# EVGA GeForce RTX 2070 Black 8 GB



## W1zzard (Oct 26, 2018)

EVGA's GeForce RTX 2070 Black is sold for just $499, a price point at which it has better price/performance than the GTX 1080, GTX 1080 Ti, Vega 56, and Vega 64. Compared to the more expensive RTX 2070 Founders Edition, the performance difference is almost negligible, too.

*Show full review*


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## W1zzard (Oct 27, 2018)

Oh noes! I hard-deleted all comment posts by accident, very sorry. If you remember what you wrote, feel free to repost it again


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## rtwjunkie (Oct 27, 2018)

I just said it was a good review, but you had backplate listed as a plus, and no backplate listed as a con.  There can be only one.


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## W1zzard (Oct 27, 2018)

rtwjunkie said:


> I just said it was a good review, but you had backplate listed as a plus, and no backplate listed as a con.  There can be only one.


Fixed already


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## beautyless (Oct 27, 2018)

Sir, RTX 2080TI's Transistors & Memory info in the 1st page bottom table is incorrect.


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## 0x4452 (Oct 27, 2018)

Looks are indeed subjective - I personally like the visible and yet protected heatsink. The founders edition is of course a whole other level, feels like an Apple product in a good sense.


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## W1zzard (Oct 27, 2018)

beautyless said:


> Sir, RTX 2080TI's Transistors & Memory info in the 1st page bottom table is incorrect.


Fixed, and also fixed in my reference table so it won't happen again. Thank you


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## GreiverBlade (Oct 27, 2018)

oh well "bis repetitam"


good review (that one and the 9700K) both confirm these product are not worth it for me (mostly because they cost 200/250$ more than a Vega64/2700X and have not the performance leap to justifiy it )



rtwjunkie said:


> There can be only one.


*play highlander theme* 



0x4452 said:


> feels like an Apple product in a good sense.


ah good comparison ... both are overpriced and overinflated brand (tho ... for Apple it's not due to the lack of concurrence )


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## Assimilator (Oct 27, 2018)

@W1zzard in the FE review, you have the VRM controller listed as uP9512*P*, but in this review uP9512*R*. Since it seems the board design is the same (i.e. EVGA is using the FE design as-is) I question whether they would change the controller, even though the -P and -R seem very similar in terms of features. tl;dr are you certain that the chip used in the FE is the -P and not the -R, as the FE markings have been so obscured that it's really difficult to tell?

Nitpick: the conclusion has the sentence "Then there are the very few who want to *eek *every last MHz out of the card with overclocking...", you probably meant _eke_.


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## The Quim Reaper (Oct 27, 2018)

No backplate on a $500 GPU.

What a joke, that alone would stop me from ever considering this.


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## W1zzard (Oct 27, 2018)

Assimilator said:


> in the FE review, you have the VRM controller listed as uP9512*P*, but in this review uP9512*R*


I think it's both R and I just misread the print as P



Assimilator said:


> *eek *


fixed


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## newtekie1 (Oct 27, 2018)

Is this the first time an aftermarket card has performed worse than the reference design? Obviously, it is because eVGA put a lower power limit on the card for some stupid reason. Which really just shows ow limited these cards are by the power limit set on the board.


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## W1zzard (Oct 27, 2018)

newtekie1 said:


> Is this the first time an aftermarket card has performed worse than the reference design? Obviously, it is because eVGA put a lower power limit on the card for some stupid reason. Which really just shows ow limited these cards are by the power limit set on the board.


I use "Founders" and "reference" fairly interchangeably. Technically the FE is an overclocked custom-design for Turing.

The reference has lower rated boost than the Founders, the EVGA Black has to follow reference clocks because it uses the non-A GPU

I think power limit doesn't play as much a role here as simply the stock clocks being different between EVGA Black and FE


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## Jism (Oct 27, 2018)

> No Windows 7 support for RTX, requires Windows 10 Fall 2018 Update


Why the hell is that. They really want to push all the gamers to Bloat-Windows-10 dont they?


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## rtwjunkie (Oct 27, 2018)

Jism said:


> Why the hell is that. They really want to push all the gamers to Bloat-Windows-10 dont they?


Because it is part of Direct X 12, that’s why.


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## Jism (Oct 27, 2018)

rtwjunkie said:


> Because it is part of Direct X 12, that’s why.



It's backwards compatible. There is no such thing as DX12 card only.


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## rtwjunkie (Oct 27, 2018)

Jism said:


> It's backwards compatible. There is no such thing as DX12 card only.


Not the cards. Ray tracing, which is what RTX uses, is part of Direct X 12.  Please do research.  W1z even did an article here just on RTX, I believe.


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## Jism (Oct 27, 2018)

rtwjunkie said:


> Not the cards. Ray tracing, which is what RTX uses, is part of Direct X 12.  Please do research.  W1z even did an article here just on RTX, I believe.



RT is'nt properly benchmarked yet. The thing is; if i was on W7 and i want the fastest card money can buy, it's bullshit that there are no drivers available for W7 in the first place.


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## W1zzard (Oct 27, 2018)

Microsoft DirectX Raytracing is available ONLY with the October 2018 update. There's some hoops that you can jump through to get it on April Update, but it's not something that the industry expects from general consumers and gamers.


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## jabbadap (Oct 27, 2018)

W1zzard said:


> Microsoft DirectX Raytracing is available ONLY with the October 2018 update. There's some hoops that you can jump through to get it on April Update, but it's not something that the industry expects from general consumers and gamers.



Well RTX features can be accessed by vulkan too(Or is there support for Turing on older windows at all?). And for non-gaming Optix uses RTX backend too. But yeah there's nothing that uses RT be it DXR or vulkan now anyway, so taht is yet to be seen.


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## rtwjunkie (Oct 27, 2018)

Jism said:


> RT is'nt properly benchmarked yet.


It really doesn’t matter if it is properly benchmarked yet.  We know that RT is not part of DX11 and below.  

Nothing, btw, is stopping you from buying the fastest cards known.  They would just be limited to non-RT use, i.e. how all games are still currently made.


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## CheapMeat (Oct 28, 2018)

This is a really minor thing but I like how there is a flat heatsink over the VRM, etc, that can stay on that isn't connected to the main heatsink fins of the card. I wonder if it would be possible to put a custom block on the chip within the space and then keep that black heatsink.


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## lexluthermiester (Oct 28, 2018)

Jism said:


> Why the hell is that. They really want to push all the gamers to Bloat-Windows-10 dont they?


The driver support is there. I am running Win7 and have a 2080.


rtwjunkie said:


> Not the cards. Ray tracing, which is what RTX uses, is part of Direct X 12. Please do research. W1z even did an article here just on RTX, I believe.


However, RTRT is not exclusive to DirectX 12. It can can be done on any API, such as OpenGL & Vulkan and on any OS.


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## Jism (Oct 28, 2018)

Yeah that is what i was saying. Many hardware features a GPU in general brings does'nt have to be DirectX exclusive only. Back in the days when W7 vs W XP was to move over to W7 to use DX10 features. But little that people knew is that those same features where possible by using OpenGL and such without using DX10 or W7 in general.

But the original convict of this card is that it states that there is no driver support for anything below W10. And that is kind of creepy. I understand that RTX is only usable on W10 / DX12 but still; sounds a bit of bullshit that a card in general could not be used < W10.


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## W1zzard (Oct 28, 2018)

Jism said:


> But the original convict of this card is that it states that there is no driver support for anything below W10. And that is kind of creepy. I understand that RTX is only usable on W10 / DX12 but still; sounds a bit of bullshit that a card in general could not be used < W10.


No Windows 7 support for raytracing, requires Windows 10 Fall 2018 Update

reworded


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## Vya Domus (Oct 28, 2018)

lexluthermiester said:


> However, RTRT is not exclusive to DirectX 12. It can can be done on any API, such as OpenGL & Vulkan and on any OS.



RTRT is a generic technique that has nothing to do with the implementation or how it's accelerated therefore that's not very relevant for this discussion. Currently RTX only works under DX12 and Vulkan on Windows and that's all that matters.


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## Amaregaz (Oct 28, 2018)

You should save yourself some time and skip the FPS Benchmarks and go straight to what's different from the rest of the 2070, power consumption, noise, thermals etc.
Avg FPS tells nothing anyway.


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## ppn (Oct 28, 2018)

I wonder, are the temperatures/noise levels improving by removing the backplate of the heatsink.


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## lexluthermiester (Oct 28, 2018)

W1zzard said:


> No Windows 7 support for raytracing, requires Windows 10 Fall 2018 Update


That is not what NVidia themselves are saying.
https://developer.nvidia.com/rtx/raytracing
Why the persistent misinformation?


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## W1zzard (Oct 28, 2018)

lexluthermiester said:


> That is not what NVidia themselves are saying.
> https://developer.nvidia.com/rtx/raytracing
> Why the persistent misinformation?


Uh, where? Are you talking about OptiX ? That's not for games


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## lexluthermiester (Oct 28, 2018)

W1zzard said:


> Uh, where? Are you talking about OptiX ? That's not for games


Vulkan is OS agnostic. It does not require Windows 10 or specific update thereof. Not to mention the unannounced but very likely correct rumblings of incoming OpenGL support. RTX is therefore not Windows 10/DirectX 12 exclusive.


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## W1zzard (Oct 28, 2018)

lexluthermiester said:


> Vulkan is OS agnostic. It does not require Windows 10 or specific update thereof. Not to mention the unannounced but very likely correct rumblings of incoming OpenGL support. RTX is therefore not Windows 10/DirectX 12 exclusive.


Ah ok, developer interest in Vulkan/OpenGL has been seriously lacking so far, there's no reason to believe that things will be any different with raytracing.


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## Salty_sandwich (Oct 28, 2018)

W1zzard said:


> Oh noes! I hard-deleted all comment posts by accident, very sorry. If you remember what you wrote, feel free to repost it again


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## lexluthermiester (Oct 28, 2018)

W1zzard said:


> Ah ok, developer interest in Vulkan/OpenGL has been seriously lacking so far, there's no reason to believe that things will be any different with raytracing.


I think we have a very different view on a few things. However, in the interest of being accurate, would it not be better to update the review info to reflect a less biased point of view?


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## rtwjunkie (Oct 28, 2018)

lexluthermiester said:


> I think we have a very different view on a few things. However, in the interest of being accurate, would it not be better to update the review info to reflect a less biased point of view?


How is W1z biased? The technology can only be implemented in Vulkan and DX12.  Can’t spin that any way at all.  If someone makes a game in Vulkan that has RTX the at that point a W7 user can use those features on the new card.


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## lexluthermiester (Oct 28, 2018)

rtwjunkie said:


> How is W1z biased? The technology can only be implemented in Vulkan and DX12.  Can’t spin that any way at all.  If someone makes a game in Vulkan that has RTX the at that point a W7 user can use those features on the new card.


Actually that's a good point. He did list the lack of Windows 7 RTX support in the *thumbs down* section of the review conclusion. It just seems inaccurate to say that it's limited to Windows 10 Fall 2018 Update when it really isn't. It kinda gives the impression that it is and will be limited just to that platform and version of platform. I guess I'm nit-picking the wording a bit. I'll shut up now.


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## jabbadap (Oct 29, 2018)

W1zzard said:


> Ah ok, developer interest in Vulkan/OpenGL has been seriously lacking so far, there's no reason to believe that things will be any different with raytracing.



Well enlisted will use Vulkan and raytracing. Newest news on vulkan side is that EAs experimental Halcyon engine will get vulkan and raytracing(SEED pica pica).


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## bug (Oct 29, 2018)

> They now use a transparent see-through fan cover; the general color theme is black and gray.


I believe the transparent shroud is there because these cards are offered in black, white or red trims.



> At the time of writing, the latest version of the Final Fantasy XV benchmark supports DLSS, and we put the card through it. We're trying to explore the performance impact of DLSS 2x vs. traditional Temporal AA 2x, along with screenshots showing image quality.


Where?

And to beat a dead horse some more, I still weep looking at those prices.


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