Packaging

The Card

EVGA has completely revamped their design language with the RTX 30 series. Instead of a transparent cooler shroud we now get classic black paired with silver metal highlights and a black trim. My sample came with a red trim on the sides. However, EVGA confirmed that all retail cards will use a black trim instead. On the back, you'll find a high-quality metal backplate.


Dimensions of the card are 30 x 14 cm.


Installation requires three slots in your system.


Display connectivity options include three standard DisplayPort 1.4a and one HDMI 2.1. The DisplayPort 1.4a outputs support Display Stream Compression (DSC) 1.2a, which lets you connect 4K displays at 120 Hz and 8K displays at 60 Hz. Ampere can drive two 8K displays at 60 Hz with just one cable per display.

Ampere is the first GPU to support HDMI 2.1, which increases bandwidth to 48 Gbps to support higher resolutions, like 4K144 and 8K30, with a single cable. With DSC, this goes up to 4K240 and 8K120. NVIDIA's new NVENC/NVDEC video engine is optimized to handle video tasks with minimal CPU load. The highlight here is added support for AV1 decode. Just like on Turing, you may also decode MPEG-2, VC1, VP8, VP9, H.264, and H.265 natively, at up to 8K@12-bit.

The encoder is identical to Turing. It supports H.264, H.265 and lossless at up to 8K@10-bit.


A dual-BIOS switch lets you activate an "OC" BIOS, which is identical to the default BIOS and just runs a more aggressive fan curve without idle fan stop.


Near the back of the card, you'll find two pin headers. The first header is to provide an RGB signal to other components, so they can be synced with the graphics card RGB. The second one lets you connect a case fan to the graphics card, making it spin at the same rate as the GPU fans. Since the graphics card is the highest heat output in most computers, this makes a lot of sense—idle fan stop during browsing and productivity and running fans when gaming.


Unlike the NVIDIA Founders Edition card that uses the new 12-pin power input, EVGA sticks to industry standard PCIe power inputs. Together with the PCIe slot, this 8+8 power configuration is specified to supply up to 375 W of power.


The GeForce RTX 3070 does not support SLI. Only the RTX 3090 does, and it has very limited SLI support.

Teardown

EVGA's thermal solution uses a large copper baseplate paired with five heatpipes to move heat away from the GPU quickly. This part of the heatsink also provides cooling for the memory and VRM circuitry.


The backplate is made out of metal and protects the card against damage during installation and handling.