GeForce RTX 2070 Review With EVGA: Turing's Sweet Spot

The staggered roll-out of NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX series of graphics cards continues today with the release of the GeForce RTX 2070. NVIDIA and its partners are at the ready with a wide array of board designs at price points starting at $499. We’ve got a somewhat pricier, all-custom EVGA board on tap for you here that’s packing a dual-fan cooler, configurable RGB lighting, and interchangeable colored accents, the EVGA GeForce RTX 2070 XC.

EVGA has a few RTX 2070 cards coming down the pipeline with various cooler configurations and clocks. The EVGA GeForce RTX 2070 XC is actually one of the tamer models, that’s clocked similarly to NVIDIA’s own Founder’s Edition. The card’s specifications are listed below, alongside the other members of the GeForce RTX family, so you can see exactly how things stack up. You’ll want to stick around for the benchmarks though, because the GeForce RTC 2070’s performance may surprise you...

EVGA GeForce RTX 2070 XC Specifications & Features

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The GeForce RTX 2070, RTX 2080, and RTX 2080 Ti are all based on different GPUs. They leverage the same underlying architecture, and have similar feature sets (except for one), but each GPU offers a different level of performance.

As you can see in the specifications listed above, the NVIDIA Turing-based TU106 GPU powering the Radeon RTX 2070 has fewer CUDA, Tensor, and RT cores than the higher-end, TU104-based GeForce RTX 2080, but it has an identical memory configuration. Step all the way up to the RTX 2080 Ti, however, and core counts and memory increase once again.


The TU106’s reduced core count translates into a somewhat smaller die size, which in turn brings costs down versus its big brothers. One feature that’s missing on the TU106-powered GeForce RTX 2070 is support for SLI with NVLink – there are no NVLink and traditional SLI connectors on the board at all. At the RTX 2070’s position in the GPU stack, NVIDIA claims multi-GPU configurations are much less common. Couple that with the decrease in popularity (and compatibility) of multi-GPU setups and that’s NVIDIA's reasoning for its omission here.
Looking specifically at the EVGA GeForce RTX 2070 XC we’ll be featuring here, its specifications are right-in line with NVIDIA’s Founder’s Edition GeForce RTX 2070. Standard RTX 2070’s, however, have a slightly lower GPU boost cock (1620MHz vs. 1710MHz).

Like all of the other cards in EVGA’s RTX line-up, the EVGA GeForce RTX 2070 XC features a totally new design. It is a complete departure from EVGA’s previous-gen cards and is outfitted with a new, more powerful cooler and custom PCB. EVGA has even overhauled its packaging design, which is now more premium as well.
The card features new Hydro Dynamic Bearing (HDB) fans that EVGA claims emit less noise, though they also have a longer a lifespan than traditional axial fans. The fans feature newly designed blades and a hub tuned for quieter operation. And underneath those fans is a dense heatsink array with L-shaped fins, and a base that’s punched from a solid sheet of metal. There’s a stylized metal plate on the backside of the PCB to help dissipate heat and add some rigidity as well. And, of course, the EVGA GeForce RTX 2070 XC is packing customizable RGB lighting too.
The fan shroud is translucent as well and can be removed to swap out the colored-accents behind it. This card has white trim, but other colors will also be available – EVGA is actually running a promo where users that register their RTX-series cards can get a free trim kit in the color of their choice. A metal shield option will also be available, along with a hydro-copper water cooling kit.
Outputs on the EVGA GeForce RTX 2070 XC mirror NVIDIA’s reference design, though the case bracket on this 2.75-slot wide card is very different. The supplemental power plugs are the same too (one 6-pin, one 8-pin), but EVGA incorporates tech that allows for real-time wattage monitoring via its Precision X1 utility to add an additional level of control.

We should also mention that EVGA has a huge array of GeForce RTX cards coming – 31 by our last count – and the XC is one of the more straight-forward models. There are cards with updated ICX2 cooling coming, triple fan designs, and additional power phases too.