There have been claims that the new RTX 3070 GPUs
perform as well as last generation's 2080 Ti,
but for significantly less money.
Today we're going to see how those claims hold up
when it comes to video editing.
Let's get undone!
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What's happening, everybody? I'm Gerald Undone
and “F you! I won't do what you tell me!”
So, for disclosure, MSI sent me their new RTX 3070 Gaming X Trio
free of charge so that I could make this comparison.
However, no money changed hands,
and they've had no input on this video
and they don't get to preview it before it's posted.
Alright, so let's start with the specs of my test system,
which is the one I do the majority of my video editing on.
I actually made a previous video about this system
that you can watch if you'd like,
but it's got an AMD Ryzen 9 3900X at 4.3GHz,
32GB of 3600MHz RAM,
and an RTX 2080 Ti.
For the sake of being considerate to MSI,
I won't go deep into the brand and details of my current GPU,
but it's a third-party graphics card that's
factory overclocked with an improved cooling solution.
Not unlike this Gaming X Trio from MSI,
but just a different brand.
I have not overclocked it further,
I'm just letting it turbo up as the manufacturer intended.
And the same is true for this 3070.
I didn't overclock it further either.
Okay, so the first test I ran was to render out
a recent project I had in Resolve.
It was an 18-minute video with several video tracks
using different codecs like DNx, H.264, and H.265.
It had some basic fusion effects
and tons of text layers with transitions and shading.
On my current rig using the 2080 Ti and using
NVIDIA hardware encoding
it took 6 minutes and 45 seconds to export
the file to an H.264 MOV.
I did the export three times and I got the same result each time.
I then swapped the 2080 Ti for the 3070
and ran the test again three more times,
and got 7 minutes and 35 seconds each time.
So that's roughly a 12% advantage
to the 2080 Ti when it comes to render speed.
For comparison, using my older GTX 1080 on this system,
the export took just over 13 minutes.
So, the 3070 is significantly faster than a 1080,
but not quite as fast as the 2080 Ti.
I also ran Puget System's 4K Video Editing Benchmark
and got a score of 1217 with the 2080 Ti
and 1071 with the 3070.
Which is a 13.6% advantage for the 2080 Ti.
I should mention, however, that despite the benchmark
showing a 13% difference,
when it comes to actual timeline performance,
I couldn't really tell the difference between the 3070
and the 2080 Ti while editing.
I also ran some other tests like 3DMark's Time Spy,
which scored 14,407 with the 2080 Ti
and 13,788 with the 3070,
which closed the gap a bit
with the 2080 Ti only leading by about 4.5%.
And then I ran OctaneBench where the 3070
actually beat the 2080 Ti in both RTX and non-RTX loads.
Although, in non-RTX the results were very close
with the 3070 only leading by 3.8%.
But in RTX, the 3070 pulled quite a bit ahead,
beating the 2080 Ti by just over 17%.
So, if you average all of these results out,
you get about a 10% overall improvement
when using the 2080 Ti over the 3070,
but that improvement is seen more
on the video editing and rendering side
and less so with gaming performance.
Which is likely attributed to the memory differences here,
and shout-out to Gaming Audio Guide on Twitter
who predicted that because of the improved memory bus
and increased VRAM,
the 2080 Ti would outperform the 3070 by about 10%.
Spot on with that prediction. However, there are
a few more things to consider here.
I did run noise and thermal tests,
but I'm not sure that they'll make for a fair comparison
because this MSI Gaming X Trio
is much bigger than my current 2080 Ti,
suggesting this cooler is significantly enhanced,
but because they're from different lineups,
it's not apples to apples. But I can say
that my max temp when running these tests
on the 2080 Ti was 78°C,
and it was only 67°C on this 3070.
So, that's significant, and potentially leaves
some more headroom to overclock the card further
to close the gap a little.
It also ran a touch quieter.
I measured the 2080 Ti under load at 41.7 dBA,
but it was only 39.2 dBA on this 3070.
And the power consumption was lower as well.
The 3070 averaged 238 watts,
where the 2080 Ti averaged 261 watts.
So, about 10% more power consumption from the 2080 Ti.
So, this particular 3070 runs cooler, quieter,
and needs less power to a similar degree
to how it underperforms the 2080 Ti.
So, that seems like a fair trade.
The only situation where it's not a fair trade off
is in price and this is the biggest difference between them.
Depending on the particular card and the brand,
the 2080 Ti can range from 2.2 to 3 times
more expensive than the 3070.
So, considering it's only 10% worse,
it offers significantly better value,
which brings the ultimate question,
if I had to buy one of these two cards today,
which would it be?
It would be the 3070 without question.
There are some other considerations to make, though.
I'm doing mostly 4K edits that aren't that demanding,
so I can get by with only 8GB of VRAM.
I never really use the 11GB of the 2080 Ti--
I mostly hover around 5-6GB max.
So if you're somebody who is still siting on the GTX 1080
and have been fine with the 8GB,
but you just want a good value upgrade to core performance,
the RTX 3070 is the perfect option.
If however you need more VRAM,
then the 3080 might be the better choice,
and while I haven't tested it,
I imagine that would easily outperform the 2080 Ti
considering how close the 3070 was.
I wish the 3070 had more VRAM,
because than it would be an absolute no-brainer
if they offered the 16GB
that the rumours were suggesting earlier this year.
But I just recently heard that those rumours
have been refuted once and for all.
So, we're unlikely to see a 16GB variant,
unless it's a completely different card, like a 3070 Ti.
But then you'd have to rerun the whole value calculation.
But for now, for most 4K edits,
I think the RTX 3070 is probably
the best bang for the buck option available.
Lastly, we should talk about the new AMD GPUs,
which do offer increased VRAM
and compelling performance comparisons,
but I'm still a bit wary.
I'd have no problems switching to AMD for gaming,
but when it comes to content creation,
my experience with AMD GPUs hasn't been great.
When it comes to streaming,
NVENC has been much more reliable,
with better quality and performance
than the AMD alternative,
and the same is true for video rendering,
leveraging CUDA cores,
and just overall compatibility with NLEs.
I haven't tested the new cards, obviously,
but in the past, AMD GPUs just weren't a good time
in the software I was using. So, for now,
I'm gonna stick to NVIDIA for content creation
until I see a compelling reason to switch,
but I am happy to see AMD bringing a healthy dose
of competition to the space.
But that’s gonna be it for me.
I hope you found this video entertaining,
or at least helpful. And if you did,
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try setting the playback speed to 75%.
Alright... I'm done.