Nvidia RTX 2070 SUPER Founders Edition 8GB Review

Launching alongside the RTX 2060 SUPER, Nvidia's RTX 2070 SUPER is the second card being announced today with the aim of taking the fight directly to AMD's soon-to-be released RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT. If you want to see our in-depth review of the RTX 2060 SUPER, be sure to read more over here.

As for RTX 2070 SUPER, this is positioned in between the RTX 2070 and RTX 2080. It uses a cut-down version of the TU104 GPU, with 40 SMs and 2560 CUDA cores. RTX 2080 has 2944 CUDA cores, and RTX 2070 has 2304, so 2070 SUPER slots neatly in the middle. It is also clocked quite high out of the box with a reference speed of 1770MHz.

This high clock speed helps performance of the 2070 SUPER fall a little closer to the 2080 than the 2070, but not by much. On average, across all of our benchmarks, Nvidia's RTX 2080 Founders Edition is 7% faster, while a reference-clocked RTX 2070 is 11% slower.

That means RTX 2070 SUPER effectively matches the performance of the GTX 1080 Ti – with the Pascal flagship proving to be just 1% faster on average across our testing. Accordingly, Radeon VII is barely 3% faster than 2070 SUPER.

So as a gaming graphics card, it is a great option for those with 1440p monitors targeting high frame rates – we saw average frame rates pushing 100FPS at that resolution. 4K gaming is possible, but not at a constant 60FPS unless you opt to lower some image quality settings.

Nvidia's Founders Edition card is another excellent design – though considering it is effectively the same card (minus the added ‘SUPER' bling) as the 2080 Founders, this is to be expected. Temperatures peaked at just 73C on the core which is great for a reference card, while noise levels also proved very innocuous. I look forward to testing a range of (hopefully heavily overclocked) partner cards in the coming weeks.

As for pricing, this is where SUPER makes most sense, as 2070 SUPER is a direct replacement for RTX 2070. In the UK, RTX 2070 started at £459 and 2070 SUPER starts at £475 – so there is a marginal price increase due to changing dollar-to-pound conversion rates, but we're still getting 12% extra performance for 3% higher cost. It's not a particularly exciting launch as a cut-down TU104 isn't anything new, but it represents good value for consumers.

That said, and I said the same in my 2060 SUPER review, the SUPER refresh as a whole doesn't paint Nvidia in the best light. It's taken a direct threat (or a perceived threat, at least) to their market share from AMD's Navi cards for this to happen. But considering the parts themselves are not new – SUPER so far is a cut-down TU106 and cut-down TU104 – that means there was nothing stopping Nvidia releasing these parts in the first place. It's not a new architecture or a new GPU layout, just cut-down versions of what we already had.

Of course, it makes complete business sense. People were buying RTX cards anyway, and now SUPER has a greater chance of mitigating the threat from Navi. From a consumer perspective, however, this is unlikely to help with gamers' overall perceptions of Nvidia and the RTX series.

To be clear, it is good that SUPER is happening now – consumers are now getting better products than what they would've otherwise got for the same money. Could Nvidia have launched these cards as the original RTX models, however? Absolutely.

RTX 2070 SUPER Founders Edition has a UK MSRP of £475, and will be available from July 9.

Pros

• Better bang-for-buck than RTX 2070 it replaces.
• Technically proficient Founders Edition card.
• Decent overclocker.
• Power efficiency beats AMD offerings all day long.

Cons

• It's a refresh, not anything new.
• SUPER makes sense from a business perspective, but RTX early adopters will feel like it's a kick in the teeth.

KitGuru says: RTX 2070 SUPER is a better card than RTX 2070, for essentially the same money. We'll have to see what AMD can bring to the table with its RX 5700 XT later this week.

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