Conclusion
Our review evaluated the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5070 EAGLE OC ICE SFF 12G video card with pricing around $659.99 at the time of publishing. This is a unique card from GIGABYTE in that it meets the full set of qualifications for the “SFF-Ready Enthusiast GeForce Cards” program. You can be sure that if you purchase this video card, it will be fully compatible with an advertised “SFF Ready chassis”. Even if you are in the mood to put together a new standard-sized PC, this video card is simply a smaller version of the standard RTX 5070. This clean, white, triple fan card carries 12GB of GDDR7 memory and is factory overclocked as well. It also comes in black if that is your preference.
Performance
To review the performance, we tested against benchmarks in plain raster, always-on ray tracing, and enabled optional ray-traced gaming, primarily at 1440p ( 2560 x 1440). Our comparison in this review was the XFX QuickSilver AMD Radeon RX 9070 OC Gaming Edition. Both cards are factory overclocked, while the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5070 EAGLE OC ICE SFF 12G has 12GB of VRAM and the XFX QuickSilver AMD Radeon RX 9070 OC Gaming Edition has 16GB.
In plain raster gaming, the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5070 EAGLE OC ICE SFF 12G was playable natively in 8 of 9 games. Only in Black Myth: Wukong did it fall short. The video card provided smooth gameplay in each of those 8 games. Despite this performance, the XFX QuickSilver AMD Radeon RX 9070 OC Gaming Edition proved to be faster in 8 of 9 games, Claire Obscur: Expedition 33 being the exception. The margin of separation averaged 11% with quite a wide range, 6-28%. Upscaling did provide a benefit in all games, pushing the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5070 EAGLE OC ICE SFF 12G into playable FPS in each game. With upscaling we saw faster results than the XFX QuickSilver AMD Radeon RX 9070 OC Gaming Edition in 2 of 9 games with two draws. Always-on ray tracing games were split evenly between the two video cards.
With optional in-game ray tracing enabled, both of the cards struggled natively; in fact, neither gained playable FPS. The GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5070 EAGLE OC ICE SFF 12G was the better card with upscaling enabled by a margin of 6% overall, excluding the very poor performance by the XFX QuickSilver AMD Radeon RX 9070 OC Gaming Edition in Black Myth: Wukong. Surprisingly, the XFX QuickSilver AMD Radeon RX 9070 OC Gaming Edition squeeked out ahead in Cyberpunk 2077 natively and drew even upscaled in Star Wars Outlaws. All in all, ray tracing is hard on both of these cards without added upscaling help.
If you dig a little deeper into the performance, one item that shines through is the overclocking performance of the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5070 EAGLE OC ICE SFF 12G. In plain raster, overclocking brought a faster FPS versus the competition in 5 of 9 games (either native or upscaled) and in 100% of the optional ray-traced games. That is quite a jump from the default performance, right there.
Overclocking, power, and temperature
We have already pointed out what sort of boost you can expect from the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5070 EAGLE OC ICE SFF 12G when overclocked. We were able to easily adjust the parameters manually to achieve a 24% increase in Boost clock. This translated to a 10% performance improvement in nearly each and every game. With this came even faster and smoother gameplay. It is pretty obvious this card has the credentials to be overclocked, and there is no reason not to do it.
Power usage was not an issue for this card. Even overclocked, it only pushed the wattage 1 Watt over the specification of 250 Watts. The default settings are well under the published limit. This would seem to indicate there is more to be had. The performance uplift with overclocking no doubt comes from the generous 20% increase in power limit in the Gigabyte Control Center.
Despite a smaller-sized shroud, this triple-fan card keeps the GPU nice and cool. At full tilt overclock and on automatic fans cycle, the GPU is barely 70C, and the memory is cooler than that. This is an obvious design achievement for GIGABYTE. It only remains to be seen what, if anything, would change inside an SFF PC case.
Small Form Factor
The NVIDIA SFF specifications are certainly an advantage to any SFF build. By conforming to the specifications, a builder or DIYer will be able to pick components that will fit together without the worry.
SFF chassis are cramped quarters and have always been a bit challenging to find just the right components. Now, at least you won’t have to worry about the video card. This and the fact that the SFF specifications are for “enthusiast class” cards ( XX70 and above) means you can put some pretty powerful graphics in that smaller case. Also, you can simply purchase a smaller-sized card for your “regular” build without sacrificing graphics power. GIGABYTE has done a very nice job with the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5070 EAGLE OC ICE SFF 12G. It’s smaller, cool, and very quiet.
Final Points
This review gave us a look at the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5070 EAGLE OC ICE SFF 12G. This video card was designed to comply with NVIDIA’s “SFF-Ready Enthusiast GeForce Cards” in order to give SFF builders more confidence in part selection. This card is a well-designed, white, triple-fan RTX 5070, which performs very well when overclocked. The performance is on par with the other RTX 5070 video cards we have reviewed. It does fall behind the XFX QuickSilver AMD Radeon RX 9070 OC Gaming Edition in native plain raster performance, but does well in ray tracing when upscaled. The overall design, cooling, and performance would make this an excellent choice for any PC build, especially a Small Form Factor.
