MSI GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER GAMING X TRIO Review

1. Introduction & Pricing
2. Specs: Turing GPU & No GDDR6 Upgrade
3. Cooling Tech: TRI-FROZR Thermal Design
4. Detailed Look
5. Test System Specs
6. Benchmarks - Synthetic
7. Benchmarks - 1080p
8. Benchmarks - 1440p
9. Benchmarks - 4K
10. Thermals, Power, Noise
11. Overclocking
12. Final Thoughts

TweakTown's Rating: 91%

The Bottom Line

MSI's new GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER GAMING X TRIO is a kick ass card in its class, offering quiet operation even when heavily overclocked, which provides close to RTX 2080 performance. Impressive stuff.

Introduction & Pricing

NVIDIA introduced its new GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER and RTX 2070 SUPER graphics cards just last week and now the NDA has lifted on the custom variants, with our first custom RTX 2070 SUPER review being the flagship MSI GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER GAMING X TRIO.

We already know all about the RTX 2070 SUPER from my review here, so I won't bore you with another introduction. The new MSI GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER GAMING X TRIO still has eveyrthing a normal RTX 2070 SUPER does but the difference will come down to the cooling, the look and style, and the overclocking ability. I've concentrated on the cooling and overclocking for the MSI RTX 2070 SUPER GAMING X TRIO as you're going to see within 5-10% of any RTX 2070 SUPER you buy.

Specs: Turing GPU & No GDDR6 Upgrade

It's Still TU104, But Now It's SUPER

Just like the GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER has the same TU106 as the RTX 2060 had, the new RTX 2070 SUPER has the same TU104 GPU that NVIDIA used for the RTX 2070. And again, like its RTX 2060 SUPER sibling the new RTX 2070 SUPER has an upgraded GPU with more SMs and CUDA cores, as well as higher GPU clocks.

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NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER has 2560 CUDA cores over the 2304 CUDA cores in the RTX 2060 while there's now 40 SMs over the 36 SMs in the RTX 2060. The GPU clocks increase a fair amount as well with the new RTX 2070 SUPER with a base GPU clock of 1605MHz versus the 1410MHz on the RTX 2070 while the boost GPU clocks go up to 1770MHz versus the 1620MHz on the normal RTX 2070.

We have 9.1 TFLOPs of FP32 compute performance on the RTX 2070 SUPER against the 7.5 TFLOPs on the RTX 2070, with 72 TFLOPs of Tensor FLOPs on the RTX 2070 SUPER versus the 60 TFLOPs on the regular RTX 2070.

No GDDR6 Upgrades Here

Unlike the GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER, the new RTX 2070 SUPER has no upgrades to its 8GB of GDDR6. We have 448GB/sec of memory bandwidth on the RTX 2070 SUPER and even when writing this review, the 448GB/sec on the RTX 2060 SUPER feels so ridiculously high that I genuinely double checked it as I was writing this part of the review. Crazy stuff. But sorry, no upgrades in the RTX 2070 SUPER and its 8GB of GDDR6.

Cooling Tech: TRI-FROZR Thermal Design

The release of NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 20 series GAMING TRIO cards saw the high-end triple-fan cooler come back, with a slick design that features great use of RGB lighting, as well as super-cool performance. We will have more on how cool the new RTX 2070 SUPER GAMING X TRIO runs later in the review. For now, let's check out what's under the hood:

Detailed Look

Test System Specs

Our New GPU Test Rig

Welcome to the latest revision of our GPU test bed, with our system being upgraded from the Intel Core i7-7700K to the Core i7-8700K. The CPU is cooled by the Corsair H115i PRO cooler, with the 8700K overclocked to 5GHz. We've stayed with GIGABYTE for our motherboard with their awesome Z370 AORUS Gaming 7.

We approached our friends at HyperX for a kit of their kick ass HyperX Predator DDR4-2933MHz RAM (HX429C15PB3AK4/32), with 2 x 8GB sticks for a total of 16GB DDR4-2933. The RAM stands out through every minute of our testing as it has beautiful RGB lights giving the system a slick look while benchmarking our lives away, while the Z370 AORUS Gaming 7 motherboard joins in with its own array of RGB lighting.

Detailed Tech Specs

• CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K @ 5GHz
• Cooler: Corsair Hydro Series H115i PRO
• MB: Z370 AORUS Gaming 7
• RAM: 16GB (2x8GB) HyperX Predator DDR4-2933
• SSD: 1TB OCZ RD400 NVMe M.2
• SSD: 512GB OCZ RD400 NVMe M.2
• PSU: InWin 1065W PSU
• Chassis: In Win X-Frame
• OS: Windows 10 Pro x64

Additional Images

Benchmarks - Synthetic

3DMark Fire Strike - 1080p

3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike - 1440p

3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike - 4K

3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.

3DMark TimeSpy

3DMark TimeSpy Extreme

Heaven - 1080p

Heaven is an intensive GPU benchmark that really pushes your silicon to its limits. It's another favorite of ours as it has some great scaling for multi-GPU testing, and it's great for getting your GPU to 100% for power and noise testing.

Heaven - 1440p

Heaven - 4K

Benchmarks - 1080p

1080p Benchmarks

Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.

Far Cry New Dawn was developed by Ubisoft, and is powered the Dunia Engine, an engine that has been modified over the years for Far Cry and last used in Far Cry 5. Dunia Engine itself was a modified version of CRYENGINE, scaling incredibly well on all sorts of hardware.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

Benchmarks - 1440p

1440p Benchmarks

Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.

Far Cry New Dawn was developed by Ubisoft, and is powered the Dunia Engine, an engine that has been modified over the years for Far Cry and last used in Far Cry 5. Dunia Engine itself was a modified version of CRYENGINE, scaling incredibly well on all sorts of hardware.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

Benchmarks - 4K

4K Benchmarks

Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.

Far Cry New Dawn was developed by Ubisoft, and is powered the Dunia Engine, an engine that has been modified over the years for Far Cry and last used in Far Cry 5. Dunia Engine itself was a modified version of CRYENGINE, scaling incredibly well on all sorts of hardware.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

Thermals, Power, Noise

Thermals

While our GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER Founders Edition ran rather hot and definitely louder at 71C, the custom MSI GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER GAMING X TRIO ran at 66C the entire time with its fans barely spinning.

Even with its maximum overclock on both the GPU (2040-2055MHz boost GPU clock) and the GDDR6 sitting at +834MHz (15.6Gbps up from 14Gbps) we had temps of maximum 68C with fans on stock settings. Yeah... I could max them but the temps wouldn't drop drastically, so why not enjoy a QUIET overclocked card.

Power Consumption

The stock RTX 2070 SUPER FE used 290W total in our Core i7-8700K test bed while the custom MSI RTX 2070 SUPER GAMING X TRIO consumed 300W, and while heavily overclocked 360-390W depending on the game.

Overclocking

This is something I had some time to spend with -- overclocking the MSI GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER GAMING X TRIO. I had half a day of playing around with overclocking and getting all of our benchmarks in all resolutions done with the overclock enabled. This took a while, but it gives you a great look at the overall performance increases you can expect from an easy-to-apply overclock.

There's plenty of headroom for it in the RTX 2070 SUPER GAMING X TRIO and the TRI-FROZR cooling solution keeps it all nice and cool at 66-68C with its fan speed on defaults, spooling the fans up will shave off a few degrees but won't open the floodgates any further for overclocking.

As for overclocking, I pushed:

• +91MHz on the GPU for a boost GPU clock of 2040-2055MHz.
• +834MHz on the GDDR6 for 7834MHz or 7834Gbps (15.6Gbps up from 14Gbps)
• 112% power limit
• 88C temp limit

GDDR6 overclocking is fun because we see insane speeds of 15.6Gbps up from the already blazing fast 14Gbps stock GDDR6 clocks. Remember, the upcoming GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER will have its 8GB of GDDR6 overclocked to 15.5Gbps, so the overclock on the GDDR6 on the current RTX 2070 SUPER to those levels definitely boosts the performance across the board.

Final Thoughts

MSI wows yet again with its new GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER GAMING X TRIO with better-than-Founders performance without the noise and heat, as well as enough overclocking headroom that you should be able to push the card to near RTX 2080 levels of performance.

The high-end TRI-FROZR cooling solution is the centerpiece here offering up its large 2.5-slot heat sink and triple-fan cooler that keeps the card, even when overclocked and under load, at around 66C. All of this without making much noise as well, another hat tip to MSI there. The RGB lighting effects on the card also look great in any system, offering a slick and powerful card that will be the eye candy of any system.

We have yet another great member of the GAMING X range for MSI and its new RTX 2070 SUPER GAMING X TRIO (which is quite the mouthful I might add). The easy overclock gave me near RTX 2080 levels of performance meaning that the upcoming RTX 2080 SUPER from MSI should be getting closer (but not as close) to the RTX 2080 Ti and that is exciting. For now, the RTX 2070 SUPER GAMING X TRIO is a great card for those with less than $600 to spend.