Credit: Brad Chacos/IDG
Fire Strike, power draw, thermals, and noise
We also tested the GeForce RTX 2070 Founders Edition using 3DMark’s highly respected Fire Strike synthetic benchmark. Fire Strike runs at 1080p, Fire Strike Extreme runs at 1440p, and Fire Strike Ultra runs at 4K resolution. All render the same scene, but with more intense graphical effects as you move up the scale, so that Extreme and Ultra flavors stress GPUs even more. We record the graphics score to eliminate variance from the CPU.
Brad Chacos/IDGEverything falls where’d you expect, which is always the case with Fire Strike tests. The EVGA graphics card and its more potent cooling solution (more on that shortly) falls just ahead of Nvidia’s RTX 2070 FE.
We test power draw by looping the F1 2018 benchmark after we’ve benchmarked everything else with a card, and noting the highest reading on our Watts Up Pro meter. The initial part of the race, where all competing cars are onscreen simultaneously, tends to be the most demanding portion.
Brad Chacos/IDGThe EVGA RTX 2070 uses slightly less power than the GTX 1080 and even the Nvidia RTX 2070 FE under load. Maybe those little “E”s all over the fan blades made the difference? The new RTX cards use much more power than the older GTX 1070 FE, but delivers much more performance in return. And really, like we said earlier, the vastly increased price point makes the RTX 2070 more of a GTX 1080 competitor.
We test thermals by leaving HWInfo’s sensor monitoring tool open during the F1 2018 5-lap power draw test, noting the highest maximum temperature at the end.
Brad Chacos/IDGLook at those temperatures! Even with a traditional two-slot, 10.6-inch design, the EVGA RTX 2070 XC doesn’t get hotter than 66 degrees Celsius—a huge improvement over the Founders Edition’s 73-degree heat. Even EVGA’s entry-level cooling solutions are damned impressive.
The EVGA RTX 2070 XC is quiet enough, delivering noise levels on a par with the RTX 2070 Founders Edition’s. It’s not silent, but it’s not loud or annoying by any stretch, even under full load. With all that extra thermal headroom, you could use EVGA’s Precision X1 software to adjust the card’s fan curves for higher temperatures but lower noise levels if you were so inclined. Yay options!
Next page: Overclocking, should you buy the EVGA RTX 2070 XC?
