Following their 720 euro RTX 3080, Nvidia is releasing their new mid-range video card, the GeForce RTX 3070. It should be the video card of the moment for anyone who wants to spend a maximum of about 5 to 6 hundred euros, especially : anyone who has a fast, high resolution (1440p) gaming monitor. You can read whether that is actually the case in our Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 review.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070
Price € 519,-10 Score 100
- Pros
- Top performance at 1440p and 1080p
- Reasonable performance at 4K
- Practical features for creators
- More efficient and faster than any other existing GPU
- Negatives
- The competition has yet to release their answer
A card without competition
Actually, the RTX 3070 is a bargain for Nvidia, because they have no competition in this price range or above it for the time being. That makes testing the new Geforce RTX 3070 mostly an internal battle in which Nvidia can show how much faster their new card is than the previous generation. And it will come as no surprise that they have made a big step compared to their 20 series of cards from 2018 and 2019. Depending on the game and the settings, the RTX 3070 is about 25 to 30% faster than the RTX 2070 SUPER, which was already known as an excellent gaming card for 1440p monitors. With the RTX 3070 you can play all games at 1440p on high settings, and often at high refresh rates.
And that's great, and in the knowledge that there is no competitor for it for the time being, that is practically the immediate conclusion: is this card within your budget, and do you want to game on such a 1440p monitor, ideally with a high (144Hz+) refresh. rate, then this is the card for you. Older cards in the 350 euros or higher category can no longer be justified in view of the huge performance difference with the RTX 3070, and one step faster will immediately cost you at least 200 euros more.
Just too short for 4K, overkill for 1080p
If you want more, or if you want to play at 4K resolution, the more expensive RTX 3080 is the more logical choice. Certainly at the 4K resolution, that card comes out better, on average the RTX 3080 is 30% faster on 4K gaming than the RTX 3070, and that extra performance comes in handy, because not all games reach the smooth 60 FPS at 4K resolution. with high settings on an RTX 3070.
If you still play games on a traditional 1080p monitor, especially if it is a 60Hz model, then the RTX 3070 delivers excellent performance, but it is actually a bit too powerful. For that target group, we recommend waiting for the upcoming RTX 3060 Ti, which will also work fine at that resolution, for a lower price. Buying an RTX 20 series card at this point is not something we would recommend. For the time being, it is either the RTX 3070, or waiting for something newer in a lower segment.
New features
With a new generation of video cards, some new features also follow. For example, Nvidia releases Reflex, a technique to lower the latency of your game. This means that they not only want to push higher frame rates, but that each image actually appears faster on your image. However, this is something we can only test and verify ourselves at a later date.
Broadcast is a feature that you can use immediately. With this tool it is possible to filter out background noise from your microphone. This also works great, and is useful if you have to deal with annoying background noise in your communication. Whether you're streaming game or simply having your business zoom meeting, with the Broadcast feature you can easily apply this filter. The same tool also brings extra features to your webcam, so it can remove the background as if you have a green screen, or you can simply soften the background for a calmer or less cluttered image.
Nvidia is also the first to add HDMI 2.1 to their video cards, making it possible to use the 120Hz feature on 4K OLED TVs, for example those from LG. They also support Nvidia's G-Sync, which makes gaming on those televisions very interesting.
Practical tips
If you are considering an RTX 3070, keep in mind that this card consumes approximately 220 Watts. Combined with a mid-range system, you approach the 350 Watt total consumption during gaming, combined with a high-end system to 500 Watt. A decent 650 Watt power supply as recommended by Nvidia itself is therefore highly recommended. For a solid RTX 3070 based gaming PC.
Also, as always, there will be many different variants of this RTX 3070 chip, for example from manufacturers such as ASUS, MSI or Gigabyte. We will soon publish a comparison about this, but the standard Founders Edition version of Nvidia is really not wrong. This relatively compact card that you order directly from Nvidia stays cool and is virtually inaudible while gaming.
The future
Nvidia is dominant at the moment, but change is in the air, because AMD is about to release high-end video cards for the first time in quite a while, the Radeon RX 6000 series, also known as “Big Navi” named after their Navi architecture. At the moment we can only compare the RTX 3070 with older cards or the more expensive RTX 3080, but if you are not necessarily in a hurry, it may be advisable to wait a little longer with your purchase. These new AMD cards are said to be released in November, so who knows, the video card landscape may change again in the short term.
Conclusion
Until then, however, Nvidia has the realm alone, and they have the best 500 euro video card by a wide margin: extremely fast on all gaming monitors up to 1440p resolution and excellent supporting features. For anyone who can't or doesn't want to wait for what the future brings, this is the mid-range video card of the moment.
