The Nvidia RTX 2070 and older GTX 1070 are both powerful gaming graphics cards, but which
should you pick, and is it worth upgrading? In this video we’ll check out a heap of
game benchmarks at 4K, 1440p, and 1080p to help you see the performance difference between
them.
Let’s quickly take a look at how the 2070 and 1070 actually differ in terms of specs,
note that things like clock speed and power will vary between specific cards, these are
just the reference specs for each model. Important differences to take note of are that the RTX
2070 is based on Nvidia’s newer Turing architecture and has more Cuda cores but lower base and
boost clock speeds out of the box when compared with the Pascal GTX 1070. They both have 8GB
of memory, but the newer 2070 is making use of GDDR6, and of course it also supports newer
features like ray tracing.
For the testing I’m using the MSI RTX 2070 Gaming Z, while the 1070 was the Galax GTX
1070 EX, the Gaming Z has a pretty good overclock on it out of the box while the Galax card
has a smaller overclock comparatively, so expect slightly different results with different
models.
The system that I’m testing with has an AMD Ryzen 2700X CPU in an MSI X470 Gaming
Pro Carbon motherboard running at stock speeds, along with 16GB of T-Force Night Hawk CL16
memory from Team Group running at DDR4-3200 in dual channel. Check the links in the description
for details on all of the components as well as for up to date pricing. The same Windows
version and Nvidia drivers were used for the testing, and with all games I’ve only tested
at max settings, as for most titles these should be more GPU bound and help us see the
differences, so with that in mind let’s get into the results.
Fortnite was tested with the same replay file at epic settings, and at all three resolutions
the 1% low results from the 2070 were above the average frame rates of the 1070, so the
2070 is giving us much better results. In terms of average frame rates, the 2070 was
performing more than 40% better than the 1070 in this test.
Overwatch was seeing massive differences, out of all the games I’ve tested this one
saw the biggest improvement on the 2070. At 1080p the average frame rate is 70% higher
on the 2070, and around 82% faster at 1440p and 4K, a pretty huge difference with this
well optimized game, although the game still does run well on the 1070.
Battlefield 5 was tested in campaign mode rather than multiplayer, as it’s easier
to consistently reproduce the test run. This time at 1080p and 1440p the 1% low from the
2070 isn’t quite better than the average of the 1070, but for average FPS the 2070
was still 32% better at 1080p, 39% better at 1440p, and up to 50% better at 4K, and
we’ll check out raytracing a bit later.
CS:GO was tested with the ulletical benchmark, and there was less of a difference between
the 1070 and 2070 in this game, this game saw the lowest increase with the 2070 out
of all of the games I tested. There was far less of a change between the 1% low results
at all 3 resolutions, and then in terms of average frame rates there was just a 12% improvement
at 1080p, then a 22% improvement at 1440p and 4K.
Rainbow Six Siege was tested with the built in benchmark, and we’re back to seeing the
1% low results from the 2070 beat the average frame rates of the 1070 once again, but even
the 1070 was able to average above 60 FPS with ultra settings at 4K in this test. This
game saw one of the largest improvements in performance out of the titles tested, with
a 41% improvement to average FPS at 1080p on the 2070, 52% better at 1440p, and a massive
61% improvement at 4K.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was also tested with the built in benchmark, and again really
good improvements with the 2070. There was a 40% improvement with the 2070 at 1080p,
48% at 1440p, and then 52% at 4K.
Far Cry 5 was tested with the built in benchmark, and both were able to get above 60 FPS at
1440p or below in this test with max settings. There wasn’t as big of a difference with
this game compared to others, the 2070 was performing 15% better than the 1070 at 1080p
in average FPS, 36% better at 1440p and then a 42% improvement at 4K.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey saw pretty similar performance differences, and was also tested
with the built in benchmark. The frame rates at ultra high settings aren’t that great
as this doesn’t seem to be a very well optimized game, although at the same time I don’t
think it needs a high frame rate to play. There wasn’t much of a difference between
1% low at 1080p and 1440p, and then with the average frame rates the 2070 was going 25%
better than the 1070 at 1080p, 22% better at 1440p, and then 44% better at 4K.
PUBG was tested using the same replay, and was another where the 1% low from the 2070
was better than the average frame rate coming from the 1070. At 1440p even with ultra settings
the 2070 was actually giving pretty decent results, while I wouldn’t really want to
play below 60 FPS on the 1070 at these settings, though of course you could lower the settings
to improve frame rate. At 1080p the 2070 was performing 35% better than the 1070 in terms
of average frame rates, 42% better at 1440p, and 41% better at 4K.
Watch Dogs 2 is a fairly resource intensive game, but I can play it perfectly fine with
a solid 30 FPS average, so 4K with the 2070 even maxed out actually went ok for me, and
then perfectly fine with either card at any other resolution and settings. With that said,
this game didn’t see as big of an improvement with the 2070 compared to most of the other
games tested. At 1080p the 2070 was scoring 24% better than the 1070 in terms of average
FPS, 27% better at 1440p, and 35% better at 4K.
The Witcher 3 was tested with Hairworks disabled, but ultra settings are still pretty intensive
compared to the other settings in this game. Despite this though even at 4K the 2070 was
still almost able to hit 60 FPS, while either were perfectly fine at 1440p or 1080p with
max settings. At 1080p the 2070 was performing 46% better in average frame rate, and then
47% better at both 1440p and 4K.
Shadow of War was tested with the built in benchmark at ultra settings, and once again
pretty big improvements seen with the 2070 graphics. There was a 40% improvement at 1080p,
51% better at 1440p, and then 59% better at 4K.
In terms of overall improvement, over all of the games tested at max settings with a
1080p resolution on average the 2070 is performing 36% better than the 1070, although we can
see there is quite a big difference between the various games.
At 1440p on average over the same games the 2070 was now performing 42% better than the
1070 in these titles, but again it really varies depending on the specific game. On
average we expect the performance gap to widen at higher resolutions because higher resolutions
are more GPU bound.
At 4K the 2070 was now on average 48% better than the 1070 in these games, but again this
really varies based on the specific game, and we’re seeing the biggest difference
here as 4K gaming is much less CPU dependent.
The 20 series does of course also have the option of playing games with ray tracing on,
and here are the frame rates we’re looking at with the 2070 with and without it enabled,
so there’s quite a performance hit by having it enabled, you’ll only really be able to
play at 1080p or 1440p and with lower settings.
I haven’t tested overclocking here, as results aren’t guaranteed and will vary between
hardware based on what overclocks you can get, although as both are pre overclocked
cards we’ll likely only see a small difference of a few FPS.
Now for the final difference, the price. I suggest checking updated prices using the
links in the description, as prices will change over time. At the time of recording the 2070
Gaming Z tested here goes for $600 USD, but there are of course cheaper 2070s available
that will only realistically perform a few FPS lower. I actually got my 1070 second hand
for a good deal at the time at the end of the mining boom, however I wasn’t able to
find pricing for my exact model new. Looking on Amazon though it looks like you can get
a similarly clocked model for around $400 USD.
This means that our 2070 costs approximately 50% more than the 1070, although again it
may be less if you get a cheaper 2070, so you’ll probably want to do this math yourself.
If you’re playing games at 4K where we saw a 48% improvement with the 2070 on average
then it may make sense to either upgrade or buy a 2070 instead of a 1070 if you’re picking
between the two, paying 50% more for around 48% more performance seems fair. On the other
hand if you’re just playing at 1080p then maybe it’s not worth spending 50% more for
36% more performance, it depends on your budget though, you do of course get ray tracing with
the 2070, which hopefully improves in the future.
So which graphics card would you pick? The RTX 2070 or GTX 1070? Both are great options,
it really comes down to what sort of games you want to play, what resolutions you want
to play at, and what frame rates you want to target. Personally I’d probably go the
2070 for higher resolution gaming and also have the extra features like ray tracing and
DLSS on the off chance that they actually get good, but if I found a nice second hand
deal on a 1070 then that could make more sense for 1080p and even 1440p gaming. The 2070
does of course appear to be closer in performance to the GTX 1080, so I’ll be comparing those
next.
Let me know which card you’d pick down in the comments, and don’t forget to subscribe
for more comparisons and tech videos like this one.