NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 vs AMD Radeon HD 7970

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 is a desktop graphics card that launched in Q4 2018 with a MSRP of $499. It is built on the Turing GPU microarchitecture (codename TU106) and is manufactured on a 12 nm process.

Memory

The RTX 2070 has 8 GB of GDDR6 memory, with a 1,750 MHz memory clock and a 256 bit interface. This gives it a memory bandwidth of 448 Gb/s, which affects how fast it can transfer data to and from memory. GPU memory stores temporary data that helps the GPU with complex math and graphics operations. More memory is generally better, as not having enough can cause performance bottlenecks.

Cores and Clock Speeds

The RTX 2070 includes 2,304 CUDA cores, the processing units for handling parallel computing tasks. The GPU operates at a core clock speed of 1,410 MHz and can dynamically boost its clock speed up to 1,620 MHz. Complementing the processing units are 144 texture mapping units (TMUs) for efficient texture filtering and 64 render output units (ROPs) for pixel processing. Additionally, the GPU features 288 tensor cores optimized for AI-accelerated workloads and 36 RT cores dedicated to real-time ray tracing calculations.

Compatibility & Power Consumption

The RTX 2070 occupies 2 PCIe expansion slots. It supports DVI, HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.4a, USB Type-C display connections. NVIDIA recommends a power supply of at least 450 W to handle the GPU's thermal design power (TDP) of 175 W.

Benchmark Performance & Value

The RTX 2070 has the 71st best 3DMark 11 Performance GPU score among the 543 benchmarked GPUs in our database. It achieves 29.89% of the performance of the best benchmarked GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090. Its 31,260 score and $499 launch price (MSRP) gives it a performance per dollar of 62.65. This is the 51st best in value for the 3DMark 11 Performance GPU benchmark.