Overclocking

Overclocking results listed in this section are achieved with the default fan, power, and voltage settings as defined in the VGA BIOS. We choose this approach as it is the most realistic scenario for most users.

Every sample overclocks differently, which is why our results here can only serve as a guideline for what you can expect from your card.



Manual overclocking has once more become more complicated with this generation. Since the cards are always running in the power limiter, you can no longer just dial-in stable clocks for the highest boost state to find the maximum overclock. The biggest issue is that you can't just reach that state reliably, so your testing is limited to whatever frequency your test load is running at. Nevertheless, we managed to pull through and achieved a good overclock on our RTX 2070 that translated into 6% additional performance. We found overclocking potential of our card to be similar to the Founders Edition and other RTX 2070 cards we tested before.

With Turing, NVIDIA provides an automated way to scan for the maximum stable overclock through software, which tests each point on the voltage-frequency curve manually. While the end result was stable, performance was a few percent lower than what we had achieved with manual overclocking.

With manual overclocking, maximum overclock of our sample is 1990 MHz on the memory (14% overclock) and +100 MHz to the GPU's base clock, which increases maximum Boost from 1965 MHz to 2040 MHz (4% overclock).

Important: Each GPU (including each GPU of the same make and model) will overclock slightly
differently based on random production variances. This table just serves to provide a list of typical
overclocks for similar cards, determined during TPU review.

Overclocked Performance

Using these clock frequencies, we ran a quick test of Unigine Heaven to evaluate the gains from overclocking.


Actual 3D performance gained from overclocking is 6.2%.

Power Limits

All NVIDIA graphics cards have a power limit defined in the BIOS, which limits power draw by adjusting Boost frequencies accordingly. A second limit exists that defines the maximum TDP adjustment limit for user overclocking; i.e., how far the power slider will go. In the second chart, the (+xx%) value lists the percentage increase from the tested card's default power limit to the highest manual setting available—the slider's adjustment range.