NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3070 is officially announced and it takes the throne not only of the flagship GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards but also the fastest gaming graphics card on the planet. The GeForce RTX 3070 makes use of the Ampere GPU architecture which is making its official debut on the consumer PC gaming segment today.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Graphics Card Unveiled – 5888 Cores, 8 GB GDDR6 VRAM & Faster Than The RTX 2080 Ti For Just $499 US
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 is a force to be reckoned with. It takes the throne of the fastest PC gaming graphics card with nothing coming even close to it. It’s surprisingly much faster than the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti which is its Turing based predecessor.
NVIDIA designed the GeForce RTX 3070 is designed to be the gaming champ, powering the next generation of AAA gaming titles with superb visuals and insane fluidity. It’s not just the FPS that matters these days, its visuals, and a smoother frame rate too and this is exactly what the GeForce RTX 30 series is made to excel at. There’s a lot to talk about regarding NVIDIA’s flagship Ampere gaming graphics cards so let’s start off with the specifications.
Marvels of NVIDIA Ampere Architecture – 2nd Generation RTX
Enabling the blistering performance of the new RTX 30 Series GPUs and the NVIDIA Ampere architecture are cutting-edge technologies and over two decades of graphics R&D, including:
- New streaming multiprocessors: The building block for the world’s fastest, most efficient GPU, delivering 2x the FP32 throughput of the previous generation, and 30 Shader-TFLOPS of processing power.
- Second-gen RT Cores: New dedicated RT Cores deliver 2x the throughput of the previous generation, plus concurrent ray tracing and shading and compute, with 58 RT-TFLOPS of processing power.
- Third-gen Tensor Cores: New dedicated Tensor Cores, with up to 2x the throughput of the previous generation, making it faster and more efficient to run AI-powered technologies, like NVIDIA DLSS, and 238 Tensor-TFLOPS of processing power.
- NVIDIA RTX IO: Enables rapid GPU-based loading and game asset decompression, accelerating input/output performance by up to 100x compared with hard drives and traditional storage APIs. In conjunction with Microsoft’s new DirectStorage for Windows API, RTX IO offloads dozens of CPU cores’ worth of work to the RTX GPU, improving frame rates and enabling near-instantaneous game loading.
- World’s fastest graphics memory: NVIDIA has worked with Micron to create the world’s fastest discrete graphics memory for the RTX 30 Series, GDDR6X. It provides data speeds of close to 1TB/s system memory bandwidth for graphics card applications, maximizing game and app performance.
- Next-gen process technology: New 8N NVIDIA custom process from Samsung, which allows for higher transistor density and more efficiency.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Graphics Card Specifications – GA104 GPU & 8 GB GDDR6 Memory
At the heart of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 graphics card lies the GA104 GPU. The GA104 is one of the many Ampere GPUs that we will be getting on the gaming segment. The GA104 GPU is the second-fastest Ampere chip in the stack. The GPU is based on Samsung’s 8nm process node.
For the GeForce RTX 3070, NVIDIA has enabled a total of 46 SM units on its flagship which results in a total of 5888 CUDA cores. In addition to the CUDA cores, NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3070 also comes packed with next-generation RT (Ray-Tracing) cores, Tensor cores, and brand new SM or streaming multi-processor units.
In terms of memory, the GeForce RTX 3070 features 8 GB of GDDR6 memory. The GeForce RTX 3070 comes with memory at speeds of 16 Gbps. That along with a full uncut bus interface of 256-bit will deliver a cumulative bandwidth of 512 Gbps.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series ‘Ampere’ Graphics Card Specifications:
Graphics Card Name | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 | NVIDIA GeForce RTX RTX 3090 |
---|---|---|---|
GPU Name | Ampere GA104-300 | Ampere GA102-200 | Ampere GA102-300 |
Process Node | Samsung 8nm | Samsung 8nm | Samsung 8nm |
Die Size | TBD | TBD | TBD |
Transistors | TBD | 28 Billion | 28 Billion |
CUDA Cores | 5888 | 8704 | 10496 |
TMUs / ROPs | TBD | TBD | TBD |
Tensor / RT Cores | TBD | TBD | TBD |
Base Clock | 1500 MHz | 1440 MHz | 1400 MHz |
Boost Clock | 1730 MHz | 1710 MHz | 1700 MHz |
FP32 Compute | 20 TOPs | 30 TFLOPs | 36 TFLOPs |
RT TFLOPs | 40 TFLOPs | 58 TFLOPs | 69 TFLOPs |
Tensor-TOPs | 163 TOPs | 238 TOPs | 285 TOPs |
Memory Capacity | 8/16 GB GDDR6 | 10/20 GB GDDR6X | 24 GB GDDR6X |
Memory Bus | 256-bit | 320-bit | 384-bit |
Memory Speed | 16 Gbps | 19 Gbps | 19.5 Gbps |
Bandwidth | 512 Gbps | 760 Gbps | 936 Gbps |
TDP | 220W | 320W | 350W |
Price (MSRP / FE) | $499 US | $699 US | $1499 US |
Launch (Availability) | October 2020 | 17th September | 24th September |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Graphics Card Cooling & Design- Next-Gen NVTTM Founders Edition Design
Unlike the new front and back cooling system that the GeForce RTX 3090 and GeForce RTX 3080 incorporate, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 makes use of a dual-fan cooling system which blows air towards the central heatsink.
The Founders Edition cooling makes use of a full aluminum alloy heatsink which is coated with a nano-carbon coating and should do a really good job at keeping the temperatures in control. The design is interesting in the sense that not only does it goes all out with a fin and heat pipe design.
The Founders Edition cooling makes use of a full aluminum alloy heatsink which is coated with a nano-carbon coating and should do a really good job at keeping the temperatures in control. The design is interesting in the sense that not only does it goes all out with a fin and heat pipe design.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Graphics Card PCB & Power – Designed To Be Overclocked!
The GeForce RTX 30 series Founders Edition cards will be featuring the 12-pin Micro-Fit 3.0 power connectors. These connectors don’t require a power supply upgrade as the cards will ship with bundled 2x 8-pin to 1x 12-pin connectors so you can run your latest graphics card without any compatibility issues.
The placement of the 12-pin connector on the PCB is also noteworthy. It is placed in a vertical position and judging by the PCB design, we can tell why NVIDIA moved to a single 12-pin plug instead of the standard dual 8-pin design. There’s limited room on the PCB to do stuff and as such, it was necessary to go for a more small and compact power input.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Graphics Card Price & Availability – Both Custom & Reference Designs at Launch
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 is being announced today and will be launching to consumers in the month of October. The first wave of graphics cards to hit the market would be the reference Founders Edtion variant which will cost $499 US. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 will feature a price of $499 (MSRP) however custom models will vary depending on their design and the extra horse-power that they have to offer.
There aren’t any performance numbers that NVIDIA is sharing right now but from what has been showcased, the GeForce RTX 3070 is faster than an RTX 2080 Ti, the RTX 3080 is a good bit ahead of the RTX 2080 Ti and the RTX 3090 is about as much as 50% faster than the RTX 2080 Ti which is very impressive for the full lineup stack. The GeForce RTX 3070 is an insane little beast which features a 60% performance uplift over its RTX 2070 predecessor powering the next-generation AAA titles at smooth frame rates at even the most demanding resolutions of 4K.