NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Review: Breakout Performance At $499

How We Configured Our Test Systems: We tested the graphics cards represented in this article on an ASUS Prime X299 Deluxe motherboard powered by a Core i9-10980XE 18-core / 36-thread processor and 32GB of HyperX DDR4 RAM clocked at 2,933MHz. The first thing we did when configuring the test system was enter the UEFI and set all values to their "high performance" defaults, then we disabled any integrated peripherals that wouldn't be put to use. The memory's clock was dialed in to its optimal performance settings using its XMP profile and the solid state drive was then formatted and Windows 10 Professional x64 was installed and fully updated. When the Windows installation was complete, we installed all of the drivers, games, applications and benchmark tools necessary to complete our tests.

HotHardware's Test System Intel Core i9 Powered

Hardware Used: Intel Core i9-10980XE (3GHz - 4.4GHz, 18-Core) ASUS X299 Prime (Intel X299 Chipset) 32GB Corsair DDR4-2933 Samsung SSD 970 EVO Integrated Audio Integrated Network NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 FE NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 FE NVIDIA Titan RTX NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FE NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Super AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT

Relevant Software: Windows 10 Pro x64 (v2004) AMD Radeon Software v20.8.3 NVIDIA GeForce Drivers v456.16/.96 Benchmarks Used: IndigoBench v4 LuxMark v4_alpha0 SiSoft SANDRA 2020 VRMark 3DMark (Time Spy, Fire Strike, Port Royal) Unigine Superposition Crytek Neon Noir Metro Exodus Red Dead Redemption 2 Gears Tactics Wolfenstein: Youngblood FarCry: New Dawn

SiSoft SANDRA 2020 Cryptography And Image Processing OpenCL Performance Tests

SANDRA's GPGPU Image Processing benchmark runs through an array of filters on its reference data and offers up an aggregate score, derived from a number of individual results. CUDA and OpenCL code paths are available in these tests, but we used OpenCL on all cards to keep the playing field level. Previously, using the CUDA path with NVIDIA GPUs resulted in better performance, but OpenCL actually outperforms CUDA in these tests now...

The GeForce RTX 3070 FE absolutely crushes all of the previous-generation GPUs in SANDRA's image processing benchmark and trails only the higher-end, pricier GeForce RTX 3080.

IndigoBench GPU Rendering Performance

The tables turn slightly with IndigoBench. Here, the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti is able to overtake the GeForce RTX 3070 FE by a few percentage points, but the 3070 finishes well ahead of the RTX 2080 Super and everything below it.

Unigine Superposition Pseudo-DirectX / OpenGL Gaming

Superposition is a relatively new benchmark from Unigine, powered by the UNIGINE 2 Engine. It offers an array of benchmark modes, targeting gaming workloads as well as VR, with both DirectX and OpenGL code paths. There is an extreme hardware stability test built-in as well. Unigine Superposition uses the developer’s unique SSRTGI (Screen-Space Ray-Traced Global Illumination) dynamic lighting technology, along with high quality textures and models, to produce some stunning visuals. We ran Superposition in two modes using the DirectX code path – 1080p Extreme and VR Future -- to compare the performance of all of the graphics cards featured here.

Unigine Superposition

Unigine Superposition's 1080P Extreme test put the GeForce RTX 3070 FE every so slightly ahead of the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, but we're talking about a miniscule delta here. Versus the similarly-priced RTX 2070 Super, the new GeForce RTX 3070 is simply in another league altogether.


Superposition's VR Future test has the GeForce RTX 3070 FE landing smack dab in between the GeForce RTX 2080 Super and RTX 2080 Ti.

UL VRMark Testing Rift And Vive Readiness

UL's VRMark is designed to test a PC’s readiness for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets. The benchmark does not, however, require that one of the headsets is attached to the PC to run and it uses an in-house graphics engine and content to ensure comparable results between different platforms. We ran the "Blue Room" VRMark test at defaults settings here, which is currently the most taxing test offered by the tool.


In VR Mark, the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti jumps out to a sizable lead over the GeForce RTX 3070 FE, but the 3070 has no trouble dispatching the RTX 2080 Super.

UL 3DMark Time Spy Direct X 12 Performance

In the DX12-based 3DMark Tme Spy benchmark, the GeForce RTX 3070 FE just misses the mark set by the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. It finishes well ahead of the RTX 2070 and 2080 Super, however, and leaves AMD's Radeon RX 5700 XT in the dust.

UL 3DMark Fire Strike Synthetic DirectX Gaming

3DMark Fire Strike has multiple benchmark modes: Normal mode runs at 1920x1080, Extreme mode targets 2560x1440, and Ultra mode runs at a 4K resolution. GPU target frame buffer utilization for normal mode is 1GB and the benchmark uses tessellation, ambient occlusion, volume illumination, and a medium-quality depth of field filter. The more taxing Extreme mode targets 1.5GB of frame buffer memory and increases detail levels across the board. Ultra mode is explicitly designed for high-end and CrossFire / SLI systems and cranks up the quality even further. GT 1 focuses on geometry and illumination, with over 100 shadow casting spot lights, 140 non-shadow casting point lights, and 3.9 million vertices calculated for tessellation per frame. GT2 emphasizes particles and GPU simulations.

3DMark Fire Strike

GeForce RTX 3070 Fire Strike Ultra Details

Our results in the DX11-based Fire Strike benchmark show the GeForce RTX 3070 FE outpacing the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti in the Combined Test and Game Test 2, which give it enough of an edge to pull out a higher overall score within striking distance of the Titan RTX.

UL 3DMark Port Royal DXR Ray Tracing Benchmark

Port Royal was released earlier this year as an update to UL’s popular 3DMark suite. It is designed to test real-time ray tracing performance of graphics cards that support Microsoft DirectX Raytracing, or DXR. Although DXR is technically compatible with all DX12-class GPUs, the graphics card must have drivers that enable DXR, and NVIDIA is the only company to have done so at this point, hence the lack of Radeons in the chart.



The GeForce RTX 3070 FE drops in a few percentage points behind the 2080 Ti in the Port Royal Ray Tracing benchmark, though it's nearly 34% ahead of the GeForce RTX 2070 Super.