GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition Card
The video card we have for review today is the GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition. Similar to the RTX 3080 Founders Edition this is a custom video card design from NVIDIA. Add-in-board manufacturers will get a reference design that they can then customize, and they will. This unique design from NVIDIA will only be available from NVIDIA as far as we know, and that encapsulate the RTX 3080’s design aesthetic this generation.
Once again, we see a design, like the RTX 3080 Founders Edition that utilizes a fan underneath to push air out the back bracket. Then, in an opposite fashion to the GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition, the second fan is located also underneath the video card this time but is still a pass-through fan. The heatpipes from the GPU extend through this pass-through area similar to the RTX 3080 Founders Edition, and the fan pushes air across them passing through to the reverse side, completely open.
NVIDIA calls the design a “flow through” design. NVIDIA states that it is up to 16dBA quieter and has a 44% higher thermal performance than the RTX 2070 Founders Edition. NVIDIA describes it as such:
The board was designed with independent push fans. The Left Fan pushes hot air out of extra-large bracket vents, and individually shaped fins direct airflow for better cooling. The Exposed Fin-Stack visually elevates and functionally enhances the airflow-centric design. Together with the unibody frame, this offers maximum rigidity and fin-stack volume with minimum air resistance. The Right Fan pushes air through the card towards the natural top and rear chassis exhausts. Each fan profile has been optimized with its own psychoacoustic profile to optimally balance airflow.
This all means the printed circuit board (PCB) is rather small on the GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition, it is compact. NVIDIA states that the PCB is super dense, and it utilizes NVIDIA’s custom 12-pin power connector. A single adapter cable is included in the box and connects to one 8-pin power connector this time instead of two. The video card also supports HDMI 2.1 and the AV1 Decode and PCI-Express 4.0. There are three DisplayPorts and one HDMI.
GeForce RTX 3070 Comparison Pictures
The video card measures only 9.5” in length, which is slightly longer than the GeForce RTX 2070 Founders Edition, but much shorter than the GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER Founders Edition and RTX 2080 Ti FE. The GeForce RTX 2070 Founders Edition measures 9” long, so the RTX 3070 FE is only 0.5” longer. The GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER Founders Edition and RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition measures 10.5” however, so the RTX 3070 FE is actually a whole inch shorter than those two video cards. That’s right, the new RTX 3070 FE is shorter than the RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 2070 SUPER FE.
This is also interesting; in terms of width the GeForce RTX 3070 FE is 3.75” in width. This is actually narrower than the GeForce RTX 2070 FE and GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FE which are 4” in width. It matches the RTX 2070 SUPER FE in width though. In terms of height, they are all the same.
Compared to the GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition it is 11.25” in length, so the GeForce RTX 3070 FE is much shorter. They are both the same width and height.
In terms of weight, the new GeForce RTX 3070 FE feels about the same as the original GeForce RTX 2070 Founders Edition. It also feels lighter than the GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER FE and RTX 2080 Ti FE, and of course RTX 3080 FE.
Our Video Card Comparisons
As we determined, the appropriate “price comparisons” for the GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition is both the GeForce RTX 2070 Founders Edition and GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER Founders Edition. The RTX 2070 at $499 and the RTX 2070 SUPER at $499 are both the video cards that the new $499 GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition will replace, price-to-price for last-gen. We will therefore definitely be comparing performance to those two video cards.
In addition, we want to give you a very big picture of performance. Therefore we have 7 video cards being compared to the GeForce RTX 3070 FE today. Naturally, we have the GeForce RTX 3080 FE in there, to see how much faster it is over the RTX 3070 FE so we can see the difference between the two. We also have the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition in there so we can see if RTX 3070 FE really can offer RTX 2080 Ti FE performance. In addition, we have the GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER, GeForce RTX 2080 Founders Edition, and a Radeon RX 5700 XT. The Radeon RX 5700 XT launched at $399, but we have it there just to give us a big picture.
On all of our graphs, you will note that we have a new percentage difference table. This shows you the most important comparisons here today, calculated for you. It shows the performance of RTX 3070 over RTX 2070, it shows RTX 3070 over RX 5700 XT, it shows RTX 3070 versus RTX 2080 Ti performance, and it shows RTX 3080 over RTX 3070 so you can see how far apart the two cards are in performance.