NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 8GB Founders Edition Graphics Card Review

Overclocking The RTX 3070 For 4K Gaming

Overclocking the GeForce RTX 3070 went quite a bit as it did for the RTX 3080. But instead of given a power budget that allowed for a 115% power limit we were treated to only a 109% power limit since we only had a single 8-pin to work with. Now that allowed us to get an additional 50MHz over the stock clock that resulted in a stable 1950-1995MHz core clock. Memory fared much much better with us being able to see upwards of +1250Mhz to the memory but settling on a much more comfortable +1000Mhz making the effective speed 16Gbps with a memory bandwidth of 512GB/s over the stock 14Gbps and 448GB/s.

We went a step further this time and included undervolting here rather than a separate article like we did for the RTX 3080, check that article if you want a guide for how to do undervolt Ampere for hidden efficiency potential.  We settled with the core at 925mV (not as much downward momentum as the RTX 3080) but a core clock of 1900MHz that ran at around 1925Mhz in-game. We set the memory to the same +1000 for an effective rate of 16Gbps and 512GB/s of bandwidth. Looking at the results overall I think it's safe to say the Undervolted core + overclocked memory is the way to go. Time to tune it up, folks!

Firestrike

Firestrike is running the DX11 API and is still a good measure of GPU scaling performance, in this test we ran the Ultra version of Firestrike which runs at 4K and we recorded the Graphics Score only since the Physics and combined are not pertinent to this review.

Time Spy

Time Spy is running the DX12 API and we used it in the same manner as Firestrike Extreme where we only recorded the Graphics Score as the Physics score is recording the CPU performance and isn't important to the testing we are doing here.

Forza Horizon 4

Forza Horizon 4 carries on the open-world racing tradition of the Horizon series.  The latest DX12 powered entry is beautifully crafted and amazingly well executed and is a great showcase of DX12 games.  We use the benchmark run while having all of the settings set to non-dynamic with an uncapped framerate to gather these results.

Rainbow 6 Siege

Rainbow 6 Siege has maintained a massive following since its launch and it consistently in Steams Top Ten highest player count game.  In a title where the higher the framerate the better in a tactical yet fast-paced competitive landscape is essential, we include this title despite its ludicrously high framerates.  We use the Vulkan Ultra preset with the High Defenition Texture Pack as well and gather our results from the built-in benchmarking tool.

Resident Evil 3

The Resident Evil 3 Remake has surpassed the RE2 Remake in visuals and is the latest use of the RE Engine.  While it does have DX12 support the DX11 implementation is far superior and because of that, we will be sticking to DX11 for this title.  We use the cutscene where Jill and Carlos enter the subway car for the first time and a 2 minute capture at that point.

Thermals

Thermals were measured from our open test bench after running the Time Spy graphics test 2 on loop for 30 minutes recording the highest temperatures reported. The room was climate controlled and kept at a constant 22c throughout the testing.

Power Consumption While Overclocked

 

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