EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra review: Frigid, silent, and built to overclock - mcraeopoetinat

The GeForce RTX 3070 is a wondrous GPU, delivering face-melt performance on a par with that of the former $1,200 RTX 2080 Ti flagship for a stunning $700 less, As we covered in our comprehensive RTX 3070 Founders Edition look back. Nvidia's Founders Variation is a fine option if you plan to simply hold fast your graphics card into your system and grow to playing. But if you want to push your hardware's carrying out to the brink of what's possible, consider EVGA's GeForce RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra.

Like the fantastic EVGA RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra, this 3070 incarnation costs a steep premium—$610, versus the Nvidia FE's $500—but you'rhenium paying for every overclocking-friendly feature you could ask in for. Spell Nvidia shrank the RTX 3070 Founders Edition design, which sick noise levels, EVGA perplexed to a husky 3-slot build for the FTW3 Ultra, exploitation non-buoyant metal to tame the International ampere GPU inside. EVGA supplemented the massive ice chest with all sorts of tools that make IT easier to top the 3DMark leaderboards, like dual BIOSes, several integrated temperature sensors to monitor various parts of the card, a dedicated sports fan hold header, and more.

Does it add up to spend over $600 on a fuddled RTX 3070 when you can upgrade to the untold more reigning RTX 3080 for precisely $100 more than? And does AMD's looming $579 Radeon RX 6800 vary the equation? Rent out's canvas the EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra.

EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 FTW3 Immoderate specs, features, and design

Here's a recap of the GeForce RTX 3070's key technical specifications, compared against its direct predecessor, the $500 RTX 2070, as well A the $1,200 RTX 2080 Cordyline terminalis with which information technology trades blows in gambling performance.

EVGA changes only 2 key inexplicit field of study specs with the RTX 3070 FTW3 Radical, with the rest of its rejiggering dedicated to the cooler design and extra features. Virtually people will notice the increased clock speeds first. While the RTX 3070 reference specification hits a 1,725MHz boost clock, EVGA cranked the FTW3 Ultra equal to 1,815MHz, a 90Hz increase. That gives it an out-of-the-package rise in gaming frame rates. It's a small dislodge, but as you'll see in our benchmarks section, it's enough to move past the RTX 2080 Ti bad very much across the board—something that Nvidia's Founders Edition couldn't quite manage.

If you're buying this card, though, you'Ra probably non preparation to adhere stock speeds. Just as important to the FTW3 Ultra's mission is its increased power requirements. Store RTX 3070 cards draw 250 watts over a one-person 8-trap power connector, upcoming from a advisable 550W king supply. In its go after overclocking glory, the FTW3 Ultra bumps that up to a pair of 8-pin top executive connectors and recommends hooking the card functioning to a sturdier 650W index supply. (In that location's no need to diddle with ugly 12-pin adapters like you do with Nvidia's Founders Edition, however.)

dsc pins — The twofold-BIOS change over is to the left of the treble 8-tholepin mightiness connectors.

EVGA puts the power to good use. This custom lineup ships from the factory with a higher 275W tycoo limit enabled. Overclockers backside crank the business leader limit up other 11 pct (to 305W) in GPU software like's EVGA's stellar Precision X1. Modern Nvidia GPUs get quicker when you feed them more world power, and like EVGA's other FTW3 options, the 11-pct great power limit increase is likely higher than what you'll see in most contende custom RTX 30-serial GPUs.

EVGA cursed a gargantuan triple-time slot cooler in its bay for overclocking supremacy. The FTW3 Ultra measures 11.8 inches provident and 5.4 inches wide, and a chunky trey slots thick.

The EVGA FTW3 Ultra is such larger than Nvidia's RTX 3070 Founders Variant.

The design largely (but not exactly) mirrors the custom tank included with the step-rising RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra, which we sealed in depth in our review of that card. In brief, the RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra includes a massive heat sink infused with sixfold copper estrus pipes. EVGA says information technology redesigned the heat slide down to allow bare to relocation Sir Thomas More freely throughout, then matched that with cut away-outs in the custom PCB and atomic number 13 backplate to rent out flow of air through the lineup (perhaps in a nod to the Founders Edition's unique flow-through design).

It's topped by three larger second-generation "HDB" fans in its wavelike shroud. They won't kick on until the GPU becomes stressed, creating a silent desktop experience. Each fan is independently controlled to major react to the temperature needs of the hardware directly underneath information technology.

That pulverised temperature see is a key selling signal for EVGA's graphics card. Most GPUs only report singular measurements for GPU and maybe VRM temperatures. The RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra packs not one, non two, but nine extra iCX3 sensors embedded end-to-end the card, rental you see temperature readings for distinguishable parts of your GPU, memory, and voltage regulation systems. EVGA introduced iCX technology in the GeForce GTX 1080 Superclocked 2 following a (mostly overblown) temperature reduction controversy. It corpse a killer exclusive feature for artwork card nerds. If you're overclocking the FTW3 Ultra to its limits in a bid to top competitive leaderboards, the iCX sensors are an invaluable resource. It's to a lesser extent useful (but ease cool) if you aren't into loyal tinkering.

Bottom credit line, though? EVGA's solid custom cooling solvent rocks when secured onto the RTX 3070. Nvidia's Founders Edition card maintained a chilly 72 degrees Celsius under burden, just EVGA's card ne'er topped an absolutely frigid 62 degrees steady nether extended duress.

The EVGA FTW3 Ultra also includes a metal backplate.

There are more receive extras for overclockers as good, including a dual-BIOS switch on the edge of the card. We test with the stock BIOS, just the secondary "OC" BIOS increases devotee speeds to reduce temperatures and hand down Nvidia's GPU Boost feature more thermal headroom to possibly hit high clocks. That's handy as-is for people who prefer unitary setting or the other, but a dual-BIOS switch is preciously for overclocking. If you push things too far with an overclock and shut awa your system, being healthy to sky a switch to a secondary BIOS to get back in and start troubleshooting is a godsend.

EVGA also equipped the FTW3 Ultra with a PWM fan header on the end of the card. You can plug one of your case's PWM fans into IT and have the fan glucinium intelligently harnessed right away aside the graphics card's temperature, rather than by your motherboard. Rival graphics cards like Asus ROG Strix have offered this before, and it's most useful if you use your card to control a front line case sports fan pointed directly at the GPU. Next to the fan header, you'll line up an ARGB header that you can plug into your motherboard to tie it together with your graphics card's chosen lighting.

Both features butt be regimented via EVGA's clean, easy-to-use Precision X1 software, which also provides admittance to iCX monitoring, an on-screen display that shows vitals during gaming, and overclocking controls—including an easy-peasy OC Scanner tool for modest one-click overclocking even to your specific GPU's particular capabilities.

The 3080 FTW3 Ultra's light strip (top) blends more thoughtfully into the card's figure than the 3070 FTW3 Ultra's strip (bottom) when the ignition is disabled.

Like its 3080 sib, the EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra features a large, enthralling RGB light strip along it edge. The color of the RGB strip when you have the RGB off looks different—worse—on the RTX 3070 version, though. On the RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra, the slip looks metallic, with EVGA and GeForce logos emblazoned on it in white letters. The 3070 version flips that, using dark letters against a milklike-White translucent strip. I'm not a winnow. The 3080 FTW3 Ultra looks esthetic with the RGB lights on surgery off, only that white chunk sticks out the likes of a sore riffle on the differently dark 3070 FTW3. It's gorgeous when illuminated, though.

Speaking of aesthetics, information technology's worthy noting that our 3070 FTW3 Ultra still includes the…polemical…redness trim on both ends of the tease, which in spades looks proscribed of berth on this design. EVGA tells me that all production models that hit the streets will have black trim instead. Hallelujah.

black trim evga 3070 ftw3 — Adios, red trim, hello embrasure report

That plays into some other reason to consider this card: EVGA is known for being very susceptible to client feedback. The company gets high marks round the web for its stellar customer service and EVGA Measure-Up Syllabu, and it North Korean won the hearts of enthusiasts in recent weeks when it instituted a line up-based system for orders on its RTX 3080 and 3090 offerings, in the face of ongoing overwhelming demand for Nvidia's new GPUs.

As an RTX 30-serial publication GPU, the FTW3 Extremist also supports AV1 decipherment, HDMI 2.1, Nvidia Reflexive, RTX IO, Nvidia Broadcast, Shadowplay, and more. Check out our RTX 3080 Founders Edition review for a fuller list of GeForce features.

But enough design talk. Let's get to the benchmarks.

Our test system

Our dedicated graphics card test system is a couple of age old, but it's packed with some of the fastest complementary components available to put any potential execution bottlenecks squarely on the GPU. Most of the hardware was provided by the manufacturers, but we purchased the cooler and storage ourselves.

Intel Core i7-8700K central processor ($300 happening Amazon) overclocked to 5GHz all cores
EVGA CLC 240 closed-loop topology liquid tank ($105 on Amazon)
Asus Maximus X Hero motherboard
64GB HyperX Predator RGB DDR4/2933 ($355 connected Amazon)
EVGA 1200W SuperNova P2 big businessman supply ($352 on Virago)
Barbary pirate Quartz glass 570X RGB case, with front and top panels abstracted and an extra behind fan installed for improved airflow
2x 500GB Samsung 860 EVO SSDs ($70 each on Amazon)

We're comparing the $610 EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra against Nvidia's $500 GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Variant, of track. We're also including Nvidia's $800 GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition, $1,200 RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition, $800 RTX 2080 Founders Edition, and $500 RTX 2070 Founders Version, as well as AMD's $400 Radeon RX 5700 XT, which twinned or even beat the RTX 2070's carrying into action in galore games despite opening at $100 less. For comparison against a wider array of GPUs, check over our Nvidia RTX 3070 FE review.

The EVGA RTX 3070 FTW3 Radical in our test system.

We test a kind of games spanning single engines, genres, and graphics Genus Apis (DirectX 11, DX12, and Vulkan). Each courageous is reliable using its in-game benchmark at the highest possible nontextual matter presets unless otherwise noted, with VSync, frame pace caps, real-time radiate tracing or DLSS effects, and FreeSync/G-Sync disabled, along with any former vendor-precise technologies like FidelityFX. We've also enabled temporal anti-aliasing (TAA) to push these card game to their limits. We run each benchmark at to the lowest degree three multiplication and listing the average consequence for to each one test.

Let's go under.

EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra gaming benchmarks

The 90MHz mill overclock applied to EVGA's FTW3 Ultra grants it a little performance cost increase in most games over Nvidia's stock-clocked RTX 3070 Founders Edition, so we're going to present these benchmarks without comment. If you deprivation deeper analysis of how the RTX 3070 stacks up against its RTX 2070 predecessor and the RTX 2080 Ti it goes blow-for-blow with, again, check out our thoroughgoing Nvidia RTX 3070 FE review.

EVGA's overclock provided surprisingly significant performance gains in a hardly a specific scenarios that are Charles Frederick Worth highlighting, yet. The FTW3 is considerably faster than Nvidia's Founders Variation in in Gears Tactic at 1080p resolving, and in Rainbow Six Siege at complete resolutions.

Horizon Zero Morning

Yep, PlayStation exclusives are coming to the PC at once. Horizon Zero Dawn hit Steam with few performance issues, but the most egregious ones give birth been mostly absolved up thanks to hard work from the developers, and the halt flat-topped the sales charts for weeks after its publish. It too seems to respond somewhat to PCIe 4.0 scaling, which will make this an interesting inclusion when we shift to a PCIe 4.0-settled system in the future.

Horizon Cypher Dawn runs connected Guerrilla Games' Decima locomotive engine, the similar engine that powers Expiry Stranding. Ambient Occlusion can quiet offer up iffy results if place to Radical, so we test thereupon setting at Medium. Every other visual option is maxed come out of the closet.

Gears Tactics

Gears Tactics puts it own brutal, double-quick-paced spin on the XCOM-alike musical genre. This Notional Engine 4-high-powered game was built from the ground rising for DirectX 12, and we love being able to work a tactics-vogue gritty into our benchmarking suite. Better as yet, the game comes with a plethora of nontextual matter options for Personal computer snobs. More games should commit such loving care to explaining what flipping all these optical knobs awful. You can't use the presets to bench mark Gears Tactics, American Samoa it intelligently scales to work best along your installed hardware, meaning that "Ultra" on one graphics card can load different settings than "Ultra" on a weaker card. We manually put up all options to their highest contingent settings.

Wolfenstein: Youngblood

Wolfenstein: Youngblood ISN't the all but fun spirited in the world unless you can play cooperatively with a buddy, but information technology's a fearless experimentation—and an absolute technical showcase. Continual on the Vulkan API, Youngblood achieves blistering frame rates, and it supports each sorts of cut-edge technologies comparable ray tracing, DLSS 2.0, HDR, GPU culling, serial computing, and Nvidia's Content Adaptive Shading. The game includes a built-in benchmark with two variant scenes; we tested Lab X.

Metro Exodus

One of the scoop games of 2019, Metro Exodus is one of the outflank-superficial games around, too. The latest version of the 4A Engine provides incredibly luscious, ultra-elaborated visuals, with one of the most sensational time period ray trace implementations released notwithstandin. We test in DirectX 12 mode with ray tracing, Hairworks, and DLSS handicapped for our basic benchmarks.

Borderlands 3

Borderlands is bet on! Gearbox's game defaults to DX12, so we do Eastern Samoa well, and it gives us a glance at the ultra-popular Ersatz Engine 4's performance in a traditional shot.

Strange Brigade

Strange Brigade is a united third-someone shooter where a team of adventurers blasts through hordes of mythological enemies. It's a technological showcase, built around the next-gen Vulkan and DirectX 12 technologies and infused with features like HDR support and the power to toggle asynchronous compute on and off. It uses Rebellion's custom Sapphire engine. We test using the Vulkan renderer, which is faster than DX12.

Total Warfare: Troy

The latest game in the popular Total Warfare saga, Troy weight was given away free for its premier 24 hours on the Epic poem Games Store, awheel over 7.5 million copies before it went on priggish sales event. Total Warfare: Troy is built victimisation a modified version of the Total War: Warhammer 2 engine, and this DX11 title looks stunning for a turn-based scheme game. We test the more intensive battle bench mark.

F1 2020

The latest in a long line of successful racing games,F1 2020 is a gem to test, supplying a wide array of both graphical and benchmarking options, making it a much more reliable (and fun) option that theForzaserial publication. It's built along the latest version of Codemasters' buttery-smooth Ego game engine, complete with support for DX12 and Nvidia's DLSS technology. We test 2 laps on the Australia course, with clear skies connected and DLSS dispatch.

Fantas of the Grave Raider

Shadow of the Grave Raider concludes the bring up trilogy, and it's perfectlygorgeous. Square Enix optimized this game for DX12, and recommends DX11 only if you're using older hardware or Windows 7, so we test with DX12.Dark of the Grave Raider uses an enhanced version of the Foundation engine that also poweredRise of the Tomb Raider and includes optional real-fourth dimension ray tracing and DLSS features.

GTA V

This DX11 game that isn't really a ocular barn-burner like the (somewhat wonky) Red Dead Redemption 2, merely it still tops the Steam charts all the time, so we deem it more sacred of examination. RDR2 wish melt your graphics carte, sure, but GTA V remains so popular years after launch that upgraded versions of IT will be available on the next-generation consoles. That's staying power.

We testGrand larceny Automobile V with all options turned to Very Intoxicated, all Advance Art options except extended shadows enabled, and FXAA.GTA Vruns on the Furore engine and has received substantial updates since its initial launch.

Rainbow Six Siege

Like GTA V, Ubisoft's Rainbow Sixer Siege still dominates the Steam charts geezerhood after its launch, and it'll be getting a visual upgrade for the adjacent-gen consoles. The developers have poured a ton of exploit into the pun's AnvilNext railway locomotive over the years, eventually rolling kayoed a Vulkan rendering of the game that we use to test. By default, the game lowers the return scaling to step-up chassis rates, but we set it to 100 per centum to bench mark connatural version operation on graphics cards. Even nevertheless, frame rates surge—particularly with the EVGA FTW3 Ultra's out-of-the-box overclock applied.

Powerfulness pull down, thermals, and noise

We test power draw by looping theF1 2020 benchmark at 4K for about 20 minutes aft we've benchmarked everything else and noting the highest reading on our Watts Up Pro meter, which measures the power consumption of our entire trial run system. The initial part of the pelt along, where completely competing cars are onscreen simultaneously, tends to be the most stern portion.

This isn't a worst-case test. We removed the Core i7 8700K's overclock and specifically chose a GPU-bound game running at a GPU-bound resolution to gauge performance when the graphics card is diaphoresis hard. If you're playing a game that likewise hammers the CPU, you could get wind high overall scheme power draws. Consider yourself warned.

The EVGA FTW3 Ultra draws many power than the Nvidia RTX 3070 Founders Edition, only that's to be expected. This is an overclocked card with a higher power limit enabled for enhanced operation. Even silent, note that the FTW3 Ultra manages to semen well under the RTX 2080 Cordyline terminalis's power demands despite matching or rhythmic its execution in games.

We test thermals by leaving GPU-Z open during theF1 2020 power draw test, noting the highest uttermost temperature at the close.

Here's where EVGA's goliath custom tank shines, straight-grained ahead you start overclocking. Nvidia's RTX 3070 Founders Edition stumble 72 degrees Celsius subordinate load, which is comparable to what we've seen from well-designed custom cooling solutions in the departed. But EVGA's cooler makes Nvidia's stylish temperatures look downright balmy, superior down at a frosty 62 degrees even after long gaming workloads. Even better, piece Nvidia's Fe can be heard while gambling, EVGA's FTW3 Ultra stays essentially silent in the least times, even when we popped off our pillow slip's face panel for a closer take heed.

We've said it before, and we'll state IT again: This is a fantastic tank.

Should you steal the EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 FTW3 Extremist?

If you're an overclocking fancier, or someone who wants the good versions of the graphics cards they bargain, the EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra should definitely be on your shortlist. To help refine your tasty, we'll walk you through the major feature and cost considerations.

There's so much to blab about with the features. The FTW3 Ultra's manufacturing plant overclock pushes this model firmly past the performance of the RTX 2080 Ti, last genesis's $1,200 flagship, while the stock-clocked Nvidia RTX 3070 Founders Edition settles for trading blows. The FTW3 Ultra is an excellent option for 4K gaming, or high refresh rate gaming at 1440p or 1080p resolution, though the 8GB store buffer probably makes IT more suitable for 1440p in the long run.

Better yet, EVGA loaded this card with overclocking-cordial specs to helper you labor performance even further. You get a dual-BIOS switch, a much high power limit, an align of helpful temperature sensors, and the superb Precision X1 software to pull it wholly together.

EVGA sharpens those overclocking chops by equipping the RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra with a monstrous 3-expansion slot cooler. It's process—both unbelievably frigid and utterly silent under full burden using stock settings. The cooler likewise includes a PWM winnow coping that lets you dedicate a case fan to react to your graphics posting's thermals.

Remember that you'll involve a 650W power supply and two 8-pin connectors to flow from this animal, more than the stock RTX 3070 cards require. To make up fair, however, that's more of a benefit than a drawback for the overclocking enthusiasts World Health Organization would buy the FTW3 Ultra.

Now let's flavour at the money. At $610, the EVGA RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra costs $110 to a higher degree the Nvidia RTX 3070 Founders Edition. The RTX 3080 variation of the FTW3 Ultra also costs $110 more its Founders Edition counterpart.

The upcharge rests a little easier with the RTX 3080 model. To advance beyond the 3080, you'd motive to jump to the $1,500 RTX 3090, which costs over doubly as much.

But then, if pure performance is your goal, remunerative $610 for an RTX 3070 might non be worthy when entry-charge RTX 3080s (including the great Nvidia Founders Edition) start at $700. Unless your budget is really tight, stipendiary a little more for the RTX 3080 gives you significantly higher frame rates and a better memory configuration—quicker GDDR6X (the RTX 3070 uses slower GDDR6), and 2GB more of it.

There is a third consideration: AMD. The company's $579 Radeon RX 6800 and $649 Radeon RX 6800 XT could put pricier RTX 3070 card game like this one between a rock and a hard place when they launch along November 18. If Team up Red's claims prove true, AMD's duo could be faster and have more than remembering, though the baseline models won't be anyplace near as beefed-out as EVGA's princely FTW3 Ultra.

It boils down pat to this: The EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 FTW3 Extremist is a antic version of a A-one GPU, full stop. Merely you'll really want to put those overclocking features to good use, or place a premium connected its exceptional cooling and interference performance, to consider picking it up. If you execute pull the trigger on this card (and can fit its heavy girth in your scheme) you won't be disappointed.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/393650/evga-geforce-rtx-3070-ftw3-ultra-review.html

Posted by: mcraeopoetinat.blogspot.com