MSI RTX 2070 Gaming Z 8GB Review: 210MHz faster than reference!

As you are likely aware, while Microsoft's DXR update has now started rolling out, we are still waiting for games to implement real-time ray tracing so we can test the real-world performance of a ray traced game. Nvidia did release one demo for the press to use when testing the ray tracing capabilities of the Turing GPUs, however – it’s named ‘Reflections’ and you will likely have seen it plenty of times, it’s the short clip showing two stormtroopers mocking Captain Phasma. You can watch it on YouTube HERE.

While this demo shows an FPS counter while it is running, there is sadly no way to record average and minimum frame rates. The difference in frame rate is noticeable when run with different cards, though, so without being able to provide any exact benchmark figures, we filmed a short video to show you how the ray tracing demo performs with different GPUs:

As we can observe from the video, here are the trends exhibited by our five test cards:

• GTX 1080: The slowest card, the GTX 1080 ran the demo at 6-8FPS, with one or two moments where it jumped to 10FPS but no higher. It also dipped to 5FPS during the elevator scene.
• GTX 1080 Ti: This card ran the demo at between 8-10FPS. It did occasionally peak above 10FPS, but also dipped as low as 6FPS during the elevator scene. It did not look very smooth.
• RTX 2070: MSI's RTX 2070 Gaming Z ran the demo typically around the 33-38FPS mark, and would hit around 43FPS at its peak. In the elevator scene we saw the frame rate dip to around 29FPS.
• RTX 2080: A much better experience here, the RTX 2080 ran the demo between 43-48FPS, with some peaks into the mid 50s. It did drop down to 35FPS during the intensive elevator scene, but overall a smooth viewing experience.
• RTX 2080 Ti: Proving even better still, the RTX 2080 Ti ran the demo around the 55-60FPS mark, with peaks almost at 70FPS. It again dipped to 46FPS, but the trend is clear to see.

Looking at the RTX 2070's performance in this demo, we saw about 4 times the FPS compared to a GTX 1080 Ti – so even though the 2070 has less RT cores than the 2080 and 2080 Ti, it still has a clear advantage over the 1080 Ti.

We can't yet say how this will translate into real-world game performance, however – but all the signs are there that the Turing cards will be able to deal with ray traced games significantly better than Pascal.

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