Today, NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2070 Super is available on store shelves and reviews of the AIC partner cards are allowed. All of NVIDIA's board partners have released Super models. This review covers the EVGA RTX 2070 Super FTW3 Ultra—we have a total of six reviews today, covering other vendors, and the RTX 2060 Super, too.

EVGA has overclocked their RTX 2070 Super FTW3 Ultra by +45 MHz rated boost, to 1815 MHz, which results in only a 1% performance increase and is lower than what we expected based on other cards reviewed today. It seems EVGA dialed up the GPU voltage quite a bit, which holds the card back. The performance delta to the much more expensive RTX 2080 is small, though, at only 6%. AMD's Radeon VII flagship is 4% behind, and the aging GTX 1080 Ti is 3% slower. AMD recently released the Navi-based Radeon RX 5700 XT—the EVGA FTW3 Ultra is 12% faster. With those performance numbers, we can easily recommend the card for gaming at 1440p.

The large triple-slot thermal solution EVGA uses has its roots in their RTX 2080 lineup, so it brings plenty of cooling power to the table. Using the default BIOS, temperatures are 8°C better than on the RTX 2070 Super Founders Edition with slightly higher fan noise. Unlike the Founders Edition, the card does include the highly popular idle-fan stop feature, which completely shuts off the fans during idle, desktop work, and light gaming. EVGA is also giving you a dual-BIOS feature, with the second "OC" BIOS turning off fan-stop and using a more relaxed fan curve. I think the fan curve is a bug because you'd either want no fan stop and a more aggressive fan curve or fan stop and a quieter fan curve. Nothing that EVGA can't fix with a BIOS update, and I'm sure they'll do so soon. EVGA has also included a 4-pin PWM case-fan header that lets you synchronize your PC's cooling to the graphics card. There's also an addressable RGB header for you to light up the rest of your PC with the same bling as on your graphics card. Last but not least, EVGA is including their iCX sensors on the PCB, which add additional temperature sensors placed in important locations, like VRM or memory. You can monitor these using the EVGA Precision overclocking app.

EVGA has increased their board power limit by more than any other board partner today. Going from 215 W (Founders Edition) to 260 W (FTW3) makes a huge difference in overclocking because NVIDIA's power limiter will no longer mess with the overclock. This lets you dial in clocks much more easily, right up to the edge of stability, which makes for a visible difference in our GPU overclocking results—we reached 2094 MHz, gaining us 8.3% in real-life performance.

Unlike AMD's Radeon RX 5700 XT, the NVIDIA RTX Super lineup comes with support for raytracing hardware acceleration. While that's not the most important feature to have right now, it looks like game developers are picking up on it, and many upcoming titles have been announced to feature raytracing, so the future might be bright for RTX.

Priced at $580, the EVGA RTX 2070 Super FTW3 Ultra comes at a massive $90 premium over the RTX 2070 Super Founders Edition. That's a lot of money (+18%). Out of the box performance alone can't justify that since it's only 1%. There's no doubt that the EVGA thermal solution is a lot better than the Founders Edition, but is that worth $90? I'm not sure. In order to sweeten the deal, NVIDIA includes a two-game bundle with all RTX Super cards consisting of Wolfenstein: Youngblood and Control. Both titles come with support for NVIDIA RTX raytracing to show off the capabilities of their new technology.