Evga Geforce Rtx 2080 Ti Ftw3 Ultra Review

The GeForce RTX 3070 is a fantastic GPU, delivering face-melting performance on a par with that of the erstwhile $i,200 RTX 2080 Ti flagship for a stunning $700 less, as we covered in our comprehensive RTX 3070 Founders Edition review. Nvidia's Founders Edition is a fine pick if y'all program to only stick your graphics card into your system and become to playing. Simply if yous desire to push your hardware'south functioning to the brink of what'due south possible, consider EVGA'south GeForce RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra.

Similar the fantastic EVGA RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra, this 3070 incarnation costs a steep premium—$610, versus the Nvidia Fe's $500—only you're paying for every overclocking-friendly feature you could ask for. While Nvidia shrank the RTX 3070 Founders Edition design, which affected dissonance levels, EVGA stuck to a bulky 3-slot build for the FTW3 Ultra, using heavy metal to tame the Ampere GPU within. EVGA supplemented the massive cooler with all sorts of tools that make it easier to top the 3DMark leaderboards, like dual BIOSes, several integrated temperature sensors to monitor various parts of the card, a dedicated fan control header, and more.

Does it brand sense to spend over $600 on a loaded RTX 3070 when you lot can upgrade to the much more powerful RTX 3080 for just $100 more? And does AMD's looming $579 Radeon RX 6800 modify the equation? Let's examine the EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra.

EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra specs, features, and design

Here'south a recap of the GeForce RTX 3070's key technical specifications, compared confronting its direct predecessor, the $500 RTX 2070, as well equally the $1,200 RTX 2080 Ti with which it trades blows in gaming performance.

EVGA changes only two key underlying technical specs with the RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra, with the rest of its rejiggering dedicated to the cooler design and extra features. Most people will discover the increased clock speeds first. While the RTX 3070 reference specification hits a ane,725MHz boost clock, EVGA cranked the FTW3 Ultra upward to ane,815MHz, a 90Hz increase. That gives it an out-of-the-box boost in gaming frame rates. It's a small crash-land, but equally yous'll see in our benchmarks section, it's plenty to motility past the RTX 2080 Ti pretty much beyond the board—something that Nvidia'south Founders Edition couldn't quite manage.

If you're buying this bill of fare, though, you lot're probably not planning to stick to stock speeds. Just as important to the FTW3 Ultra's mission is its increased power requirements. Stock RTX 3070 cards draw 250 watts over a single 8-pivot power connector, coming from a recommended 550W power supply. In its quest for overclocking glory, the FTW3 Ultra bumps that up to a pair of 8-pivot power connectors and recommends hooking the card up to a sturdier 650W power supply. (In that location's no need to fiddle with ugly 12-pin adapters like you do with Nvidia's Founders Edition, however.)

dsc pins — The dual-BIOS switch is to the left of the dual 8-pin power connectors.

EVGA puts the power to good apply. This custom card ships from the manufactory with a higher 275W power limit enabled. Overclockers can crank the power limit up another 11 percent (to 305W) in GPU software like'due south EVGA'due south stellar Precision X1. Modern Nvidia GPUs get faster when you feed them more ability, and like EVGA's other FTW3 options, the 11-percent power limit increase is probably higher than what you'll see in most rival custom RTX xxx-series GPUs.

EVGA stuck with a gargantuan triple-slot cooler in its quest for overclocking supremacy. The FTW3 Ultra measures xi.eight inches long and v.4 inches wide, and a mesomorphic iii slots thick.

The EVGA FTW3 Ultra is much larger than Nvidia's RTX 3070 Founders Edition.

The design largely (but not exactly) mirrors the custom cooler included with the step-upwardly RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra, which we covered in depth in our review of that card. In cursory, the RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra includes a massive rut sink infused with multiple copper heat pipes. EVGA says it redesigned the heat sink to let air to move more freely throughout, then matched that with cut-outs in the custom PCB and aluminum backplate to allow air period through the bill of fare (perchance in a nod to the Founders Edition's unique period-through pattern).

It'due south topped by three large second-generation "HDB" fans in its wavy shroud. They won't kick on until the GPU becomes stressed, creating a silent desktop feel. Each fan is independently controlled to meliorate react to the temperature needs of the hardware straight underneath it.

That fine-grained temperature command is a key selling bespeak for EVGA'due south graphics card. Near GPUs merely written report singular measurements for GPU and maybe VRM temperatures. The RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra packs not one, not ii, simply 9 boosted iCX3 sensors embedded throughout the card, letting you see temperature readings for different parts of your GPU, retentivity, and voltage regulation systems. EVGA introduced iCX technology in the GeForce GTX 1080 Superclocked ii post-obit a (more often than not overblown) cooling controversy. Information technology remains a killer exclusive feature for graphics card nerds. If you lot're overclocking the FTW3 Ultra to its limits in a bid to acme competitive leaderboards, the iCX sensors are an invaluable resource. It'southward less useful (but nevertheless cool) if you aren't into hardcore tinkering.

Bottom line, though? EVGA's substantial custom cooling solution rocks when bolted onto the RTX 3070. Nvidia'due south Founders Edition card maintained a chilly 72 degrees Celsius nether load, but EVGA's card never topped an admittedly frigid 62 degrees even under extended duress.

The EVGA FTW3 Ultra besides includes a metallic backplate.

There are more welcome extras for overclockers as well, including a dual-BIOS switch on the edge of the card. Nosotros test with the stock BIOS, but the secondary "OC" BIOS increases fan speeds to reduce temperatures and requite Nvidia's GPU Boost feature more than thermal headroom to potentially hit higher clocks. That'southward handy every bit-is for people who prefer i setting or the other, just a dual-BIOS switch is precious for overclocking. If yous button things too far with an overclock and lock upward your organisation, being able to flip a switch to a secondary BIOS to become back in and start troubleshooting is a godsend.

EVGA also equipped the FTW3 Ultra with a PWM fan header on the end of the card. You tin can plug 1 of your example's PWM fans into it and have the fan exist intelligently controlled directly by the graphics card'south temperature, rather than by your motherboard. Rival graphics cards like Asus ROG Strix take offered this before, and information technology'south almost useful if you use your carte to command a front case fan pointed directly at the GPU. Next to the fan header, you lot'll detect an ARGB header that you can plug into your motherboard to tie it together with your graphics carte'due south chosen lighting.

Both features tin can exist controlled via EVGA's clean, piece of cake-to-use Precision X1 software, which likewise provides access to iCX monitoring, an on-screen brandish that shows vitals during gaming, and overclocking controls—including an easy-peasy OC Scanner tool for modest i-click overclocking tied to your specific GPU'south particular capabilities.

The 3080 FTW3 Ultra's light strip (peak) blends more thoughtfully into the card's design than the 3070 FTW3 Ultra's strip (bottom) when the lighting is disabled.

Like its 3080 sibling, the EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra features a large, enthralling RGB light strip along it edge. The color of the RGB strip when you have the RGB off looks dissimilar—worse—on the RTX 3070 version, though. On the RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra, the strip looks metal, with EVGA and GeForce logos emblazoned on it in white messages. The 3070 version flips that, using dark letters against a milky-white translucent strip. I'm not a fan. The 3080 FTW3 Ultra looks beautiful with the RGB lights on or off, but that white chunk sticks out like a sore thumb on the otherwise nighttime 3070 FTW3. Information technology's gorgeous when illuminated, though.

Speaking of aesthetics, it's worth noting that our 3070 FTW3 Ultra withal includes the…controversial…red trim on both ends of the carte du jour, which definitely looks out of place on this design. EVGA tells me that all production models that hit the streets will have blackness trim instead. Hallelujah.

black trim evga 3070 ftw3 — Adios, ruby trim, hello port study

That plays into another reason to consider this card: EVGA is known for being very responsive to customer feedback. The company gets loftier marks around the web for its stellar client service and EVGA Step-Up Program, and it won the hearts of enthusiasts in recent weeks when it instituted a queue-based organisation for orders on its RTX 3080 and 3090 offerings, in the confront of ongoing overwhelming need for Nvidia's new GPUs.

As an RTX 30-serial GPU, the FTW3 Ultra also supports AV1 decoding, HDMI 2.1, Nvidia Reflex, RTX IO, Nvidia Circulate, Shadowplay, and more than. Check out our RTX 3080 Founders Edition review for a fuller list of GeForce features.

But enough design talk. Let's get to the benchmarks.

Our test system

Our dedicated graphics card exam system is a couple of years former, merely it'southward packed with some of the fastest complementary components bachelor to put any potential performance bottlenecks squarely on the GPU. Most of the hardware was provided by the manufacturers, but we purchased the cooler and storage ourselves.

Intel Cadre i7-8700K processor ($300 on Amazon) overclocked to 5GHz all cores
EVGA CLC 240 airtight-loop liquid cooler ($105 on Amazon)
Asus Maximus 10 Hero motherboard
64GB HyperX Predator RGB DDR4/2933 ($355 on Amazon)
EVGA 1200W SuperNova P2 power supply ($352 on Amazon)
Corsair Crystal 570X RGB case, with front end and superlative panels removed and an actress rear fan installed for improved airflow
2x 500GB Samsung 860 EVO SSDs ($lxx each on Amazon)

We're comparing the $610 EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra against Nvidia'south $500 GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition, of course. We're as well including Nvidia's $800 GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition, $1,200 RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition, $800 RTX 2080 Founders Edition, and $500 RTX 2070 Founders Edition, as well as AMD's $400 Radeon RX 5700 XT, which matched or even beat the RTX 2070's performance in many games despite starting at $100 less. For comparing confronting a wider assortment of GPUs, check out our Nvidia RTX 3070 Atomic number 26 review.

The EVGA RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra in our test arrangement.

We examination a variety of games spanning various engines, genres, and graphics APIs (DirectX 11, DX12, and Vulkan). Each game is tested using its in-game benchmark at the highest possible graphics presets unless otherwise noted, with VSync, frame rate caps, real-fourth dimension ray tracing or DLSS effects, and FreeSync/G-Sync disabled, along with whatsoever other vendor-specific technologies like FidelityFX. We've also enabled temporal anti-aliasing (TAA) to button these cards to their limits. We run each benchmark at least three times and list the average result for each test.

Let'south go.

EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra gaming benchmarks

The 90MHz mill overclock applied to EVGA's FTW3 Ultra grants it a slight operation boost in most games over Nvidia's stock-clocked RTX 3070 Founders Edition, so we're going to present these benchmarks without commentary. If you want deeper analysis of how the RTX 3070 stacks upwards against its RTX 2070 predecessor and the RTX 2080 Ti it goes blow-for-blow with, in one case again, check out our exhaustive Nvidia RTX 3070 Iron review.

EVGA'due south overclock provided surprisingly significant functioning gains in a few specific scenarios that are worth highlighting, withal. The FTW3 is substantially faster than Nvidia'southward Founders Edition in in Gears Tactics at 1080p resolution, and in Rainbow Six Siege at all resolutions.

Horizon Zippo Dawn

Yes, PlayStation exclusives are coming to the PC at present. Horizon Zip Dawn striking Steam with some performance issues, but the most egregious ones take been mostly cleared upward thanks to hard work from the developers, and the game topped the sales charts for weeks after its release. It also seems to respond somewhat to PCIe 4.0 scaling, which will make this an interesting inclusion when nosotros shift to a PCIe iv.0-based system in the futurity.

Horizon Zero Dawn runs on Guerrilla Games' Decima engine, the aforementioned engine that powers Death Stranding. Ambient Occlusion can still offer iffy results if set up to Ultra, so we exam with that setting at Medium. Every other visual option is maxed out.

Gears Tactics

Gears Tactics puts it ain brutal, fast-paced spin on the XCOM-like genre. This Unreal Engine four-powered game was built from the ground upwardly for DirectX 12, and we love being able to work a tactics-style game into our benchmarking suite. Meliorate yet, the game comes with a plethora of graphics options for PC snobs. More games should devote such loving care to explaining what flipping all these visual knobs mean. You lot tin can't apply the presets to criterion Gears Tactics, as information technology intelligently scales to work all-time on your installed hardware, meaning that "Ultra" on one graphics card can load different settings than "Ultra" on a weaker card. We manually gear up all options to their highest possible settings.

Wolfenstein: Youngblood

Wolfenstein: Youngblood isn't the nearly fun game in the world unless you tin play cooperatively with a buddy, but it's a fearless experiment—and an absolute technical showcase. Running on the Vulkan API, Youngblood achieves baking frame rates, and information technology supports all sorts of cutting-edge technologies like ray tracing, DLSS 2.0, HDR, GPU culling, asynchronous computing, and Nvidia'due south Content Adaptive Shading. The game includes a congenital-in criterion with two different scenes; we tested Lab 10.

Metro Exodus

One of the all-time games of 2019, Metro Exodus is ane of the best-looking games around, too. The latest version of the 4A Engine provides incredibly luscious, ultra-detailed visuals, with i of the most stunning real-time ray tracing implementations released still. We test in DirectX 12 mode with ray tracing, Hairworks, and DLSS disabled for our basic benchmarks.

Borderlands 3

Borderlands is back! Gearbox's game defaults to DX12, so we do too, and it gives us a glimpse at the ultra-popular Unreal Engine four's performance in a traditional shooter.

Foreign Brigade

Strange Brigade is a cooperative third-person shooter where a team of adventurers blasts through hordes of mythological enemies. It'due south a technological showcase, built around the side by side-gen Vulkan and DirectX 12 technologies and infused with features like HDR support and the ability to toggle asynchronous compute on and off. It uses Rebellion'southward custom Azure engine. We test using the Vulkan renderer, which is faster than DX12.

Total State of war: Troy

The latest game in the popular Total State of war saga, Troy was given away gratis for its first 24 hours on the Epic Games Store, moving over 7.5 million copies before it went on proper sale. Total War: Troy is built using a modified version of the Total State of war: Warhammer ii engine, and this DX11 title looks stunning for a turn-based strategy game. We test the more than intensive battle benchmark.

F1 2020

The latest in a long line of successful racing games,F1 2020 is a gem to examination, supplying a broad assortment of both graphical and benchmarking options, making information technology a much more reliable (and fun) option that theForzaserial. It's congenital on the latest version of Codemasters' buttery-shine Ego game engine, complete with support for DX12 and Nvidia'southward DLSS technology. We test two laps on the Commonwealth of australia form, with clear skies on and DLSS off.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Shadow of the Tomb Raider concludes the reboot trilogy, and information technology's utterlygorgeous. Foursquare Enix optimized this game for DX12, and recommends DX11 only if you're using older hardware or Windows 7, so we test with DX12.Shadow of the Tomb Raider uses an enhanced version of the Foundation engine that also poweredRising of the Tomb Raider and includes optional existent-time ray tracing and DLSS features.

GTA V

This DX11 game that isn't really a visual barn-burner like the (somewhat wonky) Blood-red Dead Redemption ii, but it notwithstanding tops the Steam charts twenty-four hour period in and solar day out, and then we deem it more worthy of testing. RDR2 will cook your graphics card, sure, merely GTA V remains then popular years subsequently launch that upgraded versions of information technology will be available on the next-generation consoles. That'due south staying power.

We examinationYard Theft Car V with all options turned to Very High, all Advanced Graphics options except extended shadows enabled, and FXAA.GTA Vruns on the RAGE engine and has received substantial updates since its initial launch.

Rainbow 6 Siege

Like GTA V, Ubisoft's Rainbow Six Siege notwithstanding dominates the Steam charts years after its launch, and it'll be getting a visual upgrade for the next-gen consoles. The developers have poured a ton of work into the game's AnvilNext engine over the years, somewhen rolling out a Vulkan version of the game that we use to test. By default, the game lowers the render scaling to increase frame rates, simply we set it to 100 percent to benchmark native rendering functioning on graphics cards. Fifty-fifty all the same, frame rates soar—especially with the EVGA FTW3 Ultra'south out-of-the-box overclock applied.

Power draw, thermals, and noise

We test power depict by looping theF1 2020 benchmark at 4K for about 20 minutes later on we've benchmarked everything else and noting the highest reading on our Watts Up Pro meter, which measures the power consumption of our unabridged test system. The initial function of the race, where all competing cars are onscreen simultaneously, tends to be the most demanding portion.

This isn't a worst-case exam. We removed the Core i7 8700K's overclock and specifically chose a GPU-bound game running at a GPU-bound resolution to guess performance when the graphics card is sweating hard. If you lot're playing a game that also hammers the CPU, you could see higher overall system power draws. Consider yourself warned.

The EVGA FTW3 Ultra draws more power than the Nvidia RTX 3070 Founders Edition, but that'south to exist expected. This is an overclocked card with a higher ability limit enabled for enhanced performance. Even even so, note that the FTW3 Ultra manages to come well under the RTX 2080 Ti's power demands despite matching or beating its performance in games.

Nosotros test thermals past leaving GPU-Z open during theF1 2020 power depict test, noting the highest maximum temperature at the end.

Here'south where EVGA's goliath custom cooler shines, even before yous start overclocking. Nvidia's RTX 3070 Founders Edition hit 72 degrees Celsius under load, which is comparable to what we've seen from well-designed custom cooling solutions in the past. Merely EVGA's cooler makes Nvidia's cool temperatures look downright balmy, topping out at a frosty 62 degrees even after long gaming workloads. Even better, while Nvidia's FE can be heard while gaming, EVGA'south FTW3 Ultra stays essentially silent at all times, even when we popped off our case'south side panel for a closer listen.

We've said it before, and we'll say it again: This is a fantastic cooler.

Should yous purchase the EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra?

If you're an overclocking enthusiast, or someone who wants the best versions of the graphics cards they buy, the EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra should definitely exist on your shortlist. To aid refine your option, we'll walk y'all through the major characteristic and cost considerations.

There'south so much to talk well-nigh with the features. The FTW3 Ultra's manufactory overclock pushes this model firmly past the performance of the RTX 2080 Ti, final generation's $1,200 flagship, while the stock-clocked Nvidia RTX 3070 Founders Edition settles for trading blows. The FTW3 Ultra is an excellent option for 4K gaming, or high refresh rate gaming at 1440p or 1080p resolution, though the 8GB retention buffer probably makes it more suitable for 1440p in the long run.

Meliorate yet, EVGA loaded this card with overclocking-friendly specs to help you push performance even further. Yous go a dual-BIOS switch, a much college power limit, an array of helpful temperature sensors, and the superb Precision X1 software to pull it all together.

EVGA sharpens those overclocking chops by equipping the RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra with a monstrous 3-slot libation. It's phenomenal—both incredibly frigid and utterly silent under total load using stock settings. The cooler also includes a PWM fan header that lets you dedicate a case fan to answer to your graphics card's thermals.

Retrieve that you'll need a 650W power supply and 2 8-pin connectors to run this brute, more the stock RTX 3070 cards require. To exist fair, however, that's more of a benefit than a drawback for the overclocking enthusiasts who would purchase the FTW3 Ultra.

At present let's await at the coin. At $610, the EVGA RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra costs $110 more than the Nvidia RTX 3070 Founders Edition. The RTX 3080 version of the FTW3 Ultra also costs $110 more than than its Founders Edition analogue.

The upcharge rests a little easier with the RTX 3080 model. To upgrade beyond the 3080, you'd need to leap to the $1,500 RTX 3090, which costs over twice as much.

On the other hand, if pure performance is your goal, paying $610 for an RTX 3070 might non be worthwhile when entry-level RTX 3080s (including the keen Nvidia Founders Edition) outset at $700. Unless your budget is really tight, paying a lilliputian more for the RTX 3080 gives you lot significantly higher frame rates and a meliorate memory configuration—faster GDDR6X (the RTX 3070 uses slower GDDR6), and 2GB more than of information technology.

At that place is a third consideration: AMD. The company's $579 Radeon RX 6800 and $649 Radeon RX 6800 XT could put pricier RTX 3070 cards like this one between a rock and a hard place when they launch on Nov 18. If Squad Red's claims evidence truthful, AMD's duo could be faster and have more than retentiveness, though the baseline models won't be anywhere near as beefed-out as EVGA's luxurious FTW3 Ultra.

Information technology boils down to this: The EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra is a fantastic version of a fantastic GPU, full stop. Merely y'all'll really want to put those overclocking features to good apply, or place a premium on its infrequent cooling and noise performance, to consider picking it upward. If you lot do pull the trigger on this card (and tin fit its massive girth in your organization) yous won't exist disappointed.

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Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/393650/evga-geforce-rtx-3070-ftw3-ultra-review.html