Nvidia recently launched their 2070 series of graphics cards, and first up I’ve got
MSI’s GeForce RTX 2070 Armor OC card here for review. I’ll be testing gaming at 4K,
1440p, and 1080p, as well as overclocking, cooling and of course ray tracing to show
you what it can do.
Let’s start by taking a look at the card. Overall it’s got a black and white design,
so pretty colour neutral and should fit in well with most builds. There are two double
ball bearing fans on the front, metal backplate with MSI logo on the back, and 8 and 6 pin
power connectors on top. It’s worth noting the absence of NVlink here too, as the 2070
does not support SLI.
There’s also some RGB lighting on the top which shines through the MSI logo, and this
can be controlled using MSI’s Mystic Light Sync software. There are 5 different effects
and colours can be modified, otherwise there’s no other lighting elsewhere on the card.
For the I/O there’s three DisplayPort 1.4 outputs, a single HDMI 2.0b output, and one
USB Type-C port, allowing for up to 4 displays at once.
The card isn’t too big, at 309mm by 155mm by 50mm it should fit in most cases, and weighs
under 1.2kg.
Here are the specs of this particular 2070 card, as it’s the OC model it comes overclocked
out of the box. It’s got the same base clock as the reference model, but a 120MHz higher
boost clock, and we’ll see how much further we can go with manual overclocking later.
Like other RTX cards the 2070 also makes use of GDDR6 memory, and there’s 8GB available
here.
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 running at DDR4-3200 in dual channel. Check the links in the description for details
on the other components as well as for up to date pricing.
First up let’s check out Battlefield 5, a game that actually supports Nvidia’s new
ray tracing, one of the key selling points of these RTX cards. For comparison I’ve
also got results with RTX on and off, and testing was done in campaign mode rather than
multi player.
Starting at 1080p I’ve got the RTX on results in green, and we can see that the average
frame rates are around half as much compared to running with RTX disabled. RTX was dropping
the performance noticeably, however despite this it was still very playable at medium
and low settings. At 1440p with RTX on it was still playable at the lower setting levels,
with low settings still able to average 60 FPS with the 1% low not too far behind the
average. Meanwhile with RTX off the game was still playing fairly smoothly comparatively
at ultra settings. 4K with RTX on is a write off with the 2070 in this game, but still
playable without RTX at the lower levels, granted it really depends on what frame rates
you’re targeting, I can happily play with 60 FPS in this game but I’m sure others
would want higher.
Fortnite was tested using the replay feature, and at 1080p as expected we’re seeing very
high frame rates even at epic settings, which provided perfectly smooth game play. At 1440p
we’re still able to average around 100 FPS at epic settings, which still played very
well for me without issue. 4K was still playable, but you’ll want to use medium or low settings
which were still able to average above 100 FPS in my test.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested using the built in benchmark, and starting off at
1080p we’re getting nice frame rates at all setting levels. Moving up to 1440p frame
rates drop back a bit, but we’re still able to average above 60 FPS with the highest setting
preset. At 4K the frame rates drop back quite a lot, although we’re still able to average
above 60 FPS in this test at the lowest settings.
Far Cry 5 was also tested using the built in benchmark, and at 1080p the results are
quite good for this test, averaging just over 100 FPS at ultra settings. At 1440p the frame
rates are still pretty good for this game, even at ultra settings the 1% low is above
60 FPS. At 4K though we’re not quite able to average 60 FPS at low settings, and there’s
not too much difference between the settings with my hardware configuration.
PUBG was tested using the replay feature, and despite being a less optimized game with
this hardware we’re still able to average above 100 FPS even at ultra settings. 1440p
was still providing a playable experience even at the higher setting levels, better
results than I was expecting anyway. 4K really tanks performance as expected, granted it
was still fairly playable at very low settings, which was running with 60 FPS for the 1% low.
I’ve tested a couple of more games at max settings, unfortunately I didn’t have time
to go through all setting levels as my time was very limited with this card. Watch Dogs
2 was running well regardless of resolution, I’ve found that I can play this one with
a solid 30 FPS, and we’re getting that even at 4K.
Likewise, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was only tested at maximum settings, and despite the
crazy settings the results at 1440p and 1080p aren’t too bad, though a bit low at 4K for
this game I think.
I haven’t tested as many games as I normally would as I didn’t have the card very long,
but don’t worry I’ve also got the MSI RTX 2070 Gaming Z here too, so make sure you’re
subscribed for that one.
As we’ve seen we’re able to get some pretty good performance in the games tested, 1440p
with good settings ran well for the most part, while 4K wasn’t a great experience unless
you’re prepared to go to minimum settings, and even then it will depend on the game.
If you’re after 4K gaming you’d probably be looking at the 2080Ti anyway, as we’ve
seen here the 2070 seems to be a pretty good pick for 1080p and 1440p gaming.
Ray tracing on the other hand in Battlefield 5 was disappointing, hopefully performance
will improve in the future as it’s still a new technology, but the entry level RTX
2070 is only giving us playable performance at 1080p and 1440p with medium or low settings,
and that’s assuming you’re not after high frame rates, which are generally beneficial
in games like this.
For overclocking I only had time to retest one game, and I chose Far Cry 5. I was able
to overclock the GPU core by 80MHz and the memory by 400MHz, although I didn’t spend
too long tweaking the memory. This wasn’t that much extra, but keep in mind it’s already
overclocked out of the box. I’ve retested at ultra settings which should be more GPU
demanding, and at 1080p there’s a 2.5% improvement to the average frame rate with the overclock
applied, a 4.2% improvement at 1440p, and a 6.1% improvement at 4K, better results at
higher resolutions as we become less CPU bound.
So we’re seeing some decent performance, but what are the thermals like? These are
the temperatures I measured with the Heaven benchmark using Hardware Info with an ambient
room temperature of 21 degrees Celsius. It wasn’t getting that hot in my testing, and
even with the 80MHz core overclock applied it was only a little warmer. It was fairly
cool at idle, considering the fans weren’t spinning at all, they don’t even spin up
until it reaches 60 degrees Celsius.
Just for fun here’s how the backplate looked after 30 minutes of stress tests running,
getting to about the 60 degree Celsius mark.
I’ve got the average and peak clock speeds while running these tests here, and with the
overclock applied I was able to average around 160MHz above the stock speed by increasing
the core clock by 80MHz and increasing the power limit to 114% using MSI Afterburner.
These are the average and peak fan speeds measured with Hardware Info under the same
tests as the temperatures just shown. I wasn’t able to adjust them using MSI’s Afterburner
though, anyway here’s how the system sounded during these tests.
As there are 7 other case fans running too this isn’t the most useful test, but the
fans on the 2070 aren’t spinning at all at idle, so using that as a reference point
we can see, or hear that there’s not much difference when under load, the card wasn’t
making much noise.
There was a little coil whine present, but it was barely noticeable, especially if you’ve
got case fans going.
Here’s what total system power draw looked like in the same Heaven benchmark, so there’s
an 8% increase in my overclock which results in a 9% improvement to clock speed, and in
Far Cry 5 at 4K ultra we saw a 6% boost to average FPS. MSI recommend a 550 Watt power
supply or above, and note that the card itself has a power consumption of 185 Watts. I was
seeing around a 200 Watt difference with my GPU stress test running, but this would also
draw more power for the CPU too.
For up to date pricing check the links in the description, as pricing will change over
time. At the time of recording, here in Australia the MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Armor OC edition
is going for around $939 AUD, or around $560 USD for my international viewers. In the US
the OC version is only around $10 more than the non OC version, while here in Australia
there’s a larger $90 difference. I haven’t tested the non OC version but I suspect that
the non OC version may be better value here in Australia for that price difference if
you’re fine with manually overclocking, in the US with that $10 gap I’d probably
just get the overclocked card.
In conclusion MSI’s RTX 2070 Armor OC graphics card seems to be well suited to 1080p and
1440p gaming, but if you’re after 4K gaming or actually getting good frame rates with
ray tracing outside of low settings at 1080p, you may need to look at a 2080 or 2080Ti instead.
So what did you guys think of MSI’s RTX 2070 Armor OC graphics card? Be sure to let
me know your thoughts down in the comments, and leave a like on the video if you found
it useful. Thanks for watching, and don’t forget to subscribe for more GPU testing,
including MSI’s RTX 2070 Gaming Z and 2080Ti gaming X Trio.