Nvidia recently refreshed the RTX 2070 with the RTX 2070 Super, and MSI have sent over
their new Gaming X version for me to check out, so let’s see what it can do in this
review. We’ll look at gaming at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K, as well as thermals, fan noise, power
draw, overclocking and more.
Like many other recent MSI cards it’s got a dark grey and black theme, nice neutral
colours and should blend in well with most builds. There are two fans on the front, a
metal backplate with a nice brushed finish and MSI logo on the back, 6 and 8 pin power
connectors on the top as well as SLI connector if you want to run two together.
There’s RGB lighting on the top and bottom of the card, and this can be controlled using
MSI’s light sync software to change the effects or match it with the rest of your
system.
For the I/O we’ve got three DisplayPort 1.4 outputs and single HDMI 2.0b port.
The card is on the larger side compared to others I’ve tested, just under 30cm in length,
14cm tall and 5.6cm wide, making it a 2.5 slot card weighing in at 1.4kg or 3.1 pounds.
As a result I did notice some sag with it installed in my case, it wasn’t that bad,
but it does come with a mounting bracket to help reduce this.
As for the specs, the RTX 2070 Super has 11% more CUDA cores over the original RTX 2070
that it’s replacing. The new Super version also has higher base and boost clock speeds,
and MSI’s Gaming X is listed with just a 30MHz higher boost clock over Nvidia’s reference
spec. Memory is otherwise still the same, it’s still got 8gb of GDDR6 at the same
speeds.
The system that I’m testing with has an Intel i7-8700K CPU overclocked to 5.1GHz on
all cores in an MSI Z390 ACE motherboard, along with 16GB of DDR4-3200 CL14 memory running
in dual channel. You can check the links in the description for details on all of the
components as well as for up to date pricing.
To get a rough idea of what sort of performance you can expect from MSI’s RTX 2070 Super
Gaming X graphics card we’ll look at the results from a few games at 1080p, 1440p and
4K resolutions. Testing was completed with all Windows updates to date applied and the
latest Nvidia drivers.
Battlefield 5 was tested in campaign mode with ultra settings. I’ve got the RTX off
results shown by the purple bars, and RTX on shown by the green bars, along with the
three resolutions tested on the left, 1080p, 1440p and 4K. With RTX off I found it still
playable at 4K, otherwise with RTX on it was only somewhat playable at 1440p, but RTX on
at 1080p did run fine, averaging above 60 FPS.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested using the built in benchmark at ultra settings,
and again the frame rates were decent at 1080p and 1440p, though a bit lower at 4K comparatively,
however keep in mind this is at max settings, higher frame rates are of course possible
at lower levels.
Far Cry New Dawn was tested with the built in benchmark at ultra settings, and as this
is a CPU heavy test the overclocked 8700K is definitely going to be helping out here.
Regardless, even at 4K we’re only just below 60 FPS at max settings, not bad at all, while
1440p was hitting above 100 FPS.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was tested with the built in benchmark max settings. This
specific test seems to be more CPU heavy, and I don’t think the game really needs
a massive frame rate to play anyway, however even maxed out we’re almost at 60 FPS at
1440p.
Fortnite was tested with the replay feature, so the exact same test was done at each resolution
with the highest epic settings in use. 4K was still just able to hit the 60 FPS sweet
spot, though for a game like this higher frame rates are typically beneficial, and 1440p
still hit above 120 FPS even at max settings.
Watch Dogs 2 was tested with ultra settings, and I can get by in this game with a stable
30 FPS, so even at 4K with max settings it was playable, however 1440p was noticeably
better and able to average above 60 FPS.
Ghost Recon Wildlands is another resource heavy game and was tested with ultra settings
using the built in benchmark. Max settings in this game is pretty tough, though 1440p
was still able to manage around 60 FPS, and 4K would be able to do this too if we step
back just a couple of setting presets.
CS:GO was tested using the Ulletical FPS benchmark at max settings, though this is more of a
CPU heavy game that people don’t really play above 1080p, so I’ll probably drop
it unless that vocal minority keep asking for it.
Rainbow Six Siege was tested with the built in benchmark at ultra settings with a 100%
render scale. We’re seeing some decent frame rates in this test even at max settings, so
if you wanted to 4K with lower settings should run pretty well too.
The Witcher 3 was tested with ultra settings, and it was easily playable without any problems
at 1080p and 1440p. 4K was ok for the most part, but I’d probably look at dropping
down to high settings for a little higher frame rate.
As we’ve seen we’re able to get some nice performance in the games tested. For the most
part both 1080p and 1440p resolutions were easily playable in these games even at max
settings. 4K was also scoring decent results in many of the games, however I am testing
with max settings here, it’s definitely possible to get better results at lower settings.
It would have been great to compare the results with a standard non super 2070, but I didn’t
have one available for testing. Steve at Hardware Unboxed found the 2070 Super to be 12% faster
than the 2070 on average though, I suggest checking out his video if you want to see
the differences.
As for overclocking I’ve tested out a few games to see what extra gains can be had.
I was able to overclock the GPU core by 110MHz and memory by 1100MHz using MSI Afterburner,
however these were by no means finely tuned settings.
In Battlefield 5 at ultra settings, and there’s a nice boost with the GPU overclocks in place,
shown by the red bars. At 1080p overclocking gets us 9.3% higher average FPS, 10.2% higher
at 1440p, and an 8.7% increase at 4K.
In Shadow of the Tomb Raider at ultra settings with the built in benchmark there’s a 4.8%
boost to average FPS with the overclock in place at 1080p, 7% at 1440p, and 6.6% at 4k.
So we could get some fair improvements with some simple tweaks.
So we’re seeing some decent performance, but what are the thermals like? These are
the temperatures I measured with the Heaven benchmark in an ambient room temperature of
21 degrees Celsius. At idle the temperatures were cool, especially considering that the
fans don’t even spin up until temperatures get above 60 degrees Celsius.
By manually maxing out the fan speed with MSI Afterburner it was possible to reduce
the temperatures by almost 20 degrees Celsius, and my manual overclocks only raised GPU core
temperature by 1 degree with the fans at stock. This was because the fan speed just got a
little louder to compensate, with the fan at the same max speed though the overclock
raised temperature by 3 degrees. Overall I thought the thermals were quite good, thanks
to the beefy cooler.
Just for fun I’ve used my thermal camera so you can see how the backplate looks with
the stress tests running. It was quite hot to the touch, you’ll definitely want to
wait for it to cool down a bit before taking it out after use.
I’ve got the average and peak clock speeds while running the Heaven benchmark for an
extended period, and we can see the higher fan speed is resulting in slightly higher
clock speeds, as GPU boost prefers cooler temperatures.
These are the average and peak fan speeds measured under the same tests as the temperatures
and clock speeds just shown. At idle they don't spin at all so it was silent, and then
they only rise a small amount with the overclock applied, I couldn't really tell the difference
sitting next to it. By maxing out the fan speed it does get noticeably louder, however
this does at least mean there’s plenty of headroom if you prefer to run cooler at the
expense of additional noise. Here’s what these different fan speeds sound like to give
you an idea of what to expect.
As I’ve got 7 other fans in the case this isn’t the best test, plus I have the side
of the case off, however you can use the idle test as a baseline, as the graphics card fans
weren’t spinning at all here.
I’ll also note that while testing I didn’t notice any coil whine over the fans.
Here’s what total system power draw from the wall looked like in the same Heaven benchmark,
so once manually overclocked there’s a 17 watt power increase.
For up to date pricing check the links in the description, as prices will change over
time. The 2070 Super launched with an MSRP of $500 USD, and at the time of recording
I don’t have US prices for the Gaming X. MSI told me it won’t be for sale until October,
however they did advise that here in Australia we’re looking at $939 AUD, which would put
it between MSI’s Ventus and Gaming X Trio as expected.
As for whether or not it’s worth it, I think I’ll leave that for the comparison videos
I’ll be doing. I still need to get my hands on AMD’s Navi to have a better idea of how
the 2070 Super compares.
There are cheaper 2070 Super cards available, even within MSI’s own lineup such as the
Ventus. For the most part you’re paying extra for the Gaming X for the better cooler,
as more metal just costs more money to produce, and it comes with higher boost clock speeds
out of the box. If you’re willing though in pretty much all cases you can manually
overclock this difference yourself, so I think it depends more on whether you want one with
a better cooling solution, if not it’s definitely possible to save some money on a cheaper 2070
Super card.
That said this particular model did appear to have excellent cooling and doesn’t even
spin the fan up until it rises above 60 degrees, however the larger heatsink put the card on
the heavier side which resulted in some sag when installed in my case, but you could reduce
this with the included bracket.
So what did you guys think of MSI’s RTX 2070 Super Gaming X graphics card? As we’ve
seen it’s easily capable of 1080p or 1440p gaming with higher settings, and even 4K in
some instances. Let me know your thoughts down in the comments, and get subscribed for
upcoming comparisons and tech videos like this one.