We recently received an ASUS TUF GAMING RTX 4070 Ti OC Edition 12GB from Nvidia and we have been testing it for the past ten days by using 19 PC games plus hybrid and non-synthetic benchmarks. This time, there will be no production nor distribution of Founder Edition models for its RTX 4070 Ti GPU (AD104) by Nvidia, and AIBs will be the only ones assembling and distributing custom models of this Ada Lovelace GPU. Although these GPUs arrive with multiple new features, including DLSS 3, this review will focus mainly on testing raw performance, not upscaling.

Our Plan

Nvidia touted the RTX 4070 Ti as a card delivering an outstanding efficient performance that can be up to 3x faster than the RTX 3090 Ti in specific games which offers a tremendous upgrade for GTX 1080 Ti or RTX 2080 users. Although for this review, we have not been able to use those same Pascal, Turing, and Ampere GPUs, we have been able to compare our RTX 4070 Ti versus an RTX 3080 (Ampere micro-architecture, 2nd RTX generation) and RTX 2080 Ti (Turing micro-architecture, 1st RTX generation).

We think comparing the RTX 4070 Ti’s performance against two iconic cards from Nvidia’s previous two RTX generations of GPUs may be worth it for Turing or Ampere users considering an upgrade to Ada Lovelace.

The RTX 4070 Ti features 7680 CUDA Cores, 40 Shader TFLOPS, 93 RT-TFLOPS, 641 Tensor FLOPS, and 12GB of GDDR6X memory, so we will see how it performs and compare with raster games and ray-tracing/DLSS games. We will focus on RTX 4070 Ti raw performance as well as consider whether the new RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC Edition at $850 delivers a good value as an upgrade from the RTX 3080 that launched at $700 MSRP two years ago and from the RTX 2080 Ti which launched at $1000 MSRP four years ago.

Features & Specifications

Key Features from ASUS

• Dedicated 3rd generation ray tracing cores (60)
• Dedicated 4th generation Tensor cores (240)
• NVIDIA DLSS 3 support
• Game Ready and Nvidia Studio drivers
• Nvidia GeForce Experience
• Nvidia Broadcast
• Nvidia G-Sync
• Nvidia GPU Boost
• PCI Express Gen 4
• Microsoft DirectX 12 Ultimate support
• Support for Vulkan RT APIs, Vulkan 1.3, and OpenGL 4.6
• HDCP 2.3 support
• DisplayPort 1.4a support: up to 4K at 240Hz or 8K at 60Hz with DSC, HDR
• HDMI 2.1a support: up to 4K 240Hz or 8K 60Hz with DSC, Gaming VRR, HDR

Specifications

Nvidia’s MSRP price for RTX 4070 Ti GPUs is $799, and ASUS’s price for the RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC Edition is $849.99. This is approximately $50 over Nvidia’s MSRP price for a quality well-cooled tri-fan custom model with a factory GPU overclock of 120 MHz over the Nvidia reference 2610MHz boost clock.

According to GPU-Z, the RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC has the same default GPU clock of 2310MHz and boost GPU clock of 2730MHz – 120MHz higher than the reference – using both VBIOS modes, so the only difference between VBIOS modes is the fan curve.

We will show GPU-Z data and test the card using the Performance VBIOS mode only, as the factory overclock doesn’t change between VBIOS modes, and the card is silent under full-load when in Performance Mode, so it is not worth having higher GPU temperatures with slightly worse performance.

Below is the advanced general information on the RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC reported by the GPU-Z tool.

As you can see from the GPU-Z screenshots above, you can even increase both power and temperature limits to some degree, so there is still some room for GPU overclocking, but not very high or extreme, at least without taking other risky modding procedures.

The Test Bed

We benchmark with CapFrameX and FrameView tools on a recent install of Windows 11 Pro Edition 22H2, at 2560×1440 and 3840×2160, using an Intel Core i9-12900K with stock clocks and 32GB of T-FORCE XTREEM ARGB WHITE DDR4 3600MHz memory on an ASUS PRIME Z690-P D4 motherboard. All games and benchmarks are the latest versions, and we use the latest GeForce Game-Ready 527.62 press drivers for games and hybrid and non-synthetic tests. The games tested, display driver, settings, and hardware are identical except for the GPUs we compare.

Let’s see the unboxing and take a closer look at this graphics card.

A Closer Look at the ASUS TUF GAMING RTX 4070 Ti OC Edition 12GB

Packaging

The box cover highlights the graphics card image, adding the TUF GAMING logo, the GeForce RTX GPU name, and references to AURA SYNC, OC Edition, 12GB of GDDR6X memory, and DLSS3, ray tracing, Reflex, and Studio.

The back of the case touts the strengths of this model in terms of cooling, durability, aesthetics, and ASUS software. It also includes a list of key features like its dedicated ray tracing and tensor cores, PCI-E Gen 4, Display Port 1.4a, HDMI 2.1a, and HDCP 2.3, and support for DirectX 12 Ultimate, DLSS 3, and G-Sync.

However, on the back of the box, there is no mention of the minimum system requirements. Only a QR code that leads to a table of recommended PSUs is added. The minimum system requirements are only shown on one lateral side of the cover and only mention the need for a 1*16-pin supplementary power connector.

Accessories

We open the box and note there are parts for a card stand. The card stand is height adjustable, and its thinner upper part can also be separated and become a small screwdriver for card disassembling purposes. Also, the card stand has a rubber band at one end, and the support base has a magnet to fix the card stand inside the chassis.

ASUS includes a PCIe Gen5 power cable adapter to two PCI-E 8-pin cables to connect the RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC to most PSUs. While the power connector adapter requires two Molex wires from the PSU to operate, newer PSUs may offer the new PCIe Gen5 single cable connector instead of massive double cabling. They also include a Velcro cable management strap with TUF GAMING branding.

Above, you can see the card stand fully assembled. Some may not feel the need to use the card stand, given how relatively heavy the 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC is. However, for safety and given the little volume it occupies inside the case, we think it is a worthwhile addition.

Also, you will find a small detachable black cardboard box, which includes the quick start guide, the warranty card, the certificate of reliability, the graphics card holder manual, an ASUS promotional detachable cardboard holder for your mobile phone, and a collectible card advertising this model.

The Card

The RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC is a large tri-fan and three-slot graphics card with sober aesthetics and solid and quality design.

Turning it over, we see a sturdy metal backplate featuring the TUF and GeForce RTX logos and branding.

Heat pipes and heatsink fins cover the entire PCB, and there is a switch to choose between the Performance and Quiet VBIOS modes. We didn’t bother using the Quiet VBIOS mode as the card is silent anyway, and the factory overclock is the same, but it is good to have in case a flash procedure fails.

The IO panel connectors are 3 DisplayPorts and 2 HDMI connections.

Below is the other card end.

Plugged in & Inside the case

The RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC looks beautiful inside a case. We liked that only the TUF logo has RGB lighting to match our RGB-lite gaming rig.

The specifications look promising, and the card, itself, looks solid and quality.

Next is our testing configuration, methodology, and more.

Test Configuration

Benching Methodology

Test Configuration – Hardware

• 12th Gen Intel Core i9-12900K (Hyper-Threading/Turbo boost on; stock settings)
• ASUS PRIME Z690-P D4 motherboard (Intel Z690 chipset, v.1008 BIOS)
• T-FORCE XTREEM ARGB WHITE 32GB DDR4 (2×16GB, dual-channel at 3600 MHz CL14 XMP), supplied by TeamGroup
• ASUS TUF GAMING GeForce RTX 4070 Ti OC Edition 12GB, stock clocks; supplied by Nvidia
• Gigabyte AORUS GeForce RTX 3080 MASTER 10GB (rev. 1.0); v.F4 VBIOS, stock clocks
• EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti BLACK EDITION GAMING 11GB, stock clocks
• 1 x Samsung 500GB SSD 960 EVO NVMe M.2
• 2 x WD Blue 1TB SATA SSD
• 1 x TeamGroup MP33 M.2 PCIe 1TB SSD
• Corsair RM850x, 850W 80PLUS Gold power supply unit
• ASUS TUF Gaming VG289Q 28? IPS UltraHD (3840×2160) 60Hz 5ms FreeSync Monitor for testing games at 2160p resolution.
• ASUS ROG Swift PG279Q 27? IPS QuadHD (2560 x 1440) 165Hz 4ms G-Sync Monitor for testing games at 1440p resolution.

Test Configuration – Software

• NVIDIA GeForce 527.62 press drivers; ‘Prefer maximum performance’ (on a per-game profile basis); Shader Cache Size ‘Unlimited’ (globally); fixed refresh rate (globally).
• We enable Resizable BAR (disabled with RTX 2080 Ti due to the lack of full support).
• ‘V-Sync application controlled’ in the control panel; V-Sync off in-game.
• We note and specify the main in-game display, graphics, AA, and scaling settings in the performance summary charts.
• Windows 11 64-bit Pro edition, latest updates v22H2, High-performance power plan, HAGS & Game Mode are enabled, Game DVR & Game Bar features off, Control Flow Guard (CFG) off on a per-game basis, Hypervisor and Virtualization-based security are disabled.
• We do not install GIGABYTE or ASUS tools.
• Latest DirectX
• All 19 games are patched to their latest versions at the time of publication.
• 3DMark suite and UNIGINE Superposition benchmark, the latest version
• Basemark GPU benchmark, v.1.2.3
• UNIGINE Superposition, v.1.1
• CapFrameX (CX), the latest version
• RivaTuner Statistics Server (RTSS), the latest version
• FrameView, the latest version
• Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU), the latest version; always uninstall drivers using DDU in safe mode, clean, and restart.

• ISLC (Purge Standby List) before each benchmark.

GeForce Driver Suite-related

• We use DCH Game Ready drivers.
• The display driver is installed.
• We install the latest version of PhysX.

Hybrid & Non-Synthetic Tests-related

• Single run per test.

Game Benchmarks-related

• We use the corresponding built-in or custom benchmark sequence.

Frametimes Capture & Analysis tool-related

• We use CapFrameX for capturing frametimes and analyzing the relevant performance numbers obtained from each recorded built-in or custom benchmark sequence.
• We use FrameView for capturing purposes only when DLSS 3 is enabled for maximum reliability.
• We always perform consecutive runs until detecting three usable runs (no outliers) that can be aggregated by CapFrameX using the following method:
  • Aggregate excluding outliers:
    • Outlier metric: Third, P0.2 (0.2% FPS percentile).
    • Outlier percentage: 3% (the % the FPS of an entry can differ from the median of all entries before counting as an outlier).
• We compare and evaluate the results and aggregated records in terms of percentages of gain/loss and set the following thresholds to consider a % value as significant (not within the margin of error) for our benchmarking purposes:
  • Score/Avg FPS > 3% when valuing hybrid and non-synthetic benchmarks;
  • Avg FPS > 3% when evaluating raw performance.

Benchmark Suite: 19 Games, 6 Hybrid & 3 Non-Synthetic Tests

PC Games

DX11 Games

• Days Gone (DX11)
• God of War (DX11)
• Total War: Warhammer III (DX11)

DX12 Games

• A Plague Tale: Requiem (DX12)
• Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla (DX12)
• Call of Duty: Vanguard (DX12)
• Cyberpunk 2077 v.1.61 (DX12)
• F1 2021 (DX12)
• Far Cry 6 (DX12)
• Forza Horizon 5 (DX12)
• Hitman 3 (DX12)
• Horizon Zero Dawn (DX12)
• Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition (DX12)
• Spider-Man: Remastered (DX12)
• The Callisto Protocol (DX12)
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt v.4.00 (DX12)

Vulkan Games

• DOOM Eternal (VK)
• Quake 2 RTX (VK; v.1.6.0)
• Wolfenstein: Youngblood (VK)

Synthetic Tests

• AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks
• Blender 3.4.0 benchmark
• Geekbench 5
• Sandra 2021 GPGPU Benchmarks

Hybrid Tests (3DMark)

• DirectX Raytracing feature test
• Fire Strike Extreme
• Fire Strike Ultra
• Port Royal
• Time Spy
• Time Spy Extreme

Non-Synthetic Tests

• Basemark GPU
• GPUScore: Relic of Life
• UNIGINE Superposition

NVIDIA Control Panel settings

Here are the global NVIDIA Control Panel settings:

Noise, Temperatures, and Power Consumption

Unfortunately, we did not have time to check out the overclocking potential, but temperatures were slightly higher than the AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER. So BTR plans to follow this review up with a VR review – conducted by Mark Poppin, BTR’s PC VR specialist – and an overclocking and creative and pro apps performance analysis – done by the author of the current article.

The RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC is quiet, and its fans never spin up, even under a heavy or full load, to be irritating or noticeable. It is as silent as the AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER. This model also supports a 0RPM fan mode on idle or light load conditions.

This card is factory clocked 120MHz higher than the reference version at 2610MHz using both BIOS modes. According to its specifications, the RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC boost can clock up to 2730MHz out of the box. From our testing, we generally see it boosting even higher and typically settling in 2820MHz with peaks above 2850MHz under full or heavy load conditions.

Below is our thermal and approximate power consumption analysis on idle (Windows desktop, no user interactions) and full-load (UNIGINE Superposition Stress Test, 2160p resolution, highest settings, 10 minutes).

Idle conditions

On idle conditions, we see a maximum GPU clock of 210MHz, a Memory Clock of 50.6MHz max, a GPU temperature of 23 Celsius degrees (room temp at 19 Celsius degrees) max, an average board power draw of approximately 9.0W, average power consumption of 3%, and a maximum GPU voltage of 0.88V.

Full-load conditions

Under full-load conditions, the RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC peaked at a maximum clock of 2880MHz, but after some minutes running the Superposition stress test, it slowed down progressively, step by step, and stabilized at 2820MHz when GPU temp stays in the mid-60s C. Also, the maximum memory clock was 1312.7MHz, the GPU peaked at 65.50 Celsius degrees max (room temp at 21 Celsius degrees), the approximate board power draw was 272.8W max, a maximum power consumption peak of 95.7%, and the GPU voltage reached a maximum of 1.10V.

Finally, the reported PerfCap reason (performance limited by different factors) during our full-load GPU stress test was either the intended VBIOS power or reliability limits.

So taking into account all the above, we consider that our ASUS TUF GAMING RTX 4070 Ti OC Edition sample works great and as intended in terms of frequencies, noise level, temperature, and power consumption. Overall the RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC is quiet, well-cooled, and power efficient.

Let’s head to the performance charts to compare the graphics performance of the RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC with two other graphics cards; an RTX 3080, based on the Ampere architecture, and an RTX 2080 Ti, based on the Turing architecture.

Gaming Performance Charts

DirectX 11 Game Performance Charts

Days Gone (DX11)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

God of War (DX11)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Total War: Warhammer III (DX11)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

DirectX 12 Game Performance Charts

A Plague Tale: Requiem (DX12)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla (DX12)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Call of Duty: Vanguard (DX12)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Cyberpunk 2077 (DX12) v.1.61

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

F1 22 (DX12)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Far Cry 6 (DX12)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Forza Horizon 5 (DX12)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Hitman 3 (DX12)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Horizon Zero Dawn (DX12)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

The Callisto Protocol (DX12)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Vulkan Game Performance Charts

Doom Eternal (Vulkan)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Wolfenstein: Youngblood (Vulkan)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

DirectX Raytracing Game Performance Charts

Cyberpunk 2077 (DXR)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

F1 22 (DXR)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Far Cry 6 (DXR)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Forza Horizon 5 (DXR)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Hitman 3 (DXR)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition (DXR)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

The Callisto Protocol (DXR)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Vulkan Raytracing Game Performance Charts

Doom Eternal (Vulkan Ray Pipeline)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Quake II RTX v.1.6.0 (Vulkan Ray Query)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Wolfenstein: Youngblood (RTX)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Main Performance Gaming Summary Charts

Here are the summary charts of 19 games, six hybrid, and three non-synthetic tests. We note and specify the main in-game display, graphics, AA, and scaling settings on the performance summary charts below. The benches were run at 2560×1440 and at 3840×2160.

We compare three graphics cards and list them listed in order starting with the TUF GAMING RTX 4070 Ti OC (yellow text), the AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER, and the EVGA RTX 2080 Ti BLACK. All results, except for 3D Mark Fire Strike, Time Spy, and Port Royal hybrid tests, show average framerates, and higher is better. Minimum framerates are next to the averages in italics and a slightly smaller font. Minimum framerates are expressed by the 1% percentile FPS (P1), and higher is better.

Here are the hybrid and non-synthetic benchmark results.

DLSS Benchmarks

In this section, we compare the performance in some games with Quality DLSS on and off, and also compare performance with Quality DLSS 2 with our RTX 3080 and 2080 Ti cards versus Quality DLSS 3 (DLSS 2 + Frame Generation) using our RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC to check if the massive performance improvements advertised by Nvidia are real.

No DLSS vs. Quality DLSS 2

Looking at the chart above, we see substantial performance improvements in all tested games using Quality DLSS 2 with our three cards compared to not using DLSS.

At 2160p and using Quality DLSS, the 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC is the only card of our three we compare to exceed the 30FPS barrier in Cyberpunk 2077 (DXR), to reach the 60FPS one in Hitman 3 (DXR), and to exceed 60FPS avg in Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition (DXR).

No DLSS vs. Quality DLSS 2 & 3

Nvidia talks about 2x and up to 2.4x performance improvements when using DLSS 3 in games supported by the RTX 4070 Ti. In our case, we saw that their promo ads are consistent with reality.

We see an impressive +159% (2.6X) performance improvement between having DLSS 3 on and off in The Witcher 3 (DXR) v4.0, another +107% (2.1X) in F1 22 (DXR), +72% (1.7X) in Spider-Man: Remastered (DXR), and +91% (1.9X) in A Plague Tale: Requiem.

The previous results using DLSS 3 show us the notable advantage and performance leap in the most demanding and current ray-traced games, which comes from having an Ada Lovelace graphics card, especially in the case of the RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC.

Considering the image quality results from a 2160p native resolution, we saw that overall, Quality DLSS 3 looks just as good as Quality DLSS 2 in all games we tested, with only some minor artifacts visible in certain situations. From a 1440p native resolution, we see similar results, except The Witcher 3 v.4.0, as the game with DLSS 3 enabled showed a blurrier image than Quality DLSS 2 in this scenario.

Averaged Framerates & Relative GPU Performance

Averaged Game Framerates

We averaged the aggregated FPS avg of all games and testing scenarios, and we represented the total game average FPS for each tested graphics card by the following chart:

On average, the TUF GAMING RTX 4070 Ti is approximately 17% faster than the AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER and 66% faster than the EVGA RTX 2080 BLACK. So, although the RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC offers a substantial performance improvement in games over the EVGA RTX 2080 Ti BLACK baseline performance, the RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC delivers a far less impressive step up over the AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER.

RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC Relative Performance

Considering the calculated total game average FPS and the RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC as 100% performance, we can situate relatively the two other cards we compare. So, based on our total game average FPS of each card, the relative GPU performance of the AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER is approximately 86% (14% less performance than the RTX 4070 Ti, on average), and the relative GPU performance of the EVGA RTX 2080 Ti BLACK is 60% (40% less performance than the RTX 4070 Ti, on average).

Let’s see our final thoughts and verdict on the RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC.

Final Thoughts & Verdict

This has been an enjoyable exploration comparing the new ASUS TUF GAMING RTX 4070 Ti OC Edition with the AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER and EVGA RTX 2080 Ti BLACK. The TUF GAMING RTX 4070 Ti is a quality card with a sober aesthetic, minimal RGB lighting, an excellent cooling system, and room for moderate additional overclocking.

The RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC performed solidly above the RTX 3080 and well above the RTX 2080 Ti. While the TUF GAMING RTX 4070 Ti OC is not a notable upgrade for existing RTX 3080 users, it certainly is for RTX 2080 Ti users and any Turing users considering upgrading their gaming rig. However, at $849.99 and for users coming from an RTX 3080, the TUF GAMING RTX 4070 Ti OC is still a reasonably priced option to consider as a decent GPU refresh, especially if you want to enjoy significant performance improvements in DX12 and ray-traced games and the massive performance gains that DLSS 3 brings to gamers.

The TUF GAMING RTX 4070 Ti OC Edition especially shines at 1440p resolution delivering high to very-high framerates in every recent game and 3D API scenario we tested, and also has the power to play most games over 60FPS at 2160p, where until now, a 3080 fell short of delivering a smooth 60 FPS experience in the most demanding games.

All in all, the ASUS TUF GAMING RTX 4070 Ti OC Edition is a decent refresh in terms of performance for RTX 3080 owners who want to upgrade to the latest architecture to maximize its graphics power for a reasonable price or even a big step up at a good price for Turing users who also like to enjoy the ray tracing and Nvidia DLSS enhancements of the new Ada-Lovelace micro-architecture.

Let’s Play!

***

Rodrigo González (aka RodroG) is the current BTR lead reviewer and an enthusiast gamer. He is especially interested in shooter games, open-world role-playing games, and software and hardware benchmarking. He is the author of the NVIDIA WHQL Driver Performance Benchmarks Series and founder and moderator of the r/allbenchmarks community on Reddit.

Reach New Peaks and Experience the Thrill of High-Performance Gaming

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?About TEAMGROUP?

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###

Happy Gaming!

The Red Devil RX 6700 XT arrived at BTR for evaluation from PowerColor as a 12GB vRAM-equipped card last week with no manufacturer recommended (SEP/MSRP) pricing. We have been comparing it with the just released $479 RX 6700 XT reference card from AMD, and also versus the GeForce $499 RTX 3070 Founders Edition (FE) and the $399 RTX 3060 Ti (FE) using 35 games, GPGPU, workstation, SPEC, and synthetic benchmarks.

We will also compare the performance of these competing cards with the RX 6700 XT’s bigger brother, the RX 6800; with its predecessor the RX 5700 XT Anniversary Edition (AE); and also with the $329 RTX 3060; but especially versus the RTX 2060 and the GTX 1060/6GB to see how older cards fare to complete BTR’s 9-card Big Picture.

The Red Devil RX 6700 XT is factory clocked higher than the reference version (below) using its OC BIOS.

According to its specifications, the Red Devil RX 6700 XT can boost up to 2622MHz out of the box or 41MHz higher than the reference RX 6700 XT which clocks to 2581MHz. It also looks different from older generation classic Red Devils, arriving in a more neutral gray color instead of in all red and black. The Red Devil RX 6700 XT features a RGB mode whose LEDs default to a bright red which may be customized by PowerColor’s DevilZone software.

The Reference and Red Devil RX 6700 XT Features & Specifications

First let’s look at the reference RX 6700 XT specifications compared with its predecessor, the RX 5700 XT

From what we can see from the specifications, the new card should be solidly faster than its predecessor.

Here are the Red Devil RX 6700 XT specifications according to PowerColor:

Specifications

Features

Here are the Red Devil RX 6700 XT features.

Additional Information from PowerColor

• The card has 2 modes, OC and Silent 203W / 186W Power target. There’s a bios switch on the side of the card. We designed this card to be very quiet, even on performance mode is considerably quieter than reference board but we also advise to try the silent mode as it’s truly whisper quiet, with a normal case with a optimal airflow, you most likely see the card run around 1000 Rpms under this mode.
• The board has 12 Phases (10+2 Dr.Mos) VS the 9 (7+2) Phase VRM design on the reference design meaning is over spec’d in order to
  deliver the best stability and overclock headroom, not only capable of well over 250w but by having such VRM it will run cooler and last longer.
• DrMos and high-polymer Caps are used on our Design, no compromises.
• Our cooler features 2 x 100mm with a center 1x90mm fan, all with two ball bearing fans with 6 heat pipes 6Φ across the high density heatsink with coper base. As you might notice the PCB is shorter than the cooler, this design is a continuation of what we already implemented in many generations previously and just now has become almost a industry standard.
• RGB is enhanced, Red Devil now connects to the motherboard aRGB (5v 3 pin connector).
• Red Devil has Mute fan technology, fans stop under 60c!
• The ports are LED illuminated. Now you can see in the dark where to plug.
• The card back plate does not have thermal pads but instead we did cuts across the backplate for the PCB to breath, which under high heat scenarios is more beneficial than having thermal pads as the back plate can become a heat trap.
• Copper Base Direct Touch – A smooth copper base with direct contact to the GPU and VRAMs provides for optimized heat transfer and dissipation
• Buyers or Red Devil Limited edition will be able to join exclusive giveaway as well access to the Devil Club website. A membership club for Devil users only which gives them access to News, Competitions, Downloads, and most important, instant support via Live chat.

The Big Navi 2 Radeon 6000 family

The reference Radeon 6700 XT at $479 competes with the RTX 3070 FE ($499) and is priced $20 lower, but it sits $80 higher than the RTX 3060 Ti ($399). This should tell us that it is expected to trade blows with the RTX 3070, but be solidly faster then the RTX 3060 Ti.

The RX 6800 at $579 competes below the RX 3080 at $699 while the RX 6900 XT at $999 is AMD’s flagship and sits below the $1499 RX 3090. Of course, as PowerColor would have us understand, none of these “suggested” prices have any meaning to gamers currently because of the supply issues and extreme demand caused by the dual pandemics – COVID 19 and cryptocurrency mining.

Above is a die shot of the GPU powering the Radeon RX 6700 XT courtesy of AMD.

AMD has their own ecosystem for gamers and many unique new features for the Radeon 6000 series. However, the above slide from AMD does not mention two very important features – the Infinity Cache and Smart Access Memory.

Infinity Cache & Smart Access Memory

AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture includes the Infinity Cache which alters the way data is delivered to GPUs. This global cache allows fast data
access and increases bandwidth with higher performance and better power efficiency. This highly optimized on-die cache uses 96MB of AMD Infinity Cache delivering up to 2.5x the effective bandwidth compared to 256-bit 12Gbps GDDR6.

Unfortunately, BTR uses Intel’s latest 10th generation flagship CPU, the i9-10990K which does not have this cache available so our results will probably be lower than what a gamer using the Ryzen 5000 platform will see. In addition, we don’t have Smart Access Memory.

AMD’s Smart Access Memory is a new feature for the Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards that enables additional memory space to be mapped to the base address register resulting in performance gains for select games when paired with an AMD Ryzen 5000 Series processor or with some Ryzen 3000 series CPUs. Using PCIe, the Base Address Register (BAR) defines how much GPU memory space can be mapped. Until now, CPUs can only access a fraction of GPU memory, often limited to 256MB. With less efficient data transfer, performance is restricted.

NVIDIA has worked with its partners and with Intel to enable Resizable BAR which currently is enabled on the EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard but only works with selected games and with the RTX 3060 for now. When we tried to enable it for the RX 6700 XT, our PC refused to boot. So we had to disable it and test all of our video cards and games without Resizable BAR limiting the RX 6700 XT’s performance.

Last Friday, AMD explained that we would have to do a clean installation of Windows 10 if we wanted to use it, but we simply had no time. Here are their instructions for enabling Resizable BAR for our Intel Z490 motherboard that we shall follow for our future reviews:

If you would like to enable Resizable BAR, we recommend re-installing Windows 10 with these steps:

• Open the BOOT menu and select CSM (Compatibility Support Module)
• Set this value to DISABLED
• Open the ADVANCED menu and choose PCI Configuration
• Set Above 4G Decoding to Enabled
• Set Re-Size BAR Support to Enabled
• Save your changes and install Windows 10

So our performance results may be lower for selected games that can take full advantage of Resizable BAR or Smart Access Memory. Hopefully we will upgrade to a Ryzen 5950X when they become available at a reasonable price and we will retire our i9-10900K. We already are very unhappy with being limited to PCIe Generation 3 using fast SSDs just because Intel chose to hold back the feature until their upcoming 11th generation.

The Test Bed

BTR’s test bed consists of 35 games and 3 synthetic game benchmarks at 1920×1080 and 2560×1440, as well as SPEC, Workstation, and GPGPU benchmarks. Our latest games include Hitman 3, Cyberpunk 2077, DiRT 5, and Godfall. The testing platform uses a recent installation of Windows 10 64-bit Pro Edition, and our CPU is an i9-10900K which turbos all 10 cores to 5.1/5.0GHz, an EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard, and 32GB of T-FORCE Dark Z DDR4 at 3600MHz. The games, settings, and hardware are identical except for the cards being compared.

First, let’s take a closer look at the new PowerColor Red Devil RX 6700 XT which we shall compare with the reference RX 6700 XT.

A Closer Look at the Reference and PowerColor Red Devil RX 6700 XT

Although the Red Devil RX 6700 XT advertises itself as a premium 7nm 16GB vRAM-equipped card on AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture which features 1440P and PCIe 4.0, the cover of the box uses almost no text in favor of stylized imagery.

The back of the box touts key features which now include HDMI 2.1 VRR, ray tracing technology, and VR Ready Premium as well as states it’s 700W power and system requirements. AMD’s technology features are highlighted and the box features PowerColor’s custom cooling solution, Dual-BIOSes, RGB software and output LEDs, and a solid backplate.

Opening its very well-padded box, we see a quick installation guide, RGB LED cable, and an invitation to join PowerColor’s Devil’s Club. PowerColor has a nicer presentation than AMD’s reference RX 6700 XT which is rather barebones.

AMD directs you to their website for installation instructions while PowerColor includes detailed instructions.

The Red Devil RX 6700 XT is a large tri-fan card in a 2.5 slot design which is quite handsome with PowerColor’s colors and even more striking with the RGB on. Here is the Red Devil next to a reference RX 5700 XT and flanked on both sides by a RTX 3060 Ti FE and a RTX 3070 FE to show how much larger and beefier a card it is than the other three cards.

The Red Devil uses two 1×8-pin PCIe connections while the reference version uses 1×8-pin and 1×6-pin. Looking at the other edge, we can see it is all heatsink fins for cooling as is typical of Red Devil cards.

Below, the PowerColor Red Devil RX 6700 XT’s sturdy backplate features a stylized custom devil symbol that lights up in the color of your choice if synced, red being the default. There is also a switch to choose between the default overclock (OC) BIOS and the Silent BIOS. We didn’t bother with the Silent BIOS but it is good to have in case a flash goes bad.

Compare with the reference RX 6700 XT backplate which is rather plain-Jane.

The Red Devil’s RX 6700 XT’s connectors include 2 DisplayPorts, 1 HDMI connection, and a USB Type C connector. There is an LED that illuminates this panel for making easier connections in the dark.

It shares the same IO connectors with the reference RX 6700 XT below, but the Red Devil has a better system exhausting hot air out of the back of the PC.

The specifications look good and the Red Devil itself looks great with its default RGB bright red contrasting with the black backplate and its aggressively lit-up end perhaps is stylistically reminiscent of an automotive grill.

Unlike with the reference version that only lights up the logo, you may also enhance and coordinate the RGB colors by connecting to the motherboard using a supplied aRGB (5v 3-pin) connector using the DevilZone RGB software. It looks awesome.

Let’s check out its performance after we look over our test configuration and more on the next page.

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i9-10900K (HyperThreading/Turbo boost On; All cores overclocked to 5.1GHz/5.0Ghz. Comet Lake DX11 CPU graphics)
• EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard (Intel Z490 chipset, v1.9 BIOS, PCIe 3.0/3.1/3.2 specification, CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x), supplied by EVGA
• T-FORCE DARK Z 32GB DDR4 (2x16GB, dual channel at 3600MHz), supplied by Team Group
• Red Devil RX 6700 XT 12GB, factory settings and overclocked, on loan from PowerColor
• Radeon RX 6700 XT 12GB, reference version stock clocks and overclocked, on loan from AMD
• Radeon RX 6800 Reference version 16GB, stock settings, on loan from AMD
• Radeon RX 5700 XT 8GB Anniversary Edition, stock AE clocks.
• EVGA RTX 3060 Black 12GB, stock clocks, on loan from NVIDIA
• RTX 3070 Founders Edition 8GB, stock clocks, on loan from NVIDIA/EVGA
• RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition 8GB, stock clocks, on loan from NVIDIA/EVGA
• RTX 2060 Founders Edition 6GB, stock clocks, on loan from NVIDIA
• EVGA GTX 1060 SC 6GB, factory SC clocks, on loan from EVGA
• 2 x 1TB Team Group MP33 NVMe2 PCIe SSD for C: drive; one for AMD and one for NVIDIA
• 1.92TB San Disk enterprise class SATA III SSD (storage)
• 2TB Micron 1100 SATA III SSD (storage)
• 1TB Team Group GX2 SATA III SSD (storage)
• 500GB T-FORCE Vulcan SSD (storage), supplied by Team Group
• ANTEC HCG1000 Extreme, 1000W gold power supply unit
• Samsung G7 Odyssey (LC27G75TQSNXZA) 27″ 2560×1440/240Hz/1ms/G-SYNC/HDR600 monitor
• DEEPCOOL Castle 360EX AIO 360mm liquid CPU cooler
• Phanteks Eclipse P400 ATX mid-tower (plus 1 Noctua 140mm fan) – All benchmarking and overclocking performed with the case closed

Test Configuration – Software

• GeForce 461.72 for the RTX 3070; and GeForce 461.64 drivers for the RTX 3060 and RTX 3060 Ti. GeForce 461.40 drivers are used for the older two GeForce cards.
• Adrenalin 2021 Edition 20.50.11 press drivers used for the RX 6800, the RX 6700 XT reference and Red Devil editions, and 21.2.3 used for the RX 5700 XT Anniversary Edition (AE).
• High Quality, prefer maximum performance, single display, set in the NVIDIA control panel; Vsync off.
• All optimizations are off, Vsync is forced off, Texture filtering is set to High, and Tessellation uses application settings in the AMD control panel.
• AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are specified with 16xAF always applied
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games
• All games have been patched to their latest versions
• Gaming results show average frame rates in bold including minimum frame rates shown on the chart next to the averages in a smaller italics font where higher is better. Games benched with OCAT show average framerates but the minimums are expressed by frametimes (99th-percentile) in ms where lower numbers are better.
• Windows 10 64-bit Pro edition; latest updates v10.0.1942. DX11 titles are run under the DX11 render path. DX12 titles are generally run under DX12, and multiple games use the Vulkan API.
• Latest DirectX

Games

Vulkan

• DOOM Eternal
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Ghost Recon: Breakpoint
• Wolfenstein Youngblood
• World War Z
• Strange Brigade
• Rainbow 6 Siege

DX12

• Hitman 3
• Cyberpunk 2077
• DiRT 5
• Godfall
• Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War
• Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla
• Watch Dogs: Legion
• Horizon Zero Dawn
• Death Stranding
• F1 2020
• Gears 5
• Tom Clancy’s The Division 2
• Metro Exodus
• Civilization VI – Gathering Storm Expansion
• Battlefield V
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Project CARS 2
• Forza 7

DX11

• Crysis Remastered
• Mech Warriors 5: Mercenaries
• Destiny 2 Shadowkeep
• Borderlands 3
• Total War: Three Kingdoms
• Far Cry New Dawn
• Assetto Corsa: Competitione
• Monster Hunter: World
• Overwatch
• Grand Theft Auto V

Synthetic

• TimeSpy (DX12)
• 3DMark FireStrike – Ultra & Extreme
• Superposition
• Heaven 4.0 benchmark
• AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks
• Blender 2.912 benchmark
• Sandra 2020/2021 GPGPU Benchmarks
• SPECworkstation3
• SPECviewperf 2020

NVIDIA Control Panel settings

Here are the NVIDIA Control Panel settings.

Next the AMD settings.

AMD Adrenalin Control Center Settings

All AMD settings are set so that all optimizations are off, Vsync is forced off, Texture filtering is set to High, and Tessellation uses application settings. All Navi cards are capable of high Tessellation unlike earlier generations of Radeons.

Anisotropic Filtering is disabled by default but we always use 16X for all game benchmarks.

Let’s check out overclocking, temperatures and noise next.

This overclocking showdown is the final follow-up to the two Red Devil RX 6900 XT reviews last week versus the RTX 3090 Founders Edition (FE). Today, we have optimized our overclocks with all performance options set to their highest limits to get the most performance from each card.

At stock, the Red Devil $1139/1179 RX 6900 XT trades blows with the $1499 RTX 3090 FE in rasterized games although it is slower overall. The Red Devil 6900 XT also provided a better VR experience than the RX 6800 XT although its performance again fell short of the RTX 3090 FE’s VR performance. This time, we will overclock the each card as far as they will go to see where they stand in relation to each other when manually overclocked.

Overclocking the Red Devil RX 6900 XT

The Red Devil version of the RX 6900 XT is factory overclocked 90MHz higher than the reference version at 2250MHz using the OC BIOS. According to its specifications, the Red Devil RX 6900 XT boost can clock up to 2340MHz out of the box. We benched it using out of the box settings at its default Power Limit setting of 280W and looped Heaven 4.0 in a 1440P window at max settings to load the GPU to 98%.

We generally see it boosting even higher than its rated specs, and it generally settles in above 2380MHz with peaks above 2400MHz. Increasing the Power Limit to its maximum (320W) we see a small increase in performance.

It will boost about 35MHz higher with a maxed out Power Limit slider, and we tested its 320W performance compared with out of the box 280W performance using synthetic benches which are sensitive to overclocking and also very accurate.

There is approximately a 1-3% performance increase with 40W added, so some enthusiasts may prefer to undervolt rather than overvolt their Red Devil depending on their preferences.

This isn’t much performance additional performance to be gained either with the RTX 3090 that gains about 2-5% by increasing its power limit. But we want to see how a maximum core and memory overclock will increase the Red Devil’s performance without consideration for the power usage.

We maxed the Power Limit, added the maximum voltage, maxed the memory OC slider to the right to add 7% more frequency, and moved the Max Frequency slider to 2750MHz after testing each +25MHz increment between 2600 and 2800MHz. Each increase in the maximum core frequency increased performance slightly which we confirmed as we looped Heaven 4.0. We were stopped dead at 2775MHz when the PC locked up.

We were disappointed with the performance increases until we also increased the fan profile to keep the GPU below 74C. Although, the fans started to become more audible, the performance stabilized and the GPU no longer throttled. With a cooler running GPU, the core clocks stayed relatively steady just below 2700MHz which is about 250MHz above the default Red Devil core clocks and the voltage pegged at 1175mV as the card consistently drew more than 300W, peaking above 320W.

Before we compare the Red Devil’s overclocked performance with the RTX 3090 FE, let’s look at its chief competitor’s overclock.

Overclocking the RTX 3090 FE

We devoted a separate evaluation to the RTX 3090 which you can read here. After testing multiple combinations further, our RTX 3090’s final stable overclock for this review to achieve the highest overall performance adds +55 MHz offset to the core and +600 MHz to the memory to perform above 1950MHz

The RTX 3090 FE is power-limited, and to achieve a higher overclock will take more voltage than what adding .1mV can deliver. But before we compare the RTX 3090 at stock and overclocked with the Red Devil RX 6900 XT, please check out our testing platform and configuration.

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i9-10900K (HyperThreading/Turbo boost On; All cores overclocked to 5.1GHz/5.0Ghz. Comet Lake DX11 CPU graphics)
• EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard (Intel Z490 chipset, v1.9 BIOS, PCIe 3.0/3.1/3.2 specification, CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x), supplied by EVGA
• T-FORCE DARK Z 32GB DDR4 (2x16GB, dual channel at 3600MHz), supplied by Team Group
• Red Devil RX 6900 XT 16GB, stock and overclocked, on short term loan from PowerColor
• RTX 3090 Founders Edition 24GB, stock and overclock, on loan from NVIDIA
• 1TB Team Group MP33 NVMe2 PCIe SSD for C: drive
• 1.92TB San Disk enterprise class SATA III SSD (storage)
• 2TB Micron 1100 SATA III SSD (storage)
• 1TB Team Group GX2 SATA III SSD (storage)
• 500GB T-FORCE Vulcan SSD (storage), supplied by Team Group
• ANTEC HCG1000 Extreme, 1000W gold power supply unit
• BenQ EW3270U 32? 4K HDR 60Hz FreeSync monitor
• Samsung G7 Odyssey (LC27G75TQSNXZA) 27? 2560×1440/240Hz/1ms/G-SYNC/HDR600 monitor
• DEEPCOOL Castle 360EX AIO 360mm liquid CPU cooler
• Phanteks Eclipse P400 ATX mid-tower (plus 1 Noctua 140mm fan) – All benchmarking and overclocking performed with the case closed

Test Configuration – Software

• GeForce 461.09 for the RTX 3090
• Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.12.2 drivers used for the Red Devil RX 6900 XT
• High Quality, prefer maximum performance, single display, set in the NVIDIA control panel.
• VSync is off in the control panel and disabled for each game
• AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are specified with 16xAF always applied
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games
• All games have been patched to their latest versions
• Gaming results show average frame rates in bold including minimum frame rates shown on the chart next to the averages in a smaller italics font where higher is better. Games benched with OCAT show average framerates but the minimums are expressed by frametimes (99th-percentile) in ms where lower numbers are better.
• Windows 10 64-bit Pro edition; latest updates v2004. DX11 titles are run under the DX11 render path. DX12 titles are generally run under DX12, and multiple games use the Vulkan API.
• Latest DirectX
• Precision X1
• Wattman

Games

Vulkan

• Ghost Recon: Breakpoint
• Wolfenstein Youngblood
• World War Z
• Strange Brigade
• Rainbow 6 Siege

DX12

• Horizon Zero Dawn
• Tom Clancy’s The Division 2
• Metro Exodus

DX11

• Total War: Three Kingdoms
• Far Cry New Dawn

Synthetic

• TimeSpy (DX12)
• 3DMark FireStrike – Ultra & Extreme
• Superposition
• Heaven 4.0 benchmark

NVIDIA Control Panel settings

Here are the NVIDIA Control Panel settings.

We used Precision X1 to set the GeForce card’s power and temperature limits to maximum and used Wattman for the Radeon.

AMD Adrenalin Control Center Settings

All AMD settings are configured so that all optimizations are off, Vsync is forced off, Texture filtering is set to High, and Tessellation uses application settings. All Navi and Navi 2 cards are capable of high Tessellation unlike earlier generations of Radeons.

Anisotropic Filtering is disabled by default but we always use 16X for all game benchmarks.

Let’s overclock both of our cards to their maximum and check out their performance.

Performance summary charts

Below is the summary chart of 10 games and 3 synthetic tests. The highest settings are always chosen and DX12 was picked above DX11 where available. Specific settings are listed on the performance charts. The benches were run at 1920×1080, 2560×1440, and at 3840×2160.

All results, except for the synthetic benchmarks show average frame rates and higher is always better. Minimum frame rates are shown when they are available next to the averages but they are in italics and in a slightly smaller font. The Red Devil RX 6900 XT’s stock results are in the first column and its overclocked results are in the second column, while the third column represents the overclocked RTX 3090’s results with its stock-clocked results in the fourth column.

There isn’t much change in the overall ranking by overclocking both cards although each card scales decently. Horizon Zero Dawn gave inconsistent benching results at 4K (between 77 and 84 FPS) which may still indicate some throttling for the Red Devil. Although both cards are constrained by their respective power limits and tiny voltage increases, the Red Devil is an aftermarket card that should not be so power-limited.

PowerColor claims that their Red Devil can handle 400W, but is limited to 320W which means a lot of performance is left on the table by AMD’s lockdown. It is possible to circumvent this power limit with overclocking tools like MorePowerTools, but we have not tested it as our sample had to be returned to PowerColor in working condition after two weeks of intensive benchmarking.

Let’s head to our conclusion.

Conclusion

This has been quite an interesting exploration for us, evaluating the overclocked $1139/$1179 Red Devil RX 6900 XT versus the overclocked $1499 RTX 3090 FE. The Red Devil is a slower card, but it also costs about $350 less. We are very disappointed that the Red Devil’s voltage and power limit has been locked down, but the blame for this lays with AMD for an illogical decision for their partner cards – not with PowerColor who would love to be able to allow enthusiasts to push their card much harder.

PowerColor has taken the RX 6900 XT GPU and over-engineered it with a 16 Phase design versus the 11+2 Phase VRM design on the reference design. Red Devils are over-spec’d in order to deliver the best stability and overclocking headroom. It’s not only capable of using well over 400W, and by having the best VRMs, it will run cooler and last longer than any reference version

The Red Devil is the equivalent of a Ferrari – and AMD has forcibly installed a limiter on it. This is a poor decision by AMD foisted on their partners and we respectfully disagree with them. We really like the Red Devil and will continue to recommend it as among the very best of the AIB RX 6900 XTs, and a great choice for AMD gamers.

Next week, we will return to benching Virtual Reality (VR). Sean has sent us a Reverb G1 Pro for evaluation to compare with a Reverb G2 that Hewlett Packard is also sending us for evaluation versus the Vive Pro. And Sean is working on his Assetto Corsa: Competizione review also.

Rodrigo’s next review is a GeForce 461.09 driver performance analysis using Ampere and Turing, and his following feature review will cover Windows 10 ‘Game Mode’, On vs. Off. Stay tuned to BTR!

Happy Gaming!

The EVGA RTX 3070 FtW3 Ultra takes on the Reference RX 6800 in 35 Games, GPGPU & SPEC Workstation Benchmarks

EVGA sent BTR a RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra ($609) and we have been evaluating it for the past couple of weeks. We also received a reference RX 6800 ($569) from AMD within the same timeframe. Since these cards have become direct competitors because of being priced within 7%, they each deserve a full review.

AMD sent us a reference RX 6800 the week after it launched. From our VR benchmarks, the RTX 3070 FE (Founders Edition $499) and the reference RX 6800 ($569) are in a similar class with the Radeon delivering higher unconstrained framerates which may support AMD’s justification for pricing it $70 higher than the FE. We use GPGPU, workstation, and SPEC benchmarks plus 35 games, directly comparing the reference RX 6800 with the $40 more expensive RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra to see what the EVGA card at $609 brings over the RTX 3070 FE at $499.

BTR’s Test Bed

BTR’s test bed consists of 35 games and 3 synthetic game benchmarks at 1920×1080, 2560×1440, and at 3840×2160 as well as SPEC and GPGPU benchmarks. Our latest games include Cyberpunk 2077, Watch Dogs: Legions, Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War, and Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. We use a clean installation of Windows 10 64-bit Pro Edition, and our CPU is an i9-10900K which turbos all 10 cores to 5.1/5.0GHz, an EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard, and 32GB of T-FORCE Dark Z DDR4 3600MHz. The games, settings, and hardware are identical except for the cards being compared.

Let’s split this review into two parts – First, let’s take a closer look at the EVGA RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra on the next page.

The EVGA RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra – Specifications & Features, Unboxing, Overclocking & noise

Specifications & Features

The RTX 3070 is not based on the GA102 chip like the RTX 3080 and the RTX 3090, but rather it uses a separate smaller GA104 GPU chip. The RTX 3070 FE uses 64 SMs, 5888 CUDA cores, 184 3rd Generation Tensor and 46 RT cores, along with 184 Texture Units and 96 ROPs. The Boost Clock is 1730MHz, and 8192MB of GDDR6 at 7000MHz on a 256-bit memory bus provide 448GB/s bandwidth, all within a 220W total GPU power envelope.

EVGA’s site lists the RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra specifications and features and they are very impressive as they build upon the reference version with a 1815MHz Boost Clock and the ability to overclock further manually than the RTX 3070 Founders Editions because of selected GPUs and higher user accessible voltage.

Surprisingly, there is no mention of a dual-BIOS which is a great feature for overclockers. Although the OC BIOS mainly sports a more aggressive fan profile without an idle fan stop, we used the OC BIOS for our benchmarking. In addition, multiple sensors across the board monitor VRM/memory temps in Precision X1.

Unboxing

Unlike with NVIDIA’s Founders Editions, the EVGA RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra comes in a traditional style box that advertises Ampere architecture, DLSS, and ray tracing.

The back of the box lists the key features in English, French, and Russian putting special emphasis on the Ampere architecture being second generation ray tracing cores and third generation tensor cores.

The box also states it is “VR Ready” but we did not see specifications, PSU requirements, nor information as to what is inside the box.

Inside the box and beneath the card are an installation guide and warranty information, plus a metal EVGA badge.

A completely redesigned shroud creates a very cool industrial look for the EVGA RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra to provides a premium and solid heavy feel to it. It is a moderately heavy 2.75-slot card with three cooling fans. According to EVGA, triple HDB fans iCX3 technology offer higher performance cooling resulting in less acoustic noise. These iCX3 fans feature a second generation HDB active motor for silent 0dB mode, asyncronous fan mode, and a special upraised “E” pattern on the blades with the goal of a very quiet card.

It’s height is 5.38 in (136.75mm) and length is 11.81 in (300mm).

Turning the card over, we see a similar unique design with small hexagonal cutouts in the backplate. Some may not like the red line on the backplate as white, gray, or black may have been a more neutral choice fitting in with the overall design better. This card is designed to keep the GPU cool including by using a short PCB, and inside the card from its edges we see mostly all heatsink fins.

The plastic panel has RGB lighting with 60 LEDs that may be customized extensively using EVGA’s Precision X1 software. Two 8-pin PCIe connectors are required to supply external power to the card since most FTW cards are good overclockers. The FTW3 is rated to draw 220W at stock but may pull 50W or more when overclocked, and EVGA recommends a decent 650W PSU to power it.

There is very large surface area for cooling so the heat is readily transferred to the fin stack and the triple fans exhaust some heat out of the back and through the backplate cutouts, but especially from the top of the card into the case’s airflow.

The IO panel has a large air vent and four connectors. The connectors are similar to the Founders Edition of the RTX 3070. Three DisplayPort 1.4 connectors are included, and the HDMI port has been upgraded from 2.0 to 2.1 allowing for 4K/120Hz over a single HDMI cable.

In our opinion, the EVGA RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra is a good-looking card with a unique industrial style and it looks good in any case. The FTW3 sports a Dual BIOS which is always a solid advantage for overclockers looking to push the card’s limits. And multiple sensors across the board for monitoring VRM/memory temps in Precision X1 giving enthusiasts more fine tuning controls.

The logo strip has 60 LEDs for a customizable RGB experience that can be synched to other EVGA component lighting. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a lot of luck photographing the customizable lighting, and it locked up leaving us with the logo in red and no way to adjust it even after multiple installs of Precision X1 and the drivers. EVGA’s tech support closed for much of the holidays so we will update this review with a short video if we can get the RGB working properly again. It looked very nice when it was working and there are a multitude of ways to customize the lighting, the colors, and the patterns.

Let’s check out overclocking, temperatures and noise next.

Next, let’s take a closer look at the reference RX 6800.

The Reference RX 6800 – Big Navi 2 Specifications & Features, Unboxing, Overclocking & Noise

We received a reference RX 6800 from AMD after the launch together with a reference RX 6800 XT which we reviewed versus the Red Devil RX 6800 XT and versus the RTX 3080. The RX 6800 has the same architecture as the RX 6900 XT and the RX 6800 XT, but it has less compute units and stream processors and the game clocks are lower with an advantage of a lower power draw. However, all three cards sport 16GB DDR6 compared to the 10GB DDR6 of the RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 (DDR6X). The following chart shows the differences and similarities of the Big Navi 2 Radeon 6000 series.

The Big Navi 2 Radeon 6000 family

The RTX 6900 XT released at $999 to compete with the $1499 RTX 3090 while the RTX 6800 XT at $649 competes with the RTX 3080 at $699. Both of these cards are slower than their GeForce competitors but the Radeon 6800 competes with the $499 RTX 3070 and is priced higher at $579 as it is expected to be faster at rasterized games.

Just like NVIDIA, AMD has their own thriving ecosystem for gamers with many unique new features for the Radeon 6000 series. AMD touts the “open” system while NVIDIA’s tends to be more proprietary, each attracting fans who may prefer one gaming ecosystem over the other. Interestingly, AMD has adopted USB Type C for VR and displays while NVIDIA has dropped it from Ampere cards after using it for Turing.

Let’s unbox the reference RX 6800.

Unboxing

The reference RX 6800 box shows just a partial image of the card with “Radeon RX 6800” text. That’s it on the front.
The back of the box doesn’t advertise features nor give any useful information except to direct the buyer to www.amd.com/RadeonUserManual for a quickstart guide and warranty information.

Opening the well-padded box, we see the card inside (above). There are no bundled games and the packing is barebones compared with AMD’s partners’ cards such as PowerColor’s bundle.The reference RX 6800 is a large tri-fan card in a two slot design which is quite handsome using AMD’s reference design. The 6800 is very much a twin to the RX 6800 XT in looks and in size.

Above is the reference RX 6800 XT backplate. It has a very clean design top and bottom.

It uses two 1×8-pin PCIe connections and the heatsink can be seen along both edges.

Just like the other Big Navi 2 cards, the IO panel sports a Type-C USB connector for display and VR as well as two DisplayPort 1.4 ports plus a HDMI 2.1 port that can handle 4K/120Hz over a single cable.

We didn’t spend very much time overclocking the RX 6800. It has rather limited performance headroom with less than a 10% overclock as AMD evidently preferred giving everyone the highest performance they could get out of all of their new cards and Wattman is rather locked down regarding clocks and voltage. But the reference design is probably AMD’s best design to date, and the card runs very cool and quiet even under load.

Overclocking, temperatures and noise

The reference RX 6800 is a fair overclocker. All of our performance and overclocked testing are performed in a closed Phanteks Eclipse P400 ATX mid-tower case. Inside, the RX 6800 is a quiet card even when overclocked and we never needed to increase its fan speeds manually or change the stock fan profile.

Here are the default Wattman settings above using Heaven to load the GPU to above 98%.

Fan speeds are low and the RX 6800 boosts easily to 2257MHz at stock. Next we overclocked it.

The reference RX 6800 when overclocked between a minimum frequency of 2350Mhz and a maximum of 2450MHz, the Radeon Boost generally stays above 2400MHz with the memory at 2140MHz which provides better than a 4% performance boost for Heaven 4.0. We were unable to hit 2500MHz and memory is locked down to +7% overclock. It may be possible to fine tune this overclock further by trial-and-error undervolting/overclocking, but we found that it was necessary to increase the Power Limit to even hit 2450Mhz.

Even overclocked, the reference RX 6800 stays cool below 75C, and the fans are never irritating when they become audible under full load.

Let’s check out its performance compared with the EVGA RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra and the RTX 3`070 FE after we look over our test configuration on the next page.

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i9-10900K (HyperThreading/Turbo boost On; All cores overclocked to 5.1GHz/5.0Ghz. Comet Lake DX11 CPU graphics)
• EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard (Intel Z490 chipset, v1.9 BIOS, PCIe 3.0/3.1/3.2 specification, CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x), supplied by EVGA
• T-FORCE DARK Z 32GB DDR4 (2x16GB, dual channel at 3600MHz), supplied by Team Group
• Radeon RX 6800 Reference version 16GB, stock settings, on loan from AMD
• EVGA RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra 8GB, at factory clocks and further manually overclocked, on loan from EVGA
• RTX 3070 Founders Edition 8GB, stock, on loan from NVIDIA
• Radeon RX 6800 XT Reference version 16GB, stock settings, on loan from AMD
• Radeon RX 5700 XT 8GB Anniversary Edition, stock AE clocks.
• RTX 3090 Founders Edition 24GB, stock clocks, on loan from NVIDIA
• RTX 3080 Founders Edition 10GB, stock clocks, on loan from NVIDIA
• RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition 11GB, stock clocks, on loan from NVIDIA
• RTX 2080 SUPER Founders Edition 8GB, stock clocks, on loan from NVIDIA
• RTX 2070 Ti Founders Edition 8GB, stock clocks, on loan from NVIDIA
• GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition 11GB, stock clocks, on loan from NVIDIA
• 1TB Team Group MP33 NVMe2 PCIe SSD for C: drive
• 1.92TB San Disk enterprise class SATA III SSD (storage)
• 2TB Micron 1100 SATA III SSD (storage)
• 1TB Team Group GX2 SATA III SSD (storage)
• 500GB T-FORCE Vulcan SSD (storage), supplied by Team Group
• ANTEC HCG1000 Extreme, 1000W gold power supply unit
• BenQ EW3270U 32″ 4K HDR 60Hz FreeSync monitor
• Samsung G7 Odyssey (LC27G75TQSNXZA) 27″ 2560×1440/240Hz/1ms/G-SYNC/HDR600 monitor
• DEEPCOOL Castle 360EX AIO 360mm liquid CPU cooler
• Phanteks Eclipse P400 ATX mid-tower (plus 1 Noctua 140mm fan) – All benchmarking and overclocking performed with the case closed

Test Configuration – Software

• GeForce 460.89 for the RTX 3070s, 456.96 for the RTX 2080 Ti, and the RTX 2070/2080 SUPER; and GeForce 456.16 Press drivers and GeForce 456.38 public drivers (functionally identical) are used for the other GeForce cards.
• Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.12.1/2 drivers used for the RX 6800 and 6800 XT reference. Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.10.1 drivers used for the RX 5700 XT Anniversary Edition (AE) at AE clocks.
• High Quality, prefer maximum performance, single display, set in the NVIDIA control panel.
• VSync is off in the control panel and disabled for each game
• AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are specified with 16xAF always applied
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games
• All games have been patched to their latest versions
• Gaming results show average frame rates in bold including minimum frame rates shown on the chart next to the averages in a smaller italics font where higher is better. Games benched with OCAT show average framerates but the minimums are expressed by frametimes (99th-percentile) in ms where lower numbers are better.
• Windows 10 64-bit Pro edition; latest updates v2004. DX11 titles are run under the DX11 render path. DX12 titles are generally run under DX12, and multiple games use the Vulkan API.
• Latest DirectX
• MSI’s Afterburner, 4.6.3 beta
• Precision X1, latest beta

Games

Vulkan

• DOOM Eternal
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Ghost Recon: Breakpoint
• Wolfenstein Youngblood
• World War Z
• Strange Brigade
• Rainbow 6 Siege

DX12

• Cyberpunk 2077
• Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War
• Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla
• Watch Dogs: Legion
• Horizon Zero Dawn
• Death Stranding
• F1 2020
• Mech Warrior 5: Mercenaries
• Gears 5
• Anno 1800
• Tom Clancy’s The Division 2
• Metro Exodus
• Civilization VI – Gathering Storm Expansion
• Battlefield V
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Project CARS 2
• Forza 7

DX11

• Crysis Remastered
• Mech Warrior 5: Mercenaries
• Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order
• The Outer Worlds
• Destiny 2 Shadowkeep
• Borderlands 3
• Total War: Three Kingdoms
• Far Cry New Dawn
• Assetto Corsa: Competitione
• Monster Hunter: World
• Overwatch
• Grand Theft Auto V

Synthetic

• TimeSpy (DX12)
• 3DMark FireStrike – Ultra & Extreme
• Superposition
• Heaven 4.0 benchmark
• AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks
• Blender 2.90 benchmark
• Sandra 2020 GPGPU Benchmarks
• SPECworkstation3
• SPECviewperf 2020

NVIDIA Control Panel settings

Here are the NVIDIA Control Panel settings.

We used MSI’s Afterburner to set all video cards’ power and temperature limits to maximum.

AMD Adrenalin Control Center Settings

All AMD settings are set so that all optimizations are off, Vsync is forced off, Texture filtering is set to High, and Tessellation uses application settings. All Navi cards are capable of high Tessellation unlike earlier generations of Radeons.

Anisotropic Filtering is disabled by default but we always use 16X for all game benchmarks.

This follow-up to BTR’s EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard review focuses on gaming. Originally we found that our off-the-shelf Intel i9-10900K could only manage an all-core overclock of 5.1GHz which performs faster than at stock for synthetic and workstation loads. Since we have upgraded from a hex-core i7-8700K overclocked to 4.8GHz, we also tested BTR’s new 33-game benchmark to see if an i9-10900K is a worthwhile upgrade for a gamer.

Originally, we discovered that for non-gaming benchmarks, our 5.1GHz all-core overclock was sufficient to provide a significant performance boost over stock speeds. At stock, the i9 may boost only one core or two cores to 5.1GHz, 5.2GHz, or to 5.3GHz, while the other 8 cores can potentially boost to 4.9GHz only if the core temperatures are kept very cool.

To cool our i9-10900K, we upgraded our 280mm EVGA CLC cooler to a 360mm DeepCool AIO. Yet we still found at stock and under heavy load, the i9 will ramp up its voltage automatically boosting to its maximum rated 5.3GHz overclock for only a relatively few seconds. Rising thermals always force the cores to drop to 3.7GHz until they cool off. This thermal-related clock inconsistency played havoc with benchmarking.

We found that by locking the voltage to 1.335V and locking all 10 cores to 5.1GHz minimized performance inconsistencies and allowed for higher performance than at stock settings with synthetic and workstation scenarios. But what about gaming using the fastest video card, the RTX 2080 Ti?

When we tested actual gaming loads by playing and benching games, we found similar inconsistencies to workstation benching at stock speeds, but also with a 5.1GHz all-core overclock. Under gaming, 1.335V is probably still too high, and we observed thermally induced up- and down-clocking of the i9 cores with somewhat variable results. We tried a hybrid overclocking approach by locking the i9’s Cores 0 and 1 to 5.1GHz and the other 8 cores to a minimum of 5.0GHz which allowed us to use a lower voltage of 1.250v which resulted in cooler temperatures than by using 1.330V.

Not all games are affected by CPU clock speeds in the same way. Many games are much more GPU-dependent while others are sensitive to CPU clock speed scaling. Some games, especially with short benchmarks, often have a faster first run than their third run, for example. BTR takes care to insure that its benchmark runs are repeatable and representative of the games we test. For example, we benchmark Red Dead Redemption 2 by using the last 2-minute scene of the built-in benchmark – the first two minutes are not counted since they serve to “warm” up the CPU and GPU thus giving more consistently repeatable results.

Let’s check out our test configuration before we head to the performance charts.

Test Configuration

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i9-10900K (HyperThreading/Turbo boost On; stock and overclocked. Comet Lake DX11 CPU graphics)
• Intel Core i7-8700K (HyperThreading and Turbo boost is on to 4.8GHz for all cores; Coffee Lake DX11 CPU graphics).
• EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard (Intel Z490 chipset, v1.3 BIOS, PCIe 3.0/3.1/3.2 specification, CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x), supplied by EVGA
• ASRock Z390 Extreme 4 motherboard (Intel Z390 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 3.0/3.1/3.2 specification, CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x)
• DEEPCOOL Castle 360EX AIO 360mm liquid CPU cooler for the i9
• EVGA 280mm CLC AIO liquid CPU cooler for the i7, supplied by EVGA
• T-FORCE DARK Z 32GB DDR4 (2x16GB, dual channel at 3600MHz), supplied by Team Group
• RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition 11GB, stock clocks, on loan from NVIDIA
• 1TB Team Group MP33 NVMe2 PCIe SSD for C: drive
• 1.92TB San Disk enterprise class SATA III SSD (storage)
• 2TB Micron 1100 SATA III SSD (storage)
• 1TB Team Group GX2 SATA III SSD (storage)
• 500GB T-FORCE Vulcan SSD (storage), supplied by Team Group
• ANTEC HCG1000 Extreme, 1000W gold power supply unit for the i9 platform
• EVGA 1000G, 1000W gold power supply unit for the i7 platform, supplied by EVGA
• BenQ EW3270U 32 Inch 4K HDR 60Hz FreeSync Monitor
• SAMSUNG LC27G75TQSNXZA 27? 2560 x 1440 240Hz 1ms G-SYNC HDR600 Monitor
• Phanteks Eclipse P400 ATX mid-tower

Test Configuration – Software

• GeForce 452.06 WHQL drivers. High Quality, prefer maximum performance, single display set in the NVIDIA control panel.
• VSync is off in the control panel and disabled in each game
• AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are specified with 16xAF always applied
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games
• All games have been patched to their latest versions
• Gaming results show average frame rates in bold including minimum frame rates shown on the chart next to the averages in a smaller italics font where higher is better. Games benched with OCAT show average framerates but the minimums are expressed by the 99th percentile frametime in ms where lower numbers are better.
• Windows 10 64-bit Pro edition; latest updates v2004. DX11 titles are run under DX11 render paths. DX12 titles are generally run under the DX12 render path unless performance is lower than with DX11; and Borderlands 3, Total War Warhammer II, and Hitman 2 are tested on DX11 and on DX12. Seven games use the Vulkan API.
• Latest DirectX
• MSI’s Afterburner, latest version to set the RTX 2080 Ti’s power and temp limits to their maximums

Games

Vulkan

• DOOM Eternal
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Ghost Recon Breakpoint
• Wolfenstein Youngblood
• World War Z
• Strange Brigade
• Rainbow 6 Siege

DX11

• Horizon Zero Dawn
• Death Stranding
• F1 2020
• Mech Warrior 5: Mercenaries
• Call of Duty Modern Warfare
• Gears 5
• Control
• Anno 1800
• Tom Clancy’s The Division 2
• Metro Exodus
• Civilization VI – Gathering Storm Expansion
• Battlefield V
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Project CARS 2
• Forza 7

DX11

• A Total War Saga: Troy
• Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order
• The Outer Worlds
• Destiny 2 Shadowkeep
• Borderlands 3
• Total War: Three Kingdoms
• Far Cry New Dawn
• Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
• Monster Hunter: World
• Overwatch
• Grand Theft Auto V

Synthetic

• TimeSpy (DX12)
• 3DMark FireStrike – Ultra & Extreme
• Superposition

Let’s head to our performance charts.

Performance Summary Charts & Conclusion

Here are the performance results of 33 games and 3 synthetic tests using a RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition to compare the i7-8700K at 4.8GHz to the i9-10900K at stock and also overclocked.

Most gaming results show average framerates in bold text, and higher is better. Minimum framerates are next to the averages in italics and in a slightly smaller font. The games benched with OCAT also show average framerates but the 1% minimums are expressed by frametimes in ms where lower numbers are better.

The first column gives the i7-8700K performance results versus the stock i9-10900K in the second, and versus the overclocked i9 to 5.1/5.0GHz in the last column.

At 3840×2160 resolution, there is generally very little average FPS performance difference between the overclocked i7 and the i9 with a few stand-out exceptions like Wolfenstein: Youngblood, Civilization VI, Project CARS 2, Grand Theft Auto V and Overwatch. However, the minimum FPS or frametime results often show more performance gains as with Forza 7 at 4K.

Playing at 2560×1440 or at 1920×1090 brings much larger average and minimum performance gains to the i9 over the overclocked i7. We don’t think that many gamers will pair a i9-10900K with a RTX 2080 Ti at 1920×1080 unless they are competing and using a high refresh rate display capable of 240Hz or higher, in which case, the fastest CPU is always the best choice.

Finally, simply overclocking the i9-10900K’s Cores 0 and 1 to 5.1GHz with the other 8 cores at 5.0GHz generally brought us higher performance and more consistent benchmarking results for our particular CPU rather than by leaving it at stock or by overclocking all the cores to 5.1GHz and using higher voltage.

Let’s check out our conclusion.

Conclusion

An i9-10900K requires a solid motherboard and very good cooling to overclock so that performance gains are consistently meaningful over stock settings. Each CPU should be individually tested and fine-tuned, and ours performs best in gaming with a hybrid overclock of 5.1/5.0GHz at 1.250V. Synthetic and workstation benchmarks appear to perform best with an all-core 5.1GHz overclock which requires 1.330V.

To answer the question if a gamer needs to upgrade from an overclocked i7-8700K at 4.8GHz to an i9-10900K really depends on ones chosen resolution. At 4K, there is generally very little average FPS performance difference, but at 2560×1440 or at 1920×1080, the performance improvement that the i9 brings over the overclocked i7-8700K may be much more dramatic, and especially with the minimums. We don’t see a lot of performance difference yet in gaming by using a 10 core CPU over using 6 cores, but this may change with the next generation of console game ports to PC.

Of course, the RTX 2080 Ti may be soon surpassed in performance by even faster upcoming video cards, and an upgrade to a i9-10900K from an overclocked i7-8700K may become even more significant. Stay tuned.

Happy Gaming!

We have recently upgraded our Core i7-8700K/Coffee Lake platform to i9-10900K/Comet Lake, and have been testing it using an ASRock Z490 Steel Legend motherboard. Since we were unable to gain any performance from overclocking, we asked EVGA for a review sample of the Z490 FTW motherboard.

The last EVGA motherboard that BTR evaluated was the Z370 FTW which allowed our i7-8700K to reach 4.8 GHz on all cores for regular use and for benching. We are going to review the $329 EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard using a RTX 2080 Ti by comparing it with the midrange ASRock Z490 Steel Legend motherboard with our i9-10900K at stock, and then we will overclock it.

It has been a long road to a solid performance increase from a stable overclock that required us to not only change the motherboard, but we also had to make several other upgrades. Core i9-10900 “K” CPUs are multiplier unlocked and can be overclocked beyond their stock speeds with hiqh-quality cooling. At stock, although all 10 cores are rated to run at 3.7 GHz, individual cores each have the potential to reach much higher speeds by selectively using Intel’s Boost and Velocity Boost which means there is very little room for increasing performance by manually overclocking. We started out using a EVGA CLC 280mm CPU cooler in a Focus G case, and later we upgraded to a Phanteks P400 case to house a DeepCool 360mm AIO cooler.

Comet Lake is Intel’s latest tenth generation platform and it brings some new features over the Coffee Lake platform although their IPC for gaming are identical So far, we have found that the biggest advantage to the Comet Lake flagship i9 CPU over Coffee Lake’s flagship i7 processor are the extra four cores of the i9. A Core i9 Comet Lake gamer using 10 cores plus HyperThreading doesn’t have to consider background processes while gaming, and the extra four cores over Coffee Lake’s CPU may be helpful for better handling upcoming multi-threaded game ports from the next generation of console games. In addition, we are also looking for a higher all core clockspeed well-above the 4.8GHz day-to-day overclock of our i7-8700K.

EVGA’s Z490 Motherboards

EVGA has introduced another Z490 motherboard in addition to the FTW that we are reviewing – the $549 Z490 DARK – their top board. The Z490 FTW is currently available from EVGA for $329. The primary difference, besides several added features between the two motherboards, are a 18 phase power delivery system for the DARK while the FTW is 14 phase. The ASRock Z490 Steel Legend uses a 11 phase power design.

The EVGA Z490 FTW is a step down from the DARK. Besides using a 18 phase power delivery instead of 14, the DARK has two extra native SATA ports, an extra USB header, and overclocking support for DDR4 to 4600MHz instead of 4400MHz. The DARK also has an upgraded Ethernet, an additional PCIe slot, and the PCB is ten layers instead of six. These are not really major downgrades for most enthusiasts although an extreme overclocker would definitely pick the DARK over the FTW. A motherboard may make a difference to achieving a higher CPU overclock. The FTW Z490 MB was able to overclock our i9-10900K while our ASRock Z490 Steel Legend couldn’t.

EVGA Z490 boards include cable cutouts to make cable management easier. These boards also feature metal-reinforced PCIe slots for supporting heavy video cards, 2-Way SLI/CrossFire support, multiple RGB headers, M.2 slots, Intel Gigabit NICs, switchable dual-BIOSes, and Realtek’s upgraded 7.1 Channel 1220 audio. Here are the EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard’s features from their website.

DESIGN DETAILS

• • Supported CPUs – Intel® Socket 1200, 10th Generation Intel® Core i9/i7/i5
  • Socket Type – Intel® Socket LGA1200
  • PCH – Intel® Z490
  • DIMM QTY – 4 DIMM Dual-Channel
  • Memory Type – DDR4 4400MHz+
  • Memory Capacity – 128GB
  • 6.0Gb/s Ports/Controller – 4/Intel® Z490 PCH
  • RAID Support – RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10
  • SATA 6.0Gb/s Ports/Controller – 2 / ASMedia ASM1061
  • USB 2.0 Ports/Controller – 5 Ports (4 from internal headers / 1 from Update Port for flashing BIOS)/ Intel® Z490 USB Hub
  • USB 3.2 Gen1 Ports/Controller – 4 (2 from internal header / Intel Z490 PCH
  • USB 3.2 Gen2 Ports/Controller – 4x USB3.2 Gen2 Type-A/1x USB3.2 Gen2x2 Type-C/1x USB3.2 Gen2 Type-C (internal header)
  • Network Speed – 10/100/1000
  • Network Ports/Controller – Intel® i219V PHY
  • WiFi/BT – Intel® AX201 WiFi 6/BT 5.1 module, preinstalled in the • M.2 Key-E 32mm Slot
  • Audio – 7.1 Channel Realtek + EVGA NU Audio
  • Audio Controller – Realtek ALC1220 + SV3H615
  • Display Output – DP 1.2 / HDMI 1.4
  • PCIe Slot Arrangement – 2×16, 1×1
  • PCIe x16 Mechanical Slots – 2
  • PCIe x16 Mechanical Arrangement – 1×16/8, 1×8 PCIe x1 Mechanical Slots – 1
  • M.2 Key-M – 2x 110mm (Up to 32Gbps)
  • M.2 Key-E – 1x 32mm (Vertical)
  • Fan Headers – 7x 4-Pin (2x CPU PWM, 5x PWM/DC)
  • BIOS Type – Latest UEFI BIOS with mouse/keyboard control, OC Robot, In-BIOS Stress
  • Software – EVGA ELEET X1 Tuning Utility

KEY SPECS

• Supports Intel® Core 10th Generation Processor Family for LGA1200 socket
• 150% Increased Gold Content
• Intel® Z490 Chipset
• NVIDIA® SLI® Ready Enthusiast Layout
• 4 DIMM Dual-Channel up to 128GB 4400MHz+
• PCI Express® 3.0 Ready
• 5 USB 2.0 Ports (4 from internal headers/1 from Update Port)
• 4 USB 3.2 Gen1 Ports (2 rear panel, 2 from 1 internal header)
• 5 USB 3.2 Gen2 Ports (4 Type-A rear panel, 1 type-C Header)
• 1 USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Port (1 Type-C rear panel)
• 1 PS/2 (Mouse+Keyboard support)
• Intel® Optane Support
• 6 SATA 6.0Gb/s (4 on Intel® Z490 PCH/2 from ASMedia ASM1061)
• 2 M.2 Key-M 110mm up to 32Gbps
• 1 M.2 Key-E 32mm
• 1 DisplayPort 1.2 / 1 HDMI 1.4
• 1 Intel® i219V Gigabit NIC (10/100/1000)
• 1 Intel® WiFi 6/ BT 5.1 module, preinstalled

DIMENSIONS

• Width: 9.6in – 244mm
• Length: 12in – 305mm
• Form Factor: ATX Form Factor

ACCESSORIES

• EVGA Quick Installation Guide
• Rear Case I/O Panel
• 2 SATA 6G Data Cables
• 2x M.2 Thermal Pad
• 2x Antenna for WiFi
• Case Badge
• USB Flash Drive
• Contains Driver and Manual

###

The specs and the design look great. An important consideration for any enthusiast are the warranty and product support should anything go wrong.

Warranty & Support

EVGA’s Z490 motherboards come with a 3 year warranty, and registration is recommended. A further warranty extension
is available upon registration within 30 days of purchase. For more details please visit: www.evga.com/warranty/motherboards/.

In addition, EVGA provides outstanding support including a 24/7 telephone hotline staffed by helpful professionals. We have had multiple opportunities to use their hotline over the past decade, and we have always received high-quality and fast service – even on the weekends. EVGA is a rare company that will allow you as a seller to transfer the remaining portion of your warranty to the second-hand buyer, and they can even cross ship RMA products so you can get back up and running quickly!

The EVGA Z490 FTW is a good-looking motherboard with excellent specifications, so let’s unbox it for a closer look before we install, test, overclock, and benchmark it.

The EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard

Unboxing and Installation

The EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard is a good-looking industrial design board using silver components to contrast with a black PCB without using any stenciled designs on the board. There are typical component placements, and some of the traces are visible. The FTW includes a silver shroud over the back panel with vents that extend to the VRM heatsinks. There are 4 RAM slots supporting up to 128GB DDR4, and 2 PCIe slots that are full X16 slots that will support mGPU in an 8x+8x configuration. If you need a high bandwidth (HB) SLI bridge for two GeForce cards, make sure to get the bridge with the 2-slot spacing.

There are headers on the board for RGB strips. The memory slots as well as the two primary x16 PCIe slots (1×16/8, 1×8 in dual graphics mGPU mode) are reinforced in order to support heavy graphics cards. We do not like the placement of the right angle connectors at the bottom of the board as the spacing is too tight for many cases including the Focus G and the Phanteks P400. You may have to remove the PSU – or as with the P400, you may have to remove the motherboard just to replace or install a new fan. The only vertical socket is for the ATX power connector and we would have instead preferred that it be right angle.

There is also a third PCIe slot at the bottom using the bandwidth from the chipset. There are two Key M M.2 slots for PCIe storage – 2x 110mm (Up to 32Gbps) – and one Key E M.2 slot with an Intel AX201 WiFi 6/BT 5.1 module preinstalled. Storage options include six SATA ports (RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 support).

For convenience, there are seven 4-pin PWM fan headers (2x CPU PWM, 5x PWM/DC), and four are close to the CPU socket with the others at the bottom of the board. For audio, the FTW uses 7.1 Channel Realtek + EVGA NU Audio, and for networking, the FTW uses a single Intel I219-V PHY controller.

The EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard arrives in a rather plain box with the necessary components for a bare-bones installation.Bucking the modern trend, EVGA still supplies a separate rear case IO panel but we are used to the extra step. Besides the four SATA cables, IO rear panel cover, EVGA badge, mini-flash drive instead of a CD, quick-start guide and Wi-Fi antennas, the bundle is sparse. We really miss having a printed manual, but settled for the .pdf which is still rather basic for 163 pages. However, an experienced builder may not need it. The Z490 FTW is very similar to other EVGA motherboards, and anyone who has used one before will be familiar with its layout.

Here is the back of the FTW motherboard.

On the rear panel of the EVGA Z490 FTW, there is a Clear CMOS button, HDMI 1.4 and DisplayPort 2.0 video outputs, four USB 3.2 ports (red), the USB 3.1 ports (blue), a USB Type-C port, the Intel network port, the audio jacks, and the two Wi-Fi antennas screw right into their corresponding bases.

Originally we started with an ASRock Z490 Steel Legend which is a mid-range board. We pre-installed the memory and the CPU together with the IO backplate and CPU cooler standoffs and securely fastened them using 9 screws to the standoffs in the Focus G. We used 2x16GB of T-FORCE DARK Z DDR4 at stock speeds of 3600 MHz using the automatic XMP profile 1 in the BIOS. We installed the AIO cooler using Arctic Silver 5 and attached the rest of the cables and wiring.

The ASRock Z490 Steel Legend motherboard was OK for running our i9-10900K at stock speeds but it was unable to attain any performance-gaining overclock with a EVGA CLC 280mm CPU cooler in a Focus G case, so we switched it out for the EVGA Z490 motherboard. We started our build by moving the hardware from our ASRock motherboard to the EVGA motherboard, and then installed it into the same Focus G case.

After the FTW build was completed, we got a decent overclock, but the temperatures were too high for the 280mm cooler. So we upgraded to a Phanteks case to house a DeepCool 360mm AIO cooler.

It was now a very easy transplant installation since we had learned to pre-install the HD audio and fan plugs into the bottom connectors before we installed the motherboard.

Well, it was soon time to turn it on. And it started right up and went to the BIOS screen. We picked Advanced and ignored the other three choices for now: Default, OC Robot, and Gamer Mode which sets a conservative overclock.

BIOS

Upon reaching the BIOS by pressing delete after powering on, you are presented with an overclocking-friendly screen. You can navigate the BIOS with a keyboard or mouse, and although it is fully-featured, it is still somewhat minimalist. It’s an advantage as the options are easy to understand and they give full control over a multitude of overclocking options. Usually, screenshots can be saved to a USB flash drive, but it never worked reliably for us so we captured photos of a few of the BIOS options and overclocking-related settings that we used.

Overclocking is simple. You switch from Automatic (3.7 GHz with multiple automatic stages of Boost) to Manual and are presented with options to set the multiplier up or down. Setting the overall CPU Multiplier setting sets the individual cores to the same frequency or they may be adjusted individually as shown above.

We settled a multiplier of 51 for 5.1 GHz on all cores. We also made sure the AVX Ratio offset was set to zero because we wanted all 10 cores to turbo to 5.1 GHz without any exception for demanding software or even for ‘power viruses’ like Prime95.

The BIOS offers options to set the BCLK Frequency but we only overclocked the core. Individual cores may have their HyperThreading enabled or disabled for those who want the ultimate in overclocking options. We enabled HT on all cores at 5.1GHz for overall better performance and benchmark repeatability although we were able to get a higher overclock on some cores by selectively disabling it .

Unlike with many motherboards that allow excessive voltage to flow to a highly overclocked CPU, the FTW is a rare board that did not allow excessive spikes even with the automatic setting at 5.1 GHz. However, we also found that setting the voltage manually to 1.335V in Vcore was enough to stabilize the CPU at 5.1 GHz although it still occasionally spiked. Disabling or enabling Vdroop made no difference to overall stability that we could notice. In the Advanced options, the user is given many options including to further fine-tune the CPU.

All of the other regular options are in the BIOS, and flashing is made easy by having a dual BIOS. We tried v1.04 but found that we got a better overclock with v1.03.

Overclocking, Voltage, and Temperatures

An i9-10900K overclocked all-core to 4.9GHz or higher requires additional voltage overstock, and temperatures rise dramatically as the voltage is increased to maintain stability for higher overclocks. The ASRock motherboard could not hold a stable overclock without throttling. Although 5.1GHz could be applied, throttling by what we suspect is uneven power delivery caused the CPU cores to throttle significantly, and the overclocked performance was lower than stock performance even though temperatures were not excessive.

Our favorite new EVGA tool is the OC Robot. Watching it closely as it ran through the frequencies told us exactly where to start with our manual overclock and what approximate voltages worked, as well as letting us know where the CPU got into thermal trouble. Here is 4.9GHz.Only 1.247V are needed for all-cores at 4900MHz. Watch what happens when the OC Robot tests 5.0GHz.

It now takes 1.3V to stabilize an all core 5000MHz OC with the temperatures peaking at 85C. So the Robot continues.

The OC Robot settled on 5.1GHz since 5.2GHz raised the voltage and temperatures dramatically. OC Robot’s 5.1GHz OC is exactly the same overclock that we were able to finally achieve after spending hours manually trying setting after setting. The only difference is that we were able to stabilize 5100MHz at 1.335V instead of 1.355V, and thus we got lower temperatures. Overall, we would give the OC Robot an A- for being a time-saver and for being reasonably accurate. The OC Robot’s result is a great place for an experienced overclocker to begin manual testing and fine-tuning.

When we manually overclocked further to 5.2 GHz, the voltage requirements exceeded 1.4V and temperatures spiked into the 90sC under a full gaming load and near 100C under full load synthetic benches. These benches are often called power viruses and may include OCCT, the Blender Benchmark, and Prime95.

We were unable to use our EVGA 280mm CLC even with a modified aggressive fan profile at 5.2GHz, so we switched out the AIO to a 360mm DeepCool AIO and a larger Phanteks case. Although the temperatures dropped by 5-8C or better, thermal throttling still took place, and the 5.2GHz overclock resulted in overall lower performance than at 5.1GHz. We also tried 5.3GHz with a 2AVX offset, but we couldn’t get the i9 completely stable. So we settled on a maximum stable 10900K overclock with all 10 cores at 5.1GHz and set about benching and comparing performance with stock settings.

Driver Installation

The included EVGA motherboard drivers and programs are no longer on CD but on a flash drive, and they work quickly and painlessly to install all needed drivers. The latest drivers can always be found on EVGA’s website which are what we used before we discovered the tiny flash drive at the bottom of a plastic bag.

Let’s look at our test configuration before we do any benching

Test Configuration

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i9-10900K (HyperThreading/Turbo boost On; stock and overclocked. Rocket Lake DX11 CPU graphics)
• EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard (Intel Z490 chipset, v1.3 and v1.4 BIOSes, PCIe 3.0/3.1/3.2 specification, CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x), supplied by EVGA
• ASRock Z490 Steel Legend motherboard (Intel Z490 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 3.0/3.1/3.2 specification, CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x)
• DEEPCOOL Castle 360EX AIO 360mm liquid CPU cooler
• EVGA 280mm CLC AIO liquid CPU cooler, supplied by EVGA
• T-FORCE DARK Z 32GB DDR4 (2x16GB, dual channel at 3600MHz), supplied by Team Group
• RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition 11GB, stock clocks, on loan from NVIDIA
• 1TB Team Group MP33 NVMe2 PCIe SSD for C: drive
• 1.92TB San Disk enterprise class SATA III SSD
• 2TB Micron 1100 SATA III SSD
• 1TB Team Group GX2 SATA III SSD
• 500GB T-FORCE Vulcan SSD, supplied by Team Group
• ANTEC HCG1000 Extreme, 1000W gold power supply unit
• BenQ EW3270U 32 Inch 4K HDR FreeSync Monitor
• SAMSUNG LC27G75TQSNXZA 27″ 2560 x 1440 240Hz 1ms G-Sync Monitor
• Fractal Design Focus G mid-tower PC case
• Phanteks Eclipse P400 ATX mid-tower

Test Configuration – Software

• Nvidia’s GeForce 451.67 WHQL drivers. High Quality, prefer maximum performance, single display
• VSync is off in the control panel
• AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are specified with 16xAF always applied
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games
• Windows 10 64-bit Pro edition; latest updates v2004
• Latest DirectX
• MSI’s Afterburner, latest version.
• CPUZ
• HWiNFO
• Intel XTU

Game-related

• Grand Theft Auto V
• Civilization Vi
• Anno 1800
• 3DMark – Time Spy & Physics
• Superposition
• VRMark Cyan

Synthetic

• Sandra 2020
• AIDA64
• PCMark 8
• PCMark 10
• RealBench
• Cinebench
• NovoBench
• Blender Benchmark
• Wprime

We used MSI’s Afterburner to set the RTX 2080 Ti’s power and temp limits to their maximums.

Let’s head to our performance charts.

Synthetic Benches

SiSoft Sandra 2020

To see where the CPU and motherboard performance results differ, there is no better tool than SiSoft’s Sandra 2020. SiSoftware SANDRA (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is a consummate information & diagnostic utility in a single complete package. It is able to provide all the information about your hardware, software and other devices for diagnosis and for benchmarking. Sandra is derived from a Greek name that implies “defender” or “helper”.

There are several versions of Sandra, including a free version of Sandra Lite that anyone can download and use. It is highly recommended! Sandra 2020 R8 is the latest version, and we are using the full engineer suite courtesy of SiSoft. Sandra 2020 features continuous multiple monthly incremental improvements over earlier versions of Sandra. It will benchmark and analyze all of the important PC subsystems and even rank your PC while giving recommendations for improvement.

We ran Sandra’s intensive benchmarks and charted the results summarizing our CPU-related benchmark testing. As with all of the following charts, the performance results of the ASRock Steel Legend motherboard at stock CPU speeds are first compared with the stock performance results of the EVGA FTW motherboard at stock and then with an all-core 5.1GHz i9 overclock.

Generally Z490 motherboards using the same CPU will give very similar results. Interestingly, the power management efficiency of the ASRock motherboard is higher than the EVGA board, and the FTW’s efficiency decreases as the power demands go up from overclocking.

A faster CPU has better results when it plays a major part in the calculations. When the tests are GPU oriented, the graphics card does most of the work. In the Sandra CPU benchmarks, overclocking the 10900K to 5.1GHz brings higher performance over stock.

We next feature AIDA64.

AIDA64 v6.00

As the successor to Everest, AIDA64 is an important industry tool for benchmarkers. Its memory bandwidth benchmarks (Memory Read, Memory Write, and Memory Copy) measure the maximum available memory data transfer bandwidth and its custom CPU benchmarks measure performance and give scores to compare against other popular CPUs.

AIDA64’s benchmark code methods are written in Assembly language, and they are extremely optimized for every popular AMD, Intel and VIA processor core variants by utilizing the appropriate instruction set extensions. We use the Engineer’s full version of AIDA64 courtesy of FinalWire. AIDA64 is free to to try and use for 30 days.

The AIDA64 Memory Latency benchmark measures the typical delay beginning from when the CPU reads data from the system memory. Memory latency time means the time is accurately measured from the issuing of the read command until the data arrives to the integer registers of the CPU. It also tests Memory Read, Write, and Copy speeds besides Cache.

CPU Queen is an integer benchmark that focuses on the branch prediction capabilities of the CPU. It finds the solutions for the classic “Queens problem” on a 10 x 10 chessboard. CPU PhotoWorxx performs common tasks used during photo processing which stresses the SIMD integer arithmetic execution units of the CPU and also the memory subsystem. ZLib is a compression benchmark, while AES focus on Advanced Encryption Standard data encryption. SHA3 benchmarks use a standard hashing algorithm.

Here is the summary chart of the multiple AIDA64 memory benchmarks.As the CPU is overclocked, the bandwidth increases and the benchmark scores also scale favorably with overclocking. The performance results are similar between the ASRock and the EVGA motherboards when the CPU is at the same stock clocks, but the FTW’s 5.1GHz overclock delivers consistently higher performance.

Let’s look at PCMark 8 next to see if its benchmarks can reflect CPU speed increases.

PCMark 8

PCMark 8 has a great Creative test which uses real world timed benchmarks including web browsing, video group chat, photo, batch, and video editing, music and video tests, and even mainstream gaming. Since the PCMark 8 Storage Test does not test the CPU, we only used the Creative benchmark suite.

Here are the ASRock Steel Legend results with the i9 at stock settings – 9137.

Overclocking the i9-10900K to 5.1GHz in the ASRock motherboard brought no performance increase and delivered the same score.

Next are the stock i9 results in the FTW motherboard – 9715.

It’s a somewhat shocking comparison that may lead one to suspect that some of the demanding and prolonged PCMark 8 benchmarks may cause the ASRock motherboard to also throttle the i9 clocks even at stock settings.

Here are the results of the i9-10900K on the FTW motherboard now overclocked to 5.1GHz – 9967

In contrast to using the ASRock motherboard, overclocking the i9 to 5.1GHz in the FTW motherboard brought increased performance as evidenced by the improved score. Here is the summary chart.

We may perhaps infer from the summary chart that increasing the CPU speed to 5.1GHz with an all core overclock may help increase overall PCMark 8 performance as reflected by the results.

PCMark 10 is next.

PCMark 10

The PCMark 10 benching suite is the follow-up to PCMark 8 and it also uses real world timed benchmarks which include web browsing, video group chat, photo, batch, and video editing, music and video tests, and even mainstream gaming. The PCMark 10 test offers two primary tests and we chose the extended version.

First up is the i9–10900K at stock in the ASRock Steel Legend motherboard – 9848.

Next we overclock the i9–10900K to 5.1GHz in the ASRock Steel Legend motherboard – and it loses performance again – 9636.

Overclocking the i9 to 5.1GHz in the ASRock motherboard resulted in lower performance than at stock settings. So let’s look at the same i9 at stock and also overclocked in the FTW motherboard.

Next are the stock 10900K results in the EVGA Z490 FTW board – 10079.

Now lets see the results after we overclock the i9 to 5.1GHz in the FTW motherboard –10568.

Overclocking the i9-10900K CPU from stock to 5.1 GHz in the FTW motherboard makes for a decent performance improvement judging by the increased scores. Here is the summary chart.

We suspect that the ASRock motherboard may not throttle the CPU at stock speeds as it did with PCMark 8’s much longer tests, but overclocking it to 5.1GHz is a waste of time in a vain attempt to gain performance. We found the same issue with our other benchmarks and cannot recommend the Steel Legend for overclocking the i9-10900K based on our experiences with it.

Let’s look at our next synthetic test, RealBench.

RealBench v2.56

RealBench is a benchmarking utility by ASUS Republic of Gamers which benchmarks image editing, encoding, OpenCL, and Heavy Multitasking. Afterward, it gives individual results and an overall score for easy comparison off or online. Some of these tests are affected by CPU and memory speeds.

Here is the summary chart.

The stock results are close between the motherboards, but the performance and the scores generally increase with higher CPU clocks.

Next we benchmark using Cinebench.

Cinebench

CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s professional 3D content creation suite, CINEMA 4D. This latest R20.0 version of CINEBENCH can test up to 64 processor threads accurately and automatically. It is an excellent tool to compare both CPU/memory and graphics OGL performance. We focus on the CPU whose results are given is cb, and higher is always better.

Here is the summary chart.

The ASRock motherboard scores higher but when we overclocked it to 5.1GHz, the score dropped to 5738! In contrast, the same overclock brought a small performance increases using the FTW motherboard. Next up, Novabench.

Novabench

Novabench is a very fast benching utility that spits out a 4 test results and an overall system score. We will focus on the CPU score and bandwidth speeds.

Overclocked, the i9-10900K gains performance overall. Here is the summary chart.

On to Wprime and number crunching.

WPrime v2.10

WPrime is a multi-threaded benchmark which may show the differences in IPC or clockspeeds between CPUs. Here are the tests using 10 threads, and we choose to calculate 1024 million digits and 32 million digits showing multiple runs.

Here is the summary chart:

An overclocked CPU calculates faster than a stock CPU and in all cases of calculation, overclocked is faster than at stock frequencies enabling the CPU to crunch numbers a little faster.

Let’s take a look at Blender.

Blender 2.83

Blender is a very popular open-source 3D content creation suite. It supports every aspect of 3D development with a complete range of tools for professional 3D creation.

We have seen Blender performance increase with faster CPU speeds, so we decided to try several specific Blender 2.83 benchmarks which can measure CPU performance by timing how long it takes to render production files.

For the following chart, lower is better as the benchmark renders a scene multiple times and gives the results in minutes and seconds. This time, we tested the overclocked ASRock motherboard as well as multiple speeds of the 10900K on the FTW motherboard.

From the chart, the Blender benchmark performance is highest with the i9-10900K overclocked to 5.1GHz in the EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard. Overclocking beyond 5.1GHz delivers less performance.

Next, we move on to game-related benchmarks and games

Game Related Benching

Let’s look at quasi game-related benchmarks starting with 3DMark next.

Fire Strike Physics & Time Spy

Fire Strike Physics depends less on the GPU and more on the CPU which can benefit from increased CPU speeds while Time Spy is more dependent on the video card.

Overclocking again brings performance increases. Let’s look at VR next.

Virtual Reality (VR)

Superposition

Superposition is benchmarked at 720P low settings and we see no real difference in the scores between motherboards other than a small boost by overclocking the i9.

VRMark – Cyan Room

There is virtually no performance difference between motherboards or by CPU overclocking with VR. It is mostly dependent on the graphics card.

Although a VR experience depends on the GPU, a wireless adapter may make a faster CPU vital to an untethered VR experience. We are going to test our Vive Pro’s Wireless Adapter and will benchmark and compare its VR performance between using an i7-8700K at 4.8GHz and an i9-10900K at 5.1GHz later this month.

Let’s look at three PC games that may scale by increasing CPU speeds.

Gaming Performance Benchmarks

Below is the summary chart of three games that use accurate built-in benchmarks which also appear to be sensitive to scaling by increasing CPU clocks.

The highest settings are used, and the benches were run at 1920×1080 using a stock RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition. Civilization 6’s built-in graphics benchmark uses frametimes but its AI benchmark measures the turn time in seconds – in both cases, lower is better. Anno 1800 is benched using OCAT and so the averages and the minimums are also expressed in frametimes where lower is better. The Grand Theft Auto V average/minimum results are given in FPS where higher is better.

Although the benchmarking margin of error may cloud the results, there is a trend showing that faster CPU clocks will increase framerates and improve frametimes for certain CPU-dependent games. We are going to follow up this review with an expanded review focusing on gaming as we compare a i7-8700K at 4.8GHz to the i9-10900K at 5.1GHz.

All Summary Charts

Here are all of the Summary charts.

If you are a primarily a gamer, you will get much higher framerates from overclocking your video card than from overclocking your CPU. If you game at 2560×1440, 3440×1440, or especially at 4K, you won’t notice any framerate increase from CPU scaling. However, for other tasks that primarily involve the CPU, overclocking may provide more dramatic results.

Let’s head for our conclusion.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that overclocking an i9-10900K from its stock frequencies of 3.7 GHz – even with Turbo and Velocity Turbo boost – to all-core 5.1GHz provides more performance. But any increased performance from overclocking is dependent on proper voltage delivery and stability from the motherboard plus well-controlled thermals.

We are impressed that the EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard was able to stably take our i9-10900K to 5.1 GHz after we failed to improve CPU performance by any manual overclock with our ASRock Steel Legend motherboard. Of course, there is a large price difference between the FTW and the Steel Legend, but it throttled excessively even at relatively cool temperatures; something the FTW motherboard never did.

As gamers, we see that CPU scaling is evident for the three highlighted games that are not GPU-bound with a small framerate increase when we increase our CPU’s core clocks to 5.1GHz from default. However, since there are issues with running a CPU at high frequency and with higher temperatures which will shorten a CPU’s life, each overclocker needs to balance the negatives against increased performance.

An extreme overclocker who wants every last bit of performance from his CPU will no doubt consider delidding their CPU to attempt to achieve an all core 5.3GHz overclock with watercooling. But a even dedicated watercooling may be insufficient on EVGA’s top motherboard to hit this overclock unless he wins the silicon lottery with a golden CPU.

Intel has pushed the i9-10900K right to its edge to maintain its gaming performance crown. Others may choose to moderate their overclocks, and for us, an all-core 5.1GHz OC provides a good balance for our general benchmarking tests and for 24/7 use with a reasonable voltage and with good temperatures under a full gaming load.

If you are upgrading to an i9-10900K, the EVGA Z490 FTW is an excellent choice as a fully-featured motherboard that will provide clean power and great features for overclockers. Intel did not leave a lot room for overclocking, but the FTW will help you maximize what is available.

EVGA Z490 FTW – Pros and Cons

Pros

• The EVGA Z490 FTW is a good-looking conservative industrial design motherboard at a competitive price
• The EVGA Z490 FTW is a fully-featured motherboard with premium components, and it has proved itself to be solid in providing stability for our i9-10900K at 5.1 GHz
• EVGA gives great 24/7 telephone support and 3 years of warranty service if you need help with your motherboard or if you need to RMA. You can also transfer your warranty to the next buyer and set up advanced RMAs for shorter down times
• In multi-tasking, encoding and almost every other task that we tested including gaming, an all core 5.1GHz overclocked Core i7-10900K is faster than at stock, and the FTW has the right overclocking tools to stabilize it
• Plenty of fan headers are available and cable management is easy using the provided FTW motherboard cutouts
• Dual BIOSes are very useful, and together with an external CMOS reset are very helpful for testing extreme overclocks
• The FTW BIOS continues to improve over earlier editions, and it has become less complex, easier to navigate, and more intuitive. Most overclocking tools are in the BIOS.
• The OC Robot is EVGA’s new star overclocking tool for inexperienced as well as well-seasoned overclockers

Cons

• We would have liked more room at the bottom of the board for right angle connectors without having to remove the PSU.
• The external Wi-Fi antennas are a funky solution and they get in the way of other connections.

We feel that EVGA has delivered another good overclocking motherboard in the form of the Z490 FTW. If you are an overclocker, you can choose this board with confidence. The EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard has become BTR’s flagship motherboard and we feel that it deserves BTR’s Editor’s Choice Award. After all, we are satisfied with our i9-10900K overclock and we will continue to use the FTW for benchmarking.

We have not finished benching the 10900K. We are going to continue by focusing on gaming as we compare our i7-8700K at 4.8GHz with our i9-10900K at stock and overclocked to see if it is a really worthwhile upgrade.

First we want take a close look at 240Hz gaming with our new Samsung 27″ 2560×1440 display to see if we can tell the difference from a really fast refresh rate compared to gaming at 120Hz or 100Hz. We certainly can tell the difference from playing our 32″ 4K BenQ FreeSync 2 display at 60Hz to a more fluid experience at 120Hz or even 100Hz on our ACER Predator 34″ G-SYNC 3440×1440 display.

Stay tuned!

Happy Gaming!

This overclocking showdown is the follow-up to the ASUS Dual GTX 1660 SUPER EVO review where we are now focusing on its maximum overclocked performance versus the maximum overclocked EVGA GTX 1660 Ti XC. The GTX 1660 SUPER was recently released at the same $229 with significantly more performance than the original vanilla GTX 1660. We found the new GTX 1660 SUPER performs within about 3% of the nearly fifty dollars more expensive Ti but we want to see if manually overclocking each card changes anything.

The ASUS Dual GTX 1660 SUPER EVO Overclocking

We reached a final stable overclock close to 2100MHz by adding +165MHz to the ASUS DUAL GTX 1660 SUPER EVO OC core’s offset. The GDDR6 is also highly overclockable as we were able to add +850MHz. Full overclocking details are here.

The EVGA GTX 1660 Ti XC Overclocking

We added 175MHz to the core to boost the EVGA GTX 1660 Ti XC’s clocks above 2050MHz. We also added 800MHz to the GDDR6 memory overclock and the full details of our overclocking experience is here.

Let’s check the performance results of 46 games with our games at factory-clocked and overclocked speeds using the EVGA GTX 1660 SUPER DUAL EVO OC and the ASUS GTX 1660 TI XC.

Testing Platform

We test 46 games and 3 synthetic benchmarks at 2560×1440 and at 1920×1080. Our testing platform is a recent install of Windows 10 64-bit Home Edition v1903, and we are using an i7-8700K which turbos all 6 cores to 4.8GHz, an EVGA Z370 FTW motherboard, and 16GB of XTREEM DDR4 at 3866MHz. The games, settings, and hardware are identical except for the cards being compared.

Before we run our benchmarks, let’s check out the full test configuration.

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i7-8700K (HyperThreading and Turbo boost is on to 4.8GHz for all cores; Coffee Lake DX11 CPU graphics).
• EVGA Z370 FTW motherboard (Intel Z370 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 3.0/3.1 specification, CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x), supplied by EVGA
• T-FORCE 16GB DDR4 (2x8GB, dual channel at 3866 MHz), supplied by Team Group
• ASUS DUAL GTX 1660 SUPER EVO OC, on loan from ASUS
• EVGA GTX 1660 Ti XC Gaming 6GB, stock GTX 1660 Ti clocks, on loan from EVGA
• 2 x 480GB Team Group SSDs – one for AMD, and one for NVIDIA
• 1.92TB San Disk enterprise class SSD
• 2TB Micron 1100 enterprise class SSD
• 500GB Vulkan SSD, supplied by Team Group
• Seasonic 850W Gold Focus power supply unit
• EVGA CLC 280mm CPU water cooler, supplied by EVGA
• EVGA Nu Audio PCIe soundcard, supplied by EVGA
• Edifier R1320T Active speakers
• EVGA DG-77, mid-tower case supplied by EVGA
• LG 43″ HDR 4K TV
• Monoprice Crystal Pro 4K

Test Configuration – Software

• GeForce 440.77 drivers used for the EVGA GTX 1660 Ti XC. . Press launch drivers 441.77 are used for the ASUS DUAL GTX 1660 SUPER EVO OC. See NVIDIA Control Panel image below.
• AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are specified with 16xAF always applied
• Gaming results show average frame rates in bold including minimum frame rates shown on the chart next to the averages in a smaller italics font where higher is better. Games benched with OCAT show average framerates but the minimums are expressed by the 99th percentile frametime in ms where lower numbers are better.
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.
• Windows 10 64-bit Home edition. DX11 titles are run under DX11 render paths. DX12 titles are generally run under the DX12 render path unless performance is lower than with DX11, and Borderlands 3, Total War Warhammer II and Hitman 2 are tested on DX11 and on DX12. Four games use the Vulkan API.
• Latest DirectX
• All 46 games are patched to their latest versions at time of posting.
• WattMan used to set Radeon cooling and power options.
• Afterburner used for GeForce settings and primarily for overclocking
• ASUS GPU Tweak II
• OCAT, latest version
• Fraps, latest version
• FrameView, latest beta
• Unigine Heaven 4.0 benchmark

46 PC Game benchmark suite & 3 synthetic tests

Synthetic

• Firestrike – Basic & Extreme
• Time Spy DX12
• Superposition

DX11 Games

• Grand Theft Auto V
• The Witcher 3
• Fallout 4
• Rainbow Six Siege
• Overwatch
• For Honor
• Mass Effect: Andromeda
• ARK: Survival Evolved
• Project CARS 2
• Total Wars: Warhammer II
• Middle Earth: Shadow of War
• Star Wars: Battlefront II
• Monster Hunter: World
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance
• Final Fantasy XV
• Far Cry 5
• Conan Exiles
• Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 4
• Hitman 2
• Just Cause 4
• Resident Evil 2
• Anthem
• FarCry New Dawn
• Devil May Cry 5
• Borderlands 3
• Destiny 2 Shadowkeep
• Ghost Recon Breakpoint
• The Outer Worlds

DX12 Games

• Civilization VI
• Sniper Elite 4
• Forza 7
• Total War: Warhammer II
• Total War: Vermintide 2
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Hitman 2
• Battlefield V
• Metro Exodus
• Tom Clancy’s The Division 2
• Anno 1800
• F1 2019
• Control
• Gears 5
• Borderlands 3
• Call of Duty Modern Warfare

Vulkan Games

• DOOM
• Strange Brigade
• World War Z
• Wolfenstein: Youngblood

NVIDIA Control Panel settings

Here are the NVIDIA Control Panel settings that match AMD’s settings.

We used the latest beta of Afterburner to set both GeForce’s highest Power and Temperature targets. By setting the Power Limits and Temperature limits to maximum, they do not throttle, but they can reach and maintain their individual maximum clocks.

Let’s head to the performance results of our overclocking showdown.

Performance summary charts

Here are the performance results of 46 games and 3 synthetic tests comparing the factory clocked EVGA and overclocked GTX 1660 Ti versus the ASUS stock and overclocked RTX 16600 SUPER. The highest settings are always chosen and the settings are listed on the charts. The benches were run at 1920×1080 and at 2560×1440.

Gaming results show average framerates in bold text, and higher is better. Minimum framerates are next to the averages in italics and in a slightly smaller font. Games benched with OCAT results are given as frametimes in ms where lower numbers are better.

The EVGA factory-clocked GTX 1660 Ti XC is in the first column and its overclocked results are in the second column compared with the overclocked ASUS GTX 1660 SUPER Dual EVO OC in the third column, followed by the SUPER’s factory-clocked results in the fourth column. Performance “wins” between the overclocked cards are given in yellow text and in gold text for the factory clocked results. Ties are expressed by having both sets of results given in colored text.

We see that both cards each gain performance from overclocking and at first glance the GTX 1660 Ti wins most of them. However, looking more closely, most of the results are usually up to a couple of percentage points apart and there is almost no noticeable practical performance difference between the cards playing most games.

Let’s check out our conclusion.

Conclusion

This has been quite an interesting exploration for us in evaluating the factory and manually overclocked ASUS GTX 1660 SUPER versus the factory-clocked and manually overclocked EVGA GTX 1660 Ti XC. The GTX 1660 SUPER overall is very slightly slower than the GTX 1660 Ti at factory settings, and it even manages to close the performance gap a little bit when each card is overclocked manually to its limits.

A gamer looking for the best value in the $230-$280 range should probably pick a GTX 1660 SUPER over a Ti. Both cards overclock equally well on their cores and memory from our samples as they remain in an almost identical performance class. NVIDIA has almost made the GTX 1660 Ti redundant by releasing the less expensive GTX 1660 SUPER. It’s very good news for gamers but a bit confusing without doing some research. To answer our original question regarding value between the two cards, the GTX 1660 Ti is generally not worth its current price premium over the GTX 1660 SUPER.

We are going to next look at these same two cards by measuring their VR performance using a Vive Pro with FCAT-VR early next week. After that, we will explore VR performance headroom using a RTX 2080 Super and a RTX 2080 Ti.

Stay tuned. In the meantime, if you have any comments or questions, feel free to post them in the comments section below.

Happy Gaming!

T-FORCE T-1 Gaming DDR4 2666MHz desktop overclocking memory is not flashy RGB like the 3200MHz Night Hawk memory, nor it is fast like their XTREEM 3600MHz memory. Rather it is mainstream memory that we shall test against T-FORCE’s other two memory kits to see what performance it brings for gamers. We also will overclock it to see if we can get some free performance.

Team Group has been creating high-quality memory products for almost two decades, and their Team T-FORCE T-1 Gaming line-up is aimed at the value conscious gamer. We received a 16BG kit from Team Group, and we will test how well this T-FORCE T-1 Gaming DDR4 2666MHz 16GB CAS18 memory kit performs at stock and at overclocked speeds compared with the RGB 16GB Nighthawk DDR4 3200MHz CAS16 memory kit and with the enthusiast grade T-FORCE XTREEM DDR4 3600MHz CAS18 16GB memory kit.

Memory pricing has softened since last year and there are some good deals to be found. The T-FORCE T-1 Gaming PC4 21300 DDR4 2666MHz CL18 2x8GB kit can be found at Newegg or on Amazon for $74.99; the T-FORCE Night Hawk RGB PC4 25600 DDR4 3200MHz CL16 2x8GB kit is available at Amazon for $139.98; and the T-FORCE XTREEM PC4 28880 3600MHz 2x8GB memory kit sells for $145.99 at Amazon. We want to determine if the $75 DDR4 2666MHz kit is worth buying compared to faster and more expensive RGB or high-performance DDR4.

From our testing with Ivy Bridge, Haswell, Skylake, and Coffee Lake platforms, using fast DDR over slower DDR memory brought limited gains to a few games. However, we found that using faster memory resulted in extra overall performance gains for many other tasks and applications.

Here are the three 16GB kits that we are comparing:

• T-FORCE T-1 Gaming PC4 21300 DDR4 2666MHz CL18 (and overclocked) 2x8GB kit
• T-FORCE Night Hawk PC4 25600 3200MHz DDR4 CL16 2x8GB kit
• T-FORCE XTREEM PC4 28880 3600MHz DDR4 CL18 2x8GB Kit

Testing Platform

Our testing platform is a recent clean installation of Windows 10 Home 64-bit, using an Intel Core i7-8700K at 4.80GHz in an EVGA Z370 FTW motherboard, a HyperX 480GB A-1000 NVMe SSD, and with 16GB of T-FORCE DDR2666 (also overclocked), 16GB of Night Hawk 3200MHz, or T-FORCE XTREEM DDR4 at 3600MHz .

The Nighthawk memory kit uses CAS16 while the other two T-FORCE memory kits use CAS18, and their Command Rates are set at 2T by their respective default XMP 1.0 profiles in the BIOS. The default XMP 1.0 Profile 1 of the T-FORCE T-1 Gaming DDR4 2666MHz timings are 18-18-18-43 . The settings, benchmarks, testing conditions, and hardware are identical except for the three DDR4 kits being compared.

We used either the RTX 2060 SUPER Founders Edition at stock clocks or the Core i7-8700K’s CPU graphics for our testing. We will compare the performance of all three grades of DDR4, and we will also overclock the 2666MHz T-1 Gaming’s memory to chart the effects of multiple memory speeds on the performance of nine modern games at a maxed-out/ultra 1920×1080 resolution. We benchmark using many of the recognized memory-related benchmarking tools including AIDA64, SANDRA, RealBench, PCMark 8 and 10, 3DMark, Cinebench, Star Swarm demo, and Wprime.

Product Specifications & Features

Here are the T-FORCE T-1 Gaming memory specifications from Team Group’s website:

Using the XMP profile, the default command rate is 2T and the timings are CL18-18-19-43. Voltage is set at 1.2V but may be manually adjusted from between 1.2V to 1.4V – or higher. Team Group informed us that although they use both Hynix and Samsung memory chips, our sample uses Hynix. These features are from Team Group’s website.

Features

We tested our final overclock using AIDA64’s System Test which also shows the voltage used at 3100MHz remained under our BIOS limit of 1.399V. This AIDA64 test really stresses the memory and also the CPU. We confirmed that our final overclock was stable by running MemTest64 and Windows Memory Diagnostics overnight, as well as by playing games and running BTR’s other benching suites.

We believe that our overclock of +434MHz from 2666MHz to 3100MHz may be a great middle ground for many enthusiasts wanting great value, long memory life, complete stability and increased performance. It will also show that this memory scales by simply increasing memory clocks. Some hardcore enthusiast overclockers may want to aim for the highest overclock that their own memory will reach, and afterward they may fine-tune the timings for maximum memory performance.

We generally see the performance increasing with faster memory speeds. Let’s head to our conclusion.

Conclusion and Verdict

We have seen that that running DDR4 at a faster clock speed produces performance gains and saves time with some common tasks. In addition, some modern games can also benefit from faster system memory with a fast CPU and a fast video card.

Is DDR at 2666MHz good enough for a gamer? Probably, although it might be helpful for gamers to overclock it depending on the games they play. If a gamer is buying a new CPU and motherboard now, faster RAM can make a performance improvement in gaming. The gaming performance improvement with faster DDR4 isn’t dramatic, from zero performance improvement to perhaps adding a few framerates in some memory-sensitive games like ARMA III and Anno 1800. Faster RAM benefits are mostly shown by memory intensive benchmarks.

T-FORCE T-1 Gaming DDR4 2666MHz

Pros

• The Team Group T-FORCE T-1 Gaming DDR4 2666MHz RAM is mainstream DDR4 that is built for reliability and even for good overclocking.
• Our sample is a value enthusiast’s dream. Fast, stable, and dependable, it overclocks multiple speed grades beyond its rated 2666MHz grade to 3100MHz at under 1.4V.
• Once overclocked, it is nearly as fast as the Night Hawk DDR4 3200MHz kit which is almost twice more expensive.
• It is conservative-looking with no frills, no external heatsinks, and no RGB which allows it to easily fit in most motherboards.
• Voltage tolerances from 1.2V to 1.4V and even higher allow for overclocking.
• It comes with a lifetime Team Group warranty.

Cons

• At 2666MHz with CAS18 latency it may not take full advantage of a very fast CPU.

The Verdict

If you are a value or a budget-minded gamer with good quality components who wants high performance from your PC, then the Team Group T-FORCE T-1 Gaming DDR4 2666MHz is an excellent choice as it is reasonably fast at stock speeds coupled with an overclocked CPU, plus it overclocks very well.

Although it is not on sale currently, the T-FORCE T-1 Gaming 2x8GB 2666MHz RAM Kit is priced similarly to other DDR4 in its speed class and it is backed by Team Group who gives a lifetime warranty. It is a decent performer at its default XMP profile and it overclocks extremely well. We feel that the T-FORCE DDR4 2866MHz deserves BTR’s Good Value Award.

If you are on a tight budget, the T-1 Gaming 2666MHz RAM may be a good choice, and then try for an overclock. For gaming, 8GB is probably still barely acceptable although for other tasks, 16GB is almost mandatory.

Stay tuned. Our RX 5700 XT is scheduled to return from RMA next week as part of a VR performance evaluation using the Vive Pro and the Oculus Rift. In the meantime, we are working on a Team Group Vulcan 500GB SSD performance review next. In the meantime, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to use Disqus below.

Happy Gaming!

This overclocking showdown is the follow-up to the RTX 2080 SUPER Founders Edition (FE) review where we are now focusing on its maximum overclocked performance versus the maximum overclocked original RTX 2080 FE. We have also matched the memory and core clocks on both cards to see what performance changes the upgrade of the RTX 2080 SUPER FE edition brings with its increased cache size and with two more SM’s enabled over the original RTX 2080 FE.

The RTX 2080 SUPER was released with about 4-8% more performance over the original RTX 2080 FE to differentiate itself more from the RTX 2070 SUPER which encroaches on the original’s performance territory. Besides the architectural upgrade, the RTX 2080 SUPER boasts a 15MHz faster core and 15.6Mbps GDDR6 which is clocked 750MHz higher than the original RTX 2080.

Besides matching their clocks, we have optimized and maxed-out our RTX 2080 SUPER FE and RTX 2080 FE overclocks with all performance options set to their highest limits to get the maximum performance from each card by using a carefully selected 7-game benchmark suite which uses the most accurate and reliable benchmarks that have been each run many more times than usual.

We use the latest WHQL public release Game Ready 431.60 drivers so our results may differ from the 431.56 press drivers used for the RTX 2080 SUPER review. In addition, the cards’ fan speeds have been set to at least 80% to eliminate thermal variability.

The RTX 2080 SUPER FE Overclocking

The RTX 2080 SUPER FE steadily averages 1935-1950MHz Boost under full gaming load after warm-up in a cool room with the card’s Power and Temperature limits maximized. We achieved a completely stable 120MHz offset to the core and a +500MHz offset to the GDDR6. We found that +600MHz was also possible, but the performance stopped increasing, and at +650MHz it began artifacting.

Our final overclock of the RTX 2080 SUPER FE gave us an offset of +120MHz to the core (2055MHz Boost) and a +500MHz offset to its faster memory (8250MHz).

The RTX 2080 Founders Edition Overclocking

The RTX 2080 FE averages 1905-1920MHz at stock settings in a cool room with its Power and Temperature limits maximized. Our final manual overclock of the original RTX 2080 FE achieves a +140MHz offset to the core (2055MHz Boost) and a +590MHz offset to the memory (7620MHz). This comparison should give a rough idea of how well these two cards each scale with overclocking and how their performance compares.

Matching the RTX 2080 FE’s Clocks to the RTX 2080 SUPER’s Clocks

To match the original RTX 2080 memory clocks, the RTX 2080 SUPER had its memory clocks lowered from 7750MHz to 7000MHz which we were able to do with Precision 1X but not with Afterburner. And to match the core clocks, the original RTX 2080 had +15MHz added to its core speed so that both cards held steady clocks, each card only fluctuating between 1920MHz and 1935MHz as the ambient temperatures were similar.

Our fan profile was set to allow both cards to ramp up from 80% to 85% for all of these tests so that neither card reached 70C even when fully overclocked so as to remove throttling caused by temperature variability.

Interestingly, both cards each reached 2055MHz boost when fully manually overclocked, so it is likely that most of the performance differences may come from the memory speed. The overclocked RTX 2080 SUPER can reach 8250MHz using faster GDDR6 while the original RTX 2080 can only handle 7590MHz.

The upgraded changes made from the original RTX 2080 to the RTX 2080 SUPER are (1) a GDDR6 memory speed upgrade to 15.6Gbps, (2) an additional speed increase to its core, (3) increased cache size, and with (4) two more SM’s enabled.

We feel that since both RTX 2080s have identical cooling and similar overall characteristics, lowering the memory clocks -750MHz on the SUPER to match the original RTX 2080 and increasing the core clock +15MHz of the original card to match the RTX 2080 SUPER may give us an idea of the performance changes from the increased cache size and additional SMs.

Let’s check the performance results of 7 games with our games at stock, matched, and overclocked speeds using the Founders Editions of the RTX 2080 SUPER versus the original RTX 2080 FE after the Testing configuration.

Testing Platform

We test 7 games and 4 synthetic benchmarks at 3840×2160 and at 2560×1440. Our testing platform is a recent install of Windows 10 64-bit Home Edition v1903, and we are using an i7-8700K which turbos all 6 cores to 4.8GHz, an EVGA Z370 FTW motherboard, and 16GB of XTREEM DDR4 at 3866MHz. The games, settings, and hardware are identical except for the cards being compared.

Before we run our benchmarks, let’s check out the test configuration.

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i7-8700K (HyperThreading and Turbo boost are on to 4.8GHz for all cores; Coffee Lake DX11 CPU graphics).
• EVGA Z370 FTW motherboard (Intel Z370 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 3.0/3.1 specification, CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x), supplied by EVGA
• T-FORCE XTREEM 16GB DDR4 (2x8GB, dual channel at 3866MHz), supplied by Team Group
• RTX 2080 8GB Founders Edition, at stock FE clocks, matched to the RTX 2080 SUPER clocks, and overclocked, on loan from NVIDIA
• RTX 2060 SUPER 8GB Founders Edition, at stock FE clocks, matched to RTX 2080 clocks, and overclocked, on loan from NVIDIA.
• 480 GB Team Group SSD
• 1.92 TB San Disk enterprise class SSD
• 2 TB Micron 1100 SSD
• Seasonic 850W Gold Focus power supply unit
• EVGA CLC 280mm CPU water cooler, supplied by EVGA
• EVGA NuAudio soundcard, supplied by EVGA
• Edifier 1280T powered speakers
• EVGA DG-77, mid-tower case supplied by EVGA
• Monoprice Crystal Pro 4K

Test Configuration – Software

• GeForce 431.60 WHQL drivers
• VSync is forced off.
• AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are specified
• Gaming results show average frame rates in bold including minimum frame rates shown on the chart next to the averages in a smaller italics font, and higher is better. Civilization VI uses frametimes measurements and lower is better.
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.
• Windows 10 64-bit Home edition latest version (v1903) and fully updated.
• Latest DirectX
• All games are updated to their latest versions at time of publication.
• MSI Afterburner, latest beta
• Precision X1 latest version
• Fraps, latest version

7 PC Game benchmark suite & 4 synthetic tests

Synthetic

• Firestrike – Basic & Extreme
• Time Spy DX12
• Superposition
• Heaven 4.0

DX11 Games

• For Honor
• Ghost Recon Wildlands
• Prey
• Total War: Warhammer II

DX12 Games

• Civilization VI
• Metro Exodus
• Metro Exodus – DLSS+Ultra RTX

Vulkan Game

• Strange Brigade

NVIDIA Control Panel settings

Here are the NVIDIA Control Panel settings that match AMD’s settings.

We used the latest beta of Afterburner to set both GeForce’s highest Power and Temperature targets. In addition we added .1mV for overclocking. By setting the Power Limits and Temperature limits to maximum, they do not throttle, but they can reach and maintain their individual maximum clocks. This is particularly beneficial for almost all higher power cards.

Let’s head to the performance results of our overclocking and matched-clocks showdown between the RTX 2080 FE and the RTX 2080 SUPER FE.

Performance summary charts

Here are the performance results of 7 games and 4 synthetic tests comparing the stock, matched, and overclocked RTX 2080 FE 8GB versus the stock, matched and overclocked RTX 2080 SUPER 8GB Founders Edition. The highest settings are always chosen and the settings are listed on the charts. The benches were run at 3840×2160 and at 2560×1440.

Gaming results show average framerates in bold text, and higher is better. Minimum framerates are next to the averages in italics and in a slightly smaller font. Civilization 6 results are given as frametimes in ms where lower numbers are better.

First up, the Overclocked results:

We see that both cards each gain performance from overclocking and the RTX 2080 SUPER pulls further away from the original RTX 2080 by virtue of its faster memory although they both achieve the same core overclock (2050MHz).

Now let’s check out the matched results where the clocks are equalized between both cards. The RTX 2080 SUPER has its memory clocks reduced by -750MHz to 7000MHz to match the original RTX 2080’s memory speeds, and the original RTX 2080 is overclocked by +15MHz to match the SUPER’s core speed.

Interestingly, the RTX 2080 SUPER tends to give slightly less performance when it is running at the same clocks as the RTX 2080. Of course, we only tested two samples with a dozen benchmarks, and all of the results are generally within 3% which could be attributed to benching ‘noise’ or margin of error.

There is one notable exception with the RTX 2080 SUPER running Strange Brigade. Lowering the SUPER’s memory clocks drastically dropped the minimum frame rates although we ran the benchmark many times with the same results. One may perhaps speculate that the RTX 2080 SUPER needs a bit more core speed and higher memory clocks to take full advantage of its extra two SMs and the larger cache.

Let’s check out our conclusion.

Conclusion

This has been quite an interesting exploration for us in evaluating the stock, clocked-matched, and overclocked RTX 2080 SUPER FE versus the stock, clock-matched, and overclocked original RTX 2080 FE. The RTX 2080 SUPER FE overall is a bit faster than the original RTX 2080 at stock. But overclocked, the new RTX 2080 SUPER pulls away even further away thanks to its significantly faster memory and architectural upgrade.

A gamer looking for the best value in the $700 range should pick either an original RTX 2080 or a RTX 2080 SUPER with confidence. Both cards overclock equally well on their cores and in our case, both reached 2050MHz, although the overclocked RTX 2080 SUPER card pulls further away from the overclocked original RTX 2080.

We had originally intended to get back to VR comparing the RX 5700 XT with the new SUPER cards, but our Anniversary Edition became defective and we sent it back to AMD for an exchange. We also received a Vive Pro from HTC Vive and can’t wait to bring you a mega-VR review. However, while waiting for our RX 5700 XT to return from RMA, we will bring you two Team Group reviews: a Vulcan 500GB SSD review and a T-FORCE DDR4 gaming review starting next week.

Stay tuned. In the meantime, if you have any comments or questions, feel free to post them in the comments section below.

Happy Gaming!

This overclocking showdown is a follow-up to the RTX 2060 SUPER Founders Edition (FE) review where we are now focusing on its overclocked performance versus the overclocked liquid-cooled RX Vega 64. Today, we have optimized and maxed-out our RTX 2060 SUPER and RX Vega 64 overclocks with all performance options set to their highest limits to get the maximum performance from each card.

At stock, the RTX 2060 FE won the majority of the 40 games we tested over the liquid cooled RX Vega 64. So now we will overclock both cards manually each as far as they will go to see where they stand in relation to each other fully overclocked.

The RTX 2060 SUPER OC

In our original review of the RTX 2060 SUPER this week, we did not have time to overclock it. After much testing, we settled on a +150MHz offset to the core which allows it to reach 2055MHz when cold, but it actually averages 1995MHz under full load in gaming. The core speed drops down to 1980MHz when temps hit 80C with the stock fan profile. So we set a custom fan profile which allows the card to reach 75% fan, and the Boost settles in between 1995MHz to 2010MHz which was a little lower than we had hoped for.

The RTX 2060 SUPER is reasonably quiet with the stock fan profile at stock settings, but it gets a bit more noticeable when it is fully overclocked with the fan allowed to reach 75%. We also benchmarked in a cool room (below 74 F). Our memory overclock was good and we achieved a +900MHz offset to the GDDR6. We found that +950MHz was also possible, but the performance stopped increasing over 900MHz; and at +1000MHz it began artifacting.

The Gigabyte Liquid-cooled RX Vega 64 OC

AMD’s premium liquid-cooled RX Vega 64 is overclocked from the factory and much faster than the reference version which easily throttles, and it is also faster than many aftermarket Vega 64s. Our overall stock-clocks average around 1678MHz and it does not throttle at all under full gaming load in a cool room.

We set our RX Vega 64’s power limit to +50% which pushes the power draw way up, but it achieves maximum overclocked performance higher than any kind of undervolting or fine-tuning allows since this premium Vega 64 is already overclocked and pre-tuned from the factory.

Our particular RX Vega 64 achieves maximum performance with brute force and with the highest voltage. Under normal gaming, we always take a slight performance hit and undervolt, but for this overclocking showdown we wanted maximum performance at any costs.

We settled on a 2.0% overclock to the core for an overall average above 1716MHz , and with its HBM2 memory clocks overclocked +110MHz from its stock 945MHz to 1055MHz. After nearly two years of gaming, it can no longer maintain the 1080MHz memory clocks that we once achieved.

Our last overclocking showdown was between the liquid cooled Vega 64 and the RTX 2070 Founders Edition in February. This time, we cooled our room down below 72 F to avoid as much thermal throttling as possible in our high desert heat, and we notice that we got slightly better overall overclocked performance increases this time.

Testing Platform

We test 40 games and 3 synthetic benchmarks at 1920×1080 and at 2560×1440. In addition, Hitman 2 and Total War: Warhammer II are benchmarked on DX11 and on DX12. Our latest game is Anno 1800.

Our testing platform is a recent install of Windows 10 64-bit Home Edition, and we are using an i7-8700K which turbos all 6 cores to 4.8GHz, an EVGA Z370 FTW motherboard, and 16GB of XTREEM DDR4 at 3866MHz. The games, settings, and hardware are identical except for the cards being compared.

Before we run our overclocked benchmarks, let’s check out the test configuration.

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i7-8700K (HyperThreading and Turbo boost are on to 4.8GHz for all cores; Coffee Lake DX11 CPU graphics).
• EVGA Z370 FTW motherboard (Intel Z370 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 3.0/3.1 specification, CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x), supplied by EVGA
• T-FORCE XTREEM 16GB DDR4 (2x8GB, dual channel at 3866MHz), supplied by Team Group
• Gigabyte liquid-cooled RX Vega 64 8GB, at stock LC clocks and overclocked
• RTX 2060 SUPER 8GB Founders Edition, at stock FE clocks and overclocked, on loan from NVIDIA.
• 2 x 480 GB Team Group SSD; One for Radeon and one for GeForce
• 1.92 TB San Disk enterprise class SSD
• 2 TB Micron 1100 SSD
• Seasonic 850W Gold Focus power supply unit
• EVGA CLC 280mm CPU water cooler, supplied by EVGA
• EVGA NuAudio soundcard, supplied by EVGA
• Edifier 1280T powered speakers
• EVGA DG-77, mid-tower case supplied by EVGA
• Monoprice Crystal Pro 4K

Test Configuration – Software

• GeForce 431.16 WHQL drivers are used for the RTX 2060 SUPER.
• AMD’s Adrenalin Software 19.6.3 is used for the liquid cooled RX Vega 64.
• VSync is forced off.
• AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are specified
• Gaming results show average frame rates in bold including minimum frame rates shown on the chart next to the averages in a smaller italics font. OCAT uses .1ms frametime measurements for the minimums also shown in italics.
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.
• Windows 10 64-bit Home edition latest version (v1903) and fully updated. All DX11 titles were run under DX11 render paths. DX12 titles are generally run under the DX12 render path unless performance is lower than with DX11. Three games use the Vulkan API.
• Latest DirectX
• All 40 games are updated to their latest versions at time of publication.
• Wattman MSI Afterburner, latest beta.
• OCAT, latest version
• Fraps, latest version
• Heaven 4.0 Unigine benchmark

40 PC Game benchmark suite & 3 synthetic tests

Synthetic

• Firestrike – Basic & Extreme
• Time Spy DX12
• Superposition

DX11 Games

• Grand Theft Auto V
• The Witcher 3
• Fallout 4
• Rainbow Six Siege
• Overwatch
• For Honor
• Ghost Recon Wildlands
• Mass Effect: Andromeda
• Prey
• ARK: Survival Evolved
• Project CARS 2
• Middle Earth: Shadow of War
• Total War: Warhammer II
• Destiny 2
• Star Wars: Battlefront II
• Monster Hunter: World
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance
• Final Fantasy XV
• Far Cry 5
• Conan: Exiles
• F1 2018
• Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 4
• Hitman 2
• Just Cause 4
• Resident Evil 2
• Devil May Cry 5

DX12 Games

• Tom Clancy’s The Division
• Gears of War 4
• Civilization VI
• Sniper Elite 4
• Forza 7
• Total War: Warhammer II
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Battlefield V
• Hitman 2
• Metro Exodus
• Tom Clancy’s The Division 2
• Anno 1800

Vulkan Games

• DOOM
• Wolfenstein: The New Colossus
• Strange Brigade

AMD Adrenalin Control Center Settings

All AMD settings are set so as to be apples-to-apples when compared to NVIDIA’s control panel settings – all optimizations are off, Vsync is forced off, Texture filtering is set to High, and Tessellation uses application settings.

We use Wattman to set the liquid cooled RX Vega 64’s power, temperature and fan settings to their maximums and the fan was allowed to spin up to 100%.

NVIDIA Control Panel settings

Here are the NVIDIA Control Panel settings that match AMD’s settings.

We used the latest beta of Afterburner to set the RTX 2060 SUPER’s highest Power and Temperature targets and the fan was allowed to spin up to 75%. By setting the Power Limits and Temperature limits to maximum, it does not throttle, but it can reach and maintain its individual maximum clocks. This is particularly beneficial for almost all higher power cards.

Let’s head to the performance results of our overclocking showdown between the liquid cooled RX Vega 64 and the RTX 2060 SUPER Founders Edition.

Performance summary charts

Here are the performance results of 40 games and 3 synthetic tests comparing the stock and overclocked liquid-cooled RX Vega 64 8GB versus the stock and overclocked RTX 2060 SUPER 8GB Founders Edition. The highest settings are always chosen and the settings are listed on the charts. The benches were run at 1920×1080 and at 2560×1440.

Most gaming results show average framerates in bold text, and higher is better. Minimum framerates are next to the averages in italics and in a slightly smaller font. Several games benched with OCAT show average framerates but the .1 minimums are expressed by frametimes in ms where lower numbers are better.

The first two columns are devoted to the RTX 2060 SUPER – first stock, then overclocked. The third and fourth columns represent the liquid-cooled RX Vega 64, overclocked then stock (so the overclocked RTX 2060 SUPER results are right next to the overclocked RX Vega 64 results). Wins between stock results are given in gold text and wins between overclocked results are given in yellow. If there is a performance tie, both sets of numbers are colored. As always, open each chart in a separate tab for the best viewing.

We see that both cards each gain performance from overclocking. The liquid-cooled RX Vega 64 is already factory-clocked so close to its limit that only the memory overclocking gives any real performance gain, and unfortunately it can no longer hold its former memory overclock after many months of gaming. We were slightly disappointed by the RTX 2060 SUPER’s performance increase from overclocking, but it was enough to distance itself even further from the overclocked liquid cooled Vega 64.

Let’s check out our conclusion.

Conclusion

This has been quite an interesting exploration for us in evaluating the manually overclocked RTX 2060 SUPER FE versus the overclocked liquid-cooled RX Vega 64. The new RTX 2060 SUPER performs within a percentage or two of the RTX 2070, so it also is faster than the RX Vega 64 liquid-cooled edition, and overclocking both cards doesn’t really change their rankings.

Of course, this overclocking showdown is a warm-up for our RX 5700 XT review. We are looking forward to posting a series of reviews that will compare its stock and overclocked performance to the RTX 2070 SUPER, the RTX 2060 SUPER, and to the liquid cooled Vega 64.

Stay tuned. In the meantime, if you have any comments or questions, feel free to post them in the comments section below.

Happy Gaming!

This overclocking showdown is the follow-up to BTR’s launch review of the EVGA GTX 1660 XC versus the PowerColor Red Devil RX 590. Today we have optimized and maxed-out both individual overclocks with all performance options set to their highest limits to get the most performance from each card.

In the USA market both cards are in a similar price range. The EVGA GTX 1660 is priced at $239 with a $10 mail-in-rebate and a 1-game bundle while the Red Devil RX 590 is priced at $239 with a 3-game bundle and a $20 mail-in-rebate.

At stock, the GTX 1660 won nearly all of the 41 games we tested over the Red Devil RX 590. This time, we will overclock our cards manually each as far as they will go to see where they stand in relation to each other overclocked and to see if anything changes. We also updated to the very latest drivers and have added Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 to our benchmarks.

The GTX 1660 OC

The EVGA GTX 1660 XC 6GB is a factory overclocked card that is clocked 45MHz higher than the reference clocks boosting to around 1920MHz. We found our own final stable manual overclock was higher than Precision X1’s +109MHz scan recommendation. We added 145MHz to the core to boost the clocks to above 2040MHz. We also added 900MHz to the GDDR5 memory overclock.

Our core overclock of the GTX 1660 seems to be well in line with what is expected from Turing GPUs.

The Red Devil RX 590 OC

The RX 590 8GB is clocked up from the reference 1545MHz to its maximum boost speeds of 1576MHz. The details of our original overclocking may be found here. We found that as long as the the Power and Temperature limits are maximized, it will not throttle even with the Silent BIOS profile.

We settled on a 2.5% overclock or an offset of +40MHz to the core for a 1615MHz boost, with memory clocks overclocked +175MHz to 2175MHz. We found that higher memory clocks gained significant performance over a slightly higher core overclock. Adjusting the voltage – undervolting or undervolting – made no practical difference, and we achieved stability in all of our 41 tested games by using overclocking brute force.

Testing Platform

We test 41 games and 3 synthetic benchmarks at 1920×1080 and at 2560×1440. Our platform is a recent installation of Windows 10 64-bit Home Edition, and we are using an i7-8700K which turbos all 6 cores to 4.7GHz, an EVGA Z370 FTW motherboard, and 16GB of HyperX DDR4 3333MHz. The games, settings, and hardware are identical except for the cards being compared.

Before we run our overclocked benchmarks, let’s check out the test configuration.

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i7-8700K (HyperThreading and Turbo boost is on to 4.7GHz for all cores; Coffee Lake DX11 CPU graphics).
• EVGA Z370 FTW motherboard (Intel Z370 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 3.0/3.1 specification, CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x), supplied by EVGA
• HyperX 16GB DDR4 (2x8GB, dual channel at 3333 MHz), supplied by HyperX
• EVGA GTX 1660 XC 6GB, factory GTX 1660 clocks, on loan from EVGA
• Red Devil RX 590 8GB, at factory overclocked settings, on loan from PowerColor
• 2 x 480GB Team Group SSDs – one for AMD, and one for NVIDIA
• 1.92TB San Disk enterprise class SSD
• 2TB Micron 1100 enterprise class SSD
• Seasonic 850W Gold Focus power supply unit
• EVGA CLC 280mm CPU water cooler, supplied by EVGA
• EVGA Nu Audio PCIe soundcard, supplied by EVGA
• Edifier R1320T Active speakers
• EVGA DG-77, mid-tower case supplied by EVGA
• LG 43″ HDR 4K TV
• Monoprice Crystal Pro 4K

Test Configuration – Software

• Nvidia’s GeForce 419.35 drivers. See NVIDIA Control Panel image below.
• AMD Adrenalin Software 19.3.2 drivers. See the AMD Control Panel image below.
• VSync is forced off.
• AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are specified with 16xAF always applied
• Gaming results show average frame rates in bold including minimum frame rates shown on the chart next to the averages in a smaller italics font.
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.
• Windows 10 64-bit Home edition. All DX11 titles were run under DX11 render paths. DX12 titles are generally run under the DX12 render path unless performance is lower than with DX11. Three games use the Vulkan API.
• Latest DirectX
• All 41 games are patched to their latest versions at time of publication.
• WattMan used to set Radeon cooling and power options.
• Precision X1 used for all GeForce settings and for overclocking.
• OCAT, latest version
• Fraps, latest version
• Unigine Heaven 4.0

41 PC Game benchmark suite & 4 synthetic tests

Synthetic

• Firestrike – Basic & Extreme
• Time Spy DX12
• Superposition

DX11 Games

• Grand Theft Auto V
• The Witcher 3
• Fallout 4
• Rainbow Six Siege
• Battlefield 1
• For Honor
• Ghost Recon Wildlands
• Mass Effect: Andromeda
• Prey
• Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
• Project CARS 2
• Total War: Warhammer II
• Middle Earth: Shadow of War
• Destiny 2
• Star Wars: Battlefront II
• Monster Hunter: World
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance
• Final Fantasy XV
• Far Cry 5
• The Crew 2
• Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 4
• Hitman 2
• Just Cause 4
• Resident Evil 2

DX12 Games

• Tom Clancy’s The Division
• Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation
• Hitman
• Rise of the Tomb Raider
• Gears of War 4
• Civilization VI
• Sniper Elite 4
• Forza 7
• Total War: Warhammer II
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Battlefield V
• Metro Exodus
• Tom Clancy’s The Division 2

Vulkan Games

• DOOM
• Wolfenstein: The New Colossus
• Strange Brigade

AMD Adrenalin Control Center Settings

All AMD settings are set so as to be apples-to-apples when compared to NVIDIA’s control panel settings – all optimizations are off, Vsync is forced off, Texture filtering is set to High, and Tessellation uses application settings.

We use Wattman to set the RX 590’s power, temperature and fan settings to their maximums.

NVIDIA Control Panel settings

Here are the NVIDIA Control Panel settings that match AMD’s settings.

We used the latest beta of Precision X1 to set the GTX 1660’s highest Power and Temperature targets and for our overclocks. By setting the Power Limits and Temperature limits to maximum for each card, they do not throttle, but they can each reach and maintain their individual maximum clocks. This is particularly beneficial for high power cards.

Let’s check out the performance of our competing cards to conclude how they stand each manually overclocked in relation to each other.

Performance summary charts

Here are the performance results of 41 games and 3 synthetic tests comparing the stock and overclocked GTX 1660 XC versus the Red Devil RX 590. The highest settings are always chosen and the settings are listed on the charts. The benches were run at 1920×1080 and at 2560×1440.

Most gaming results show average framerates in bold text, and higher is better. Minimum framerates are next to the averages in italics and in a slightly smaller font. A few games benched with OCAT show average framerates but the .1 minimums are expressed by frametimes in ms where lower numbers are better.

The first two columns are devoted to the GTX 1660. The next two columns are devoted to the Red Devil RX 590. The overclocked results are in the middle two columns for easy comparison. “OC” refers to the overclocked cards’ performance. Wins between the overclocked results are shown by yellow text while the wins between stock cards are show in orange. If there is a performance tie, both results are given in colored text. As always, open each chart in a separate tab for the best viewing.

We see each of our cards gain decent performance from manual overclocking although the Red Devil RX 590 gains less as it doesn’t appear to have a lot of headroom. The stock GTX 1660 XC wins most of our benchmarks at stock and even gains further performance by reason of its better overclocking headroom.

Let’s check out our conclusion.

Conclusion

This has been a fun and interesting overclocking exploration evaluating the manually overclocked EVGA GTX 1660 XC versus the overclocked Red Devil RX 590. Both cards appear to scale well with each of their respective overclocks although the GTX 1660 gains more performance by reason of its superior headroom and higher core and memory overclocking capability.

The EVGA GTX 1660 XC is quieter than the RX 590 especially when the cards are overclocked and under full load. The RX 590 also tends to use a lot of power when overclocked especially if undervolting isn’t also used.

The overall pricing has changed from last week when the GTX 1660 launched. Although the EVGA GTX 1660 Black still sits at $239 with a $10 mail-in-rebate and a bundled game, the RX 590s have dropped in price at some outlets and some SKUs can now be found at $229, generally with a 3-game bundle.

Later this week, BTR will continue our Driver Performance Analyses series with a new post as Adrenalin 19.3.2 driver was released last Thursday for The Division 2.

BTR will also continue our VR performance benching series next week.

Happy Gaming!