The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Super & RTX 2060 Super Review: Smaller Numbers, Bigger Performance
by Ryan Smith on July 2, 2019 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- GeForce
- NVIDIA
- Turing
- GeForce RTX
The 2019 GPU Benchmark Suite & The Test
As we’re kicking off a new(ish) generation of video cards, we’re also kicking off a new generation of the AnandTech GPU benchmark suite.
For 2019 most of the suite has been refreshed to include games released in the last year. The latest iteration of the Tomb Raider franchise, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, is 2019’s anchor title and is the game used for power/temperature/noise testing as well as game performance testing. Also making its introduction to the GPU benchmark suite for the first time is an Assassin’s Creed game, thanks to Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’s extra-handy built-in benchmark.
For 2019 Ashes of the Singularity has been rotated out, so we’re empty on RTSes at the moment. But as an alternative we have Microsoft’s popular Forza Horizon 4, which marks the first time a Forza game has been included in the suite.
AnandTech GPU Bench 2019 Game List | ||||
Game | Genre | Release Date | API | |
Shadow of the Tomb Raider | Action/TPS | Sept. 2018 | DX12 | |
F1 2019 | Racing | Jun. 2019 | DX12 | |
Assassin's Creed Odyssey | Action/Open World | Oct. 2018 | DX11 | |
Metro Exodus | FPS | Feb. 2019 | DX12 | |
Strange Brigade | TPS | Aug. 2018 | Vulkan | |
Total War: Three Kingdoms | TBS | May. 2019 | DX11 | |
The Division 2 | FPS | Mar. 2019 | DX12 | |
Grand Theft Auto V | Action/Open world | Apr. 2015 | DX11 | |
Forza Horizon 4 | Racing | Oct. 2018 | DX12 |
All told, I’m pleasantly surprised by the number of DirectX 12-enabled AAA games available this year. More than half of the benchmark suite is using DX12, with both AMD and NVIDIA cards showing performance gains across all of the games using this API. So this is a far cry from the early days of DX12, where using the low-level API would often send performance backwards. And speaking of low-level APIs, I’ve also thrown in Strange Brigade for this iteration, as it’s one of the only major Vulkan games to be released in the past year.
Finally, I’ve also kept Grand Theft Auto V as our legacy game for 2019. Despite being released for the PC over 4 years ago – and for game consoles 2 years before that – the game continues to be one of the top selling games on Steam. And even with its age, the scalability of the game means that it’s a heavy enough load to challenge even the latest video cards.
As for our hardware testbed, it too has been updated for the 2019 video card release cycle.
Internally we’ve made a pretty big change, going from an Intel HEDT platform (Core i7-7820X) to a standard desktop platform based around an overclocked Core i9-9900K and Z390 chipset. While we’ve used HEDT platforms for the GPU testbed for the last decade, HEDT is becoming increasingly irrelevant/compromised for gaming; while the extra PCIe lanes are nice, these platforms haven’t delivered the best CPU performance for games as of late.
By contrast, desktop processors with 8 cores now provide more than enough cores, and they also provide far better clockspeeds, delivering more of the single/lightly-threaded performance that games need. Furthermore, as SLI and Crossfire are on the rocks, the extra PCIe lanes aren’t as necessary as they once were.
On a side note, I had originally hoped to cycle in a Ryzen 3000 platform at this point, particularly for PCIe 4.0. However the timing of all of these hardware launches meant that we needed to go with an established platform, as it takes a week or so to build and validate a new GPU testbed. Plus with Ryzen 3000 not launching for another week, we wouldn’t have been able to use it for this review anyhow.
Otherwise the rest of our 2019 GPU testbed is relatively straightforward. With 32GB of RAM and a high-end Phison E12-based NVMe SSD, the system and any video cards being tested as well-fed. Enclosing all of this for our real-world style testing is our trusty NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition case.
CPU: | Intel Core i9-9900K @ 5.0GHz |
Motherboard: | ASRock Z390 Taichi |
Power Supply: | Corsair AX1200i |
Hard Disk: | Phison E12 PCIe NVMe SSD (960GB) |
Memory: | G.Skill Trident Z RGB DDR4-3600 2 x 16GB (17-18-18-38) |
Case: | NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition |
Monitor: | Asus PQ321 |
Video Cards: | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 2070 Super Founders Edition NVIDIA GeForce GTX 2060 Super Founders Edition NVIDIA GeForce GTX 2080 Founders Edition NVIDIA GeForce GTX 2070 Founders Edition NVIDIA GeForce GTX 2060 Founders Edition AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 |
Video Drivers: | NVIDIA Release 431.15 AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.6.3 |
OS: | Windows 10 Pro (1903) |
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GreenReaper - Tuesday, July 2, 2019 - link
Are "CUDA cores" the same as "RT cores"? The article actually talks about "SMs" - a term not defined before use. Perhaps they are all the same thing. In any case, not in the specifications, so easy to miss.GreenReaper - Tuesday, July 2, 2019 - link
Also, are all parts of the CPU in the same clock domain?If not, the speed of one part may not relate to another.
(And if so, they're arguably not separate "cores".)
chowmanga - Tuesday, July 2, 2019 - link
Why are you only showing cards from the current generation in the benchmarks? Most of the people who opt for a lower priced card like the RTX 2070 aren't going to be in the market for getting a card upgrade to 2070 Super. Looking at the Steam Survey, we see that the most owned cards come from the last generation and the 750Ti is still in the top 10 of most popular cards! Owners of cards even one generation old can't compare their cards in the GPU 2019 benchmark section as it is only populated by new cards. It seems like you've neglected to consider the audience who would be in the market for old cards.Sincerely,
Disgruntled 980Ti owner
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, July 2, 2019 - link
"Why are you only showing cards from the current generation in the benchmarks?"Short answer: lack of time. It takes a lot of time to put together a new GPU benchmarking suite, and NVIDIA's launch inopportunely arrived right in the middle of that. So I only had a few days to benchmark cards.
GPU Bench 2019 will get filled out with more cards over time, including 980 series cards.
chowmanga - Wednesday, July 3, 2019 - link
Good to know, thanks.Ananke - Tuesday, July 2, 2019 - link
If AMD prices the RX5700 at $299 and 5700XT at $399, it will absolutely devastate NVidia. I kinda doubt AMD has the marketing team to understand that, but semi aggressive high end product prices can bring them half of the GPU market, especially if well executed with Ryzon alliance. AMD has once in a lifetime opportunity now. Next year, Intel will enter the game, and it will be very competitive market to do anything with high margins.webdoctors - Tuesday, July 2, 2019 - link
LOL, at those prices it would devastate AMD. They have employees to pay, as well as foundries for the chips. They're not a charity. They need to pay for the 8GB of RAM and the dies at 7nm won't be cheap now, maybe next yr. These dies are bigger than CPUs. Compared to a CPU you're getting a PCB and DRAM as well so you can't compare it to the Ryzen CPU pricing.Bensam123 - Tuesday, July 2, 2019 - link
Please cover AMDs input delay reduction technology in the review of the 5700 series along with Nvidias. It's not just about raw FPS (or frame times). Input delay matters a lot.pandemonium - Wednesday, July 3, 2019 - link
Quick fix for your table:RTX 2080 Super
Launch Date 07/23/2018
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, July 3, 2019 - link
Thanks!