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

1. Introduction2. MSI RTX 2070 Gaming Z 8G3. Testing Methodology4. 3DMark (1080p, 1440p, 4K)5. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (1080p, 1440p, 4K)6. Far Cry 5 (1080p, 1440p, 4K)7. Ghost Recon: Wildlands (1080p, 1440p, 4K)8. Middle Earth: Shadow of War (1080p, 1440p, 4K)9. Shadow of the Tomb Raider (1080p, 1440p, 4K)10. Ray Tracing Tested11. DLSS Tested12. Clock Speed13. Temperatures14. Acoustics15. Power Consumption16. Overclocking: 3DMark and Games17. Overclocking: Thermals, Acoustics, Power18. Closing Thoughts19. View All Pages

Back in August, Nvidia announced its new RTX 20-series cards based on the Turing architecture. Three cards were announced – the RTX 2080 and 2080 Ti, which launched almost a month ago, and the RTX 2070. With a lot made over the high prices of the 2080 and 2080 Ti cards, the RTX 2070 has almost gone unnoticed – until now that is, as today we can publish our first 2070 review.

The card in question is not the Nvidia Founders Edition, however – but the MSI RTX 2070 Gaming Z 8G. This is MSI's flagship 2070 model, with features including a custom PCB, a hefty factory overclock and – of course – bling-tastic RGB lighting. With an MSRP of £605.99 it comes in almost £40 more expensive than Nvidia's Founders Edition, so the question is – how competitive can it be at this price?

GPU	RTX 2080 Ti (FE)	GTX 1080 Ti	RTX 2080 (FE)	GTX 1080	RTX 2070 (FE)	GTX 1070
SMs	68	28	46	20	36	15
CUDA Cores	4352	3584	2944	2560	2304	1920
Tensor Cores	544	N/A	368	N/A	288	N/A
Tensor FLOPS	114	N/A	85	N/A	63	N/A
RT Cores	68	N/A	46	N/A	36	N/A
Texture Units	272	224	184	N/A	144	120
ROPs	88	88	64	64	64	64
Rays Cast	10 Giga Rays/sec	1.1 Giga Rays/sec	8 Giga Rays/sec	0.877 Giga Rays/sec	6 Giga Rays/sec	0.65 Giga Rays/sec
RTX Performance	87 Trillion RTX-OPS	11.3 Trillion RTX-OPS	60 Trillion RTX-OPS	8.9 Trillion RTX-OPS	45 Trillion RTX-OPS	6.5 Trillion RTX-OPS
GPU Boost Clock	1635 MHz	1582 MHz	1800 MHz	1733 MHz	1710 MHz	1683 MHz
Memory Clock	14 Gbps	11 Gbps	14 Gbps	10 Gbps	14 Gbps	8 Gbps
Total Video Memory	11GB GDDR6	11GB GDDR5X	8GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR5X	8GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR5
Memory Interface	352-bit	352-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit
Memory Bandwidth	616 GB/sec	484 GB/sec	448 GB/sec	320 GB/sec	448 GB/sec	256 GB/sec
TDP	260W	250W	225W	180W	185W	150W

 

First of all – it is worth taking a quick look at the RTX 2070 specs as it has been a while since these were first announced. The 2070 uses the TU106 GPU which is equipped with 2304 CUDA cores, 144 texture units and 64 ROPS. As part of the Turing architecture, the 2070 also boasts 288 Tensor cores and 36 RT cores.

Memory is provided by 8GB GDDR6 which is exactly the same as the memory found with the RTX 2080 – so it operates over a 256-bit bus providing 448 GB/s bandwidth, with a stock frequency of 1750MHz.

While the Founders Edition (FE) RTX 2070 has a boost clock of 1710MHz (which is 90MHz faster than reference 2070 speeds), this MSI RTX 2070 Gaming Z 8G ups the boost clock to 1830MHz, though memory is left at stock. There is no dual-BIOS functionality and no need to download software to achieve this speed – meaning it runs at 1830MHz out of the box.

If you're interested in reading more about the Turing architecture, we published a detailed breakdown within our initial RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti reviews. It's obviously the same design as used with the RTX 2070, so all of what you can read there applies to this card as well.

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