Review — Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Founders Edition – Complicated Equation with Many Unknowns | Launch review

Nvidia's GeForce RTX 2070 is primarily aimed at players with QHD or Full HD displays who want their favorite titles in maximum quality or quality. want to play at a maximum frame rate. However, the older GeForce GTX 1080 serves the same segment, similar to AMD's Radeon RX Vega56 and Vega64. Usable representatives of both cards can now be obtained for less than 500 euros (GeForce GTX 1080, RX Vega56) or just above (Vega64). The GeForce RTX 2070 FE tested here costs a whopping 639 euros in the Nvidia Store.

But: According to Nvidia, the cheapest board partner cards of the new GeForce RTX 2070 should also hit the magic 519-euro price tag, which also makes the hectic chin-ups two weeks before the launch more plausible, so that even the cheaper ones can be non-OC boards to the editorial offices. The recently arrived MSI RTX 2070 Armor, like the Palit RTX 2070 Dual, stands at 519 euros incl. Vat. exactly on this direction number. So it's possible.

 

 

Based on Chris' measurements, it is true that the GeForce RTX 2070 is faster than the GeForce GTX 1080 in the 13 games and two resolutions tested. It would even be without the tiny factory OC of the FE. The TU106-based card also beats the Radeon RX Vega 64 in most performance benchmarks. Although AMD's flagship doesn't look bad in our entire suite, there's a visible drawback, at least in terms of power. Sure, you could manually undervoltage any card again, but the normal user will hardly do so. However, power consumption is not the only criterion for every user.

But what does the customer currently have about opting for a GeForce RTX 2070 and not for the slightly cheaper alternatives? Turing introduces many new features designed to improve the realism of games in the coming weeks and months. But why is the potential customer so dissatisfied with the two cards presented so far and the current prices?

It is a very complex interplay of extremely prominent technologies, which cannot yet be used at all and the performance comparison to the significantly cheaper and hardly slower Pascal-based maps, together with the resulting ( negative) value perception. In past generations, Nvidia has almost always offered us more performance at a comparable, if not better, price. But one has reacted at least in the short term, which makes the GeForce RTX 2070 quite interesting for some, than one might think.

 

 

Conclusion

The new GeForce RTX 2070 is certainly an interesting offer for upgraders from a GeForce 9 series card or equivalent AMD product, but only one side-grade for each player with a GeForce GTX 1070 Ti, 1080 or RX Vega64, so honestly you have to stay in the end. The GeForce RTX 2080 is analogous to all those who already own a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. The GeForce RTX 2080 Ti alone stands out as an unrivalled winner among people who were previously willing to pay 1300 euros for titanium frame rates.

Do you buy Pascal or Turing? No matter, because Nvidia definitely wins. And that's where Nvidia's clever price brake on certain models now comes in to make the GeForce RTX 2070 more palatable to players than the older GeForce GTX 1080 on sale. And yes, you get the newer technology at a very similar price and a certain performance increase for free. Of course, RTX ON has yet to prove itself.

The following graph shows how well this very strong price target affects the price/performance ratio. We simply cumulated the frame rates and put them in relation to the price. While the GeForce RTX 2070 FE with its 639 Euro performs even worse than the GeForce RTX 2080, the 519 Euro cards are even ahead of a GeForce GTX 1070! The price template for this was the cheapest tickets, which are still available today:

In doing so, Nvidia seems to be stoically relying on the (coming) first round of ray tracing and DLSS-enabled games to justify its architecture-based decisions, and is also surprisingly undeterred and consistent in pushing through this attitude. Well, a return would not be possible at this stage anyway. Based on our hands-on experience with various demos, we have no doubt that no one will regret buying a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, as this card has unbeatable advantages outside the RTX microcosm due to its UHD capability.

But whether the GeForce RTX 2070 presented here and today will also be fast enough to make the latest features of Turing really useful will have to be proven. Nevertheless, the cheaper GeForce RTX 2070 are suddenly back in the game, because you get the more interesting package in the end compared to the GeForce GTX 1080 for a small surcharge. This should also be borne in mind when purchasing a new graphics card in this performance segment.

 

Shortly before this launch date, two board partner cards arrived, an MSI RTX 2070 Armor and a Palit RTX 2070 Dual. I quickly re-tested these 519-euro cards overnight and present them in parallel today in a separate individual review

>>> Palit GeForce RTX 2070 Dual in first test

>>> MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Armor in first test