Review: EVGA GeForce RTX 2070 Super XC Gaming

by Tarinder Sandhu on 6 August 2019, 14:01

Tags: EVGA, NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qaeb5q

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Conclusion

...EVGA improves upon it by offering RGB backlighting of the logo, a zero-fan mode, and cooler and quieter operation.

It is understandable that EVGA would jump on the RTX Super bandwagon by releasing numerous models that each offer something a bit different. That is indeed the case, as the line-up includes six cards that span a regular dual-slot form factor, oversized PCB, and even hybrid cooling.

Slap bang in the middle is the Super XC Gaming. Fitting into the same dual-slot profile as the Founders Edition, EVGA improves upon it by offering RGB backlighting of the logo, a zero-fan mode, and cooler and quieter operation. Core frequency is rated to be 30MHz higher, at 1,800MHz, and real-world performance means it is an excellent solution for QHD or WQHD gaming. EVGA also throws in an extra game over the Founders Edition, too.

That's the good news. The bad is that, at £530, the card is £55 dearer than the beautiful-looking Founders Edition. That's just about okay for some enthusiasts, but looking across to AMD, you can get most of this card's performance for a lot less money by way of Radeon RX 5700 and XT.

Botton line: a competent GeForce RTX 2070 Super, the EVGA XC Gaming's pricing is what ultimately counts against it.

The Good
  
The Bad
Looks good
Solid perf at QHD
Nice and quiet at full load
Hardware-accelerated ray tracing
  
More expensive than FE
Not a whole heap better than RX 5700 XT


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The reviewed card is available to purchase from Scan Computers.

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At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.



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HEXUS Forums :: 9 Comments

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Posted by darcotech - Tue 06 Aug 2019 17:30
So basically, if you do not “need” ray tracing, go for 5700 XT. And save some money.
Posted by philehidiot - Tue 06 Aug 2019 23:18
darcotech
So basically, if you do not “need” ray tracing, go for 5700 XT. And save some money.

Yeh, I suspect that where the 5700XT is positioned high enough to attract serious gamers but low enough to mean they'd be willing to replace it in a year or so when ray tracing becomes a real thing. So they'll not bother with the 2070 because who knows how it'll perform in ray tracing but they'll save nearly £150 and buy the AMD card, knowing the savings will allow them to upgrade sooner once the RTX tech and market has stabilised.

You ask me how much I'll pay for a GPU and £600 for the top end is it (and I expect that to last 5 years or so with decent FPS). £400 I expect decent performance but maybe not so much longevity. The 2070 here is nearly £600 and the AMD card is available for under £400. I feel the AMD card is pitched relatively sensibly in the market but Nvidia are trying to gouge on ray tracing and I'm sorry, but it's not there yet. We may well get software based ray tracing which performs nearly as well, as demonstrated by Crytech, making the extra (substantial) investment in an RTX capable card worthless.

On top of that I just am not gaming as much as I'd like (too many games have annoyed me with either things trying to push me into microtransactions (Far Cry) or poor programming for PC in favour of consoles (COD)) given the investment I've made in my GPU. I strongly suspect I'll be going to plan b next time which is where my 4K monitor is used at 1080P in games as it should just turn one pixel into four and work perfectly well.
Posted by Dashers - Wed 07 Aug 2019 13:01
These prices are frankly laughable.

As a nvidia fan-boy, I can't see any reason why anybody would buy this over a 5700XT at these prices. Ray-tracing is too much of a performance hit - if you want high framerates, even at average resolutions you can't use ray-tracing unless of course, you drop some other graphics settings, but if you're not wanting the graphics to look the best they can, why use ray tracing?
Posted by philehidiot - Wed 07 Aug 2019 15:19
Dashers
These prices are frankly laughable.

As a nvidia fan-boy, I can't see any reason why anybody would buy this over a 5700XT at these prices. Ray-tracing is too much of a performance hit - if you want high framerates, even at average resolutions you can't use ray-tracing unless of course, you drop some other graphics settings, but if you're not wanting the graphics to look the best they can, why use ray tracing?

10 print “Recursive error.”
Go 10 until head$=“caved in against the wall”.


Yeh, it's a total mess. I suspect software level raytracing will come out and there will be some hardware acceleration from these cards but, from what I've seen, this will be “hardware acceleration” in that they'll code it to slow down if you don't have the hardware.
Posted by Dashers - Wed 07 Aug 2019 15:36
I can't be the only person who'd rather buttery smooth framerates at high resolutions and refresh rates before more flare. I mean, there are some games that you love to play for the visual feast, but they're few and far between as we largely play games for gameplay.

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