NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition Review - Ampere can also be efficient, fast and small | Page 16

Game performance

In the following result overviews, I have cumulated the average FPS of all cards and in all games and then calculated and compared this in percentage terms. I have tested 10 games in total and Ultra-HD is still going strong, but we must never forget that this is not a cherry picking, there are games in the selection in every situation that can easily break through the fair weather front.

If you now look at the percentages, we land on average, depending on the resolutions, with a lead of 7.4 to 5.3 percent of the GeForce RTX 3070 FE in front of the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. The gap to the GeForce RTX 3080 FE in Full-HD can almost be described as small, the real defeat only comes in Ultra-HD, where the RTX 3080 is then a full 12 already almost 24% faster. But this is not only due to the potential bottleneck of the RTX 3080 in Full-HD in some situations.

Summarized: This card is a nice offer, especially at lower resolutions up to WQHD, because even if the gap to the GeForce RTX 3080 is quite clear, it’s still enough to easily reach the intended playability despite the memory expansion of 8GB. The right-hand stop of many quality controllers is also included here. Especially when the games of the GeForce RTX 3070 and the new architecture are lying, the mail goes off much faster than with the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. NVIDIA has to admit that, although the real gain is not only visible in pure FPS figures, because efficiency has also increased significantly.

Those who have looked at the page with the variances will also see that especially below Ultra-HD, it often enough results in a much better, because softer image gradient. The FPS or percentiles are still much too coarse intervals to be able to reproduce this very subjective impression well. Only in higher resolutions does it get a bit tighter, but NVIDIA only advertises the card up to 1440p. But it’s currently still sufficient for that.

But the mature customer always has something to complain about anyway (which is good by the way and keeps the suppliers on their toes) and NVIDIA keeps all options open for later on in return, of course, to top a Radeon RX 6800 XL with 16 GB memory expansion with 16 GB (and a little more bang) and to be able to upgrade it. This will certainly be exciting again, but it is still unsalted curd cheese in Jensen’s shop window.

Application Performance and Studio

A total of 17 benchmarks and many hours later one can almost raise more approval in this area than it was already the case with the GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090, since the card acts faster than any Turing card, especially in the designated studio applications, and still remains affordable. Whenever FP32 calculations are involved and you think you are getting closer to the pension every time you render, the RTX 3070 is a nasty spoilsport for Turing, Pascal and the Radeons.

Partially, even a Quadro RTX 6000 with 24 GB memory is reached or beaten, which definitely demands respect. NvEnc has been making life easier since Turing, but if all the postprocessing filters get a good run now, you can be happy with the GeForce RTX 3070, too. With Decode and Encode for many 4K clips in the time line anyway. Constant 24 FPS are not to be sneezed at, the competitor unfortunately (still) has the disadvantage.

And because we were just talking about moving images, the new amp cards support AV1 natively in the decoder (Intel’s Xe will probably do the same). But why AV1? The codec is up to 50% more efficient than H.264, which means you only need half the Internet bandwidth to transmit the same quality – including HDR and even 10-bit encoding. This could be up to 8K – theoretically. Unfortunately, even among cable providers, the practice of Germany looks rather meagre. But the beginnings have been made and somehow the will counts, even if I miss the 8K-TV.

In summary: Yes, you can work quite well and efficiently with the GeForce RTX 3070 and you can find it even nicer than the RTX 3080, because it is much cheaper and above all available. The 3D-community is happy because the Gelbeutel is finally playing again. With OptiX, the GeForce RTX 3070 also mutates to a Turing and Pascal cannibal, because it acts faster than the Quadro RTX 6000 or the Titan RTX. Which of course also applies to video editing and all those workstation or CAD applications that do not require certified and optimized drivers for sprinting. In general, Ampere do not cut a bad figure here and the RTX 3070 even hangs closer to the sweet spot.

GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition

The in-house Founders Edition is relatively small, cuddly, quiet and relatively cool. It is always better than its predecessors and at a much lower price. Optically and haptically the part is cute, only the 12-pin adapter still looks ugly. The cooler lives up to its name and it is comforting to know that it can do both: cool AND quiet. Of course this is not, even if a small lapse was found. But this can be remedied quickly and cheaply. And since there are no seals, you can treat yourself to that. But there is a separate article on this. There is nothing more to write about the currently smallest Ampere-FE.

Conclusion and final remark

In general, the GeForce RTX 3070 is an all-around success, because it is faster than a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, costs less than half the price and has become significantly more efficient. For a final assessment, including that of the market positioning, one will, however, have to wait for the launch of the new Radeon graphics cards. I already wrote that NVIDIA’s feature set ranges from the usual RTX components such as raytracing and DLSS 2.0, to various RTX software (video, voice) for the end user, to the entire studio and workstation applications.

Especially in the semi-professional areas, AMD is currently rather at a disadvantage and it will have to wait and see what will be launched on 28.10.2020 in addition to the new hardware. So everyone will have to set their own premises and ask themselves what value which feature and use case really has (or not) for them. A review can’t take this decision away from anyone, it’s up to each person to decide for themselves.

Boundless euphoria or even prejudices are always a bad advisor, even when it comes to memory expansion, drivers, software features and the entire infrastructure. Everyone has different preferences and demands, which can certainly stimulate the market. Just gambling, working or both? The customer is the winner this time, that much is certain even without a company affinity. And that’s a good thing too!

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