTX 3070’s cooling device is designed isn’t as convincing as that of its big sisters.

The back plate heats up a lot and the hot air is propelled up the case by the fans. Now, in the route of all those calories is your rig’s CPU cooler – if you’ve chosen that cooling solution.

It seems that Nvidia assumed that all current gaming machines were cooled with a water-cooling system when they designed the cooling of the RTX 3070. This is not the case with our test platform or our personal game machine.

Usually, the Noctua radiators on our platform are at the right temperature even during intensive testing phases. But there, during the tests of the RTX 3070, the fins tended to heat up (and they are not used to it). The probes confirmed it to us: + 5 ° C to 10 ° C on the CPU and the motherboard.

Let’s end with noise and … nothing. No runaway fans, no nuisance to deplore.

Better, as on the RTX 3080, the two rotors come to a complete stop when the components of the 3070 are not under heavy strain. Nvidia has finally implemented the “0 fan” on its GeForce Founders Edition. It was time.