Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3070 Gaming OC Review

Name: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3070 Gaming OC
Brand: GIGABYTE

W1zzard

on Oct 29th, 2020,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: GIGABYTE

(11 Comments) »

Introduction

Gigabyte sent us its GeForce RTX 3070 Gaming OC, its affordable custom-design graphics card based on NVIDIA's third—and most important—GeForce RTX 30-series "Ampere" graphics card launch so far. Gigabyte carries forward its tradition of clean, understated custom designs focusing on low noise and compatibility. The card is targeted at everyone who just wants the RTX 3070 for its gaming performance, and who just installs the card and forgets about it. In that sense, the Gigabyte Gaming OC shares the same goals as the Zotac Twin Edge OC, but takes a different approach—putting on some lengths in the pursuit of making the card strictly full-height. You also get a decent factory overclock to boot.

NVIDIA's second silicon based on the GeForce "Ampere" graphics architecture, the "GA104," debuts with the GeForce RTX 3070. This chip is significantly smaller than the big "GA102" that's at the heart of both the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090. Despite that, the RTX 3070 is equipped with more (and faster) CUDA cores than even the previous-generation flagship RTX 2080 Ti, and NVIDIA extensively markets the RTX 3070 as being faster than the $1000 card, at half its price. This should mean that the RTX 3070 is capable of not just maxed-out 1440p gaming with RTX-on, but also 4K UHD gaming with fairly high settings, as the RTX 2080 Ti was built to do just this. The e-sports crowd has reason to rejoice with the RTX 3070 being capable of high refresh-rate 1440p and 1080p gaming, which required footing at least $800 for an RTX 2080S from the previous generation. For the full details on RTX 3070 technology and architecture, refer to our RTX 3070 Founders Edition article.

The Gigabyte RTX 3070 Gaming OC, as we explained, is a sincere custom-job on the RTX 3070 with a large triple-fan WindForce 3X cooling solution rated for much higher thermal loads than the 220 W (reference) the RTX 3070 can throw at it. The additional cooling headroom is traded in for lower noise. The card features three fans and a heatsink that has five copper heat-pipes which make direct contact with the GPU at the base. The heatsink is much longer than the PCB, which means airflow from the third fan goes right through a large cutout in the card's backplate—a concept not unlike NVIDIA's dual-axial flow-through. Using an interesting internal riser, Gigabyte even made sure the shorter PCB is no reason for the power connectors to be awkwardly located near the card's center, as both are still at the card's tail-end. The card pulls power from a unique 6+8 pin combination of standard PCIe power connectors. Gigabyte also gave the card a significant 1815 MHz factory OC, which is in the same league as the premium MSI Gaming X and EVGA FTW3 Ultra—all for $570. In this review, we put this card through its paces to show you if you really need to spend any more on the premium RTX 3070 offerings.

GeForce RTX 3070 Market Segment Analysis
	Price	Shader Units	ROPs	Core Clock	Boost Clock	Memory Clock	GPU	Transistors	Memory
RX 5700	$330	2304	64	1465 MHz	1625 MHz	1750 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
GTX 1080	$330	2560	64	1607 MHz	1733 MHz	1251 MHz	GP104	7200M	8 GB, GDDR5X, 256-bit
RTX 2060 Super	$380	2176	64	1470 MHz	1650 MHz	1750 MHz	TU106	10800M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX Vega 64	$400	4096	64	1247 MHz	1546 MHz	953 MHz	Vega 10	12500M	8 GB, HBM2, 2048-bit
GTX 1080 Ti	$650	3584	88	1481 MHz	1582 MHz	1376 MHz	GP102	12000M	11 GB, GDDR5X, 352-bit
RX 5700 XT	$370	2560	64	1605 MHz	1755 MHz	1750 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2070	$340	2304	64	1410 MHz	1620 MHz	1750 MHz	TU106	10800M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2070 Super	$450	2560	64	1605 MHz	1770 MHz	1750 MHz	TU104	13600M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
Radeon VII	$680	3840	64	1802 MHz	N/A	1000 MHz	Vega 20	13230M	16 GB, HBM2, 4096-bit
RTX 2080	$600	2944	64	1515 MHz	1710 MHz	1750 MHz	TU104	13600M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2080 Super	$690	3072	64	1650 MHz	1815 MHz	1940 MHz	TU104	13600M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2080 Ti	$1000	4352	88	1350 MHz	1545 MHz	1750 MHz	TU102	18600M	11 GB, GDDR6, 352-bit
RTX 3070	$500	5888	96	1500 MHz	1725 MHz	1750 MHz	GA104	17400M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
Gigabyte RTX 3070 Gaming OC	$570	5888	96	1500 MHz	1815 MHz	1750 MHz	GA104	17400M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3080	$700	8704	96	1440 MHz	1710 MHz	1188 MHz	GA102	28000M	10 GB, GDDR6X, 320-bit
RTX 3090	$1500	10496	112	1395 MHz	1695 MHz	1219 MHz	GA102	28000M	24 GB, GDDR6X, 384-bit

Packaging

The Card

Gigabyte's card uses a mix of black and gray highlights paired with a blocky industrial design. On the back you'll find a high-quality metal backplate.

Dimensions of the card are 29 x 11.5 cm.

Installation requires three slots in your system.

Display connectivity options include two standard DisplayPort 1.4a and two 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.

Unlike the NVIDIA Founders Edition card that uses the new 12-pin power input, Gigabyte sticks to industry standard PCIe power inputs. Together with the PCIe slot, this 6+8 power configuration is specified to supply up to 300 W of power.

Using this BIOS switch you may toggle between the silent BIOS and OC BIOS. Looks like two different teams designed the backplate and PCB as the labels are printed a few centimeters from where the actual switch is located.

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

Teardown

Gigabyte's cooler uses five heatpipes that make direct contact with the GPU surface to keep the card cool. The main heatsink also provides cooling for memory chips and VRM circuitry.

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

High-resolution PCB Pictures

These pictures are for the convenience of volt modders and people who would like to see all the finer details on the PCB. Feel free to link back to us and use these in your articles or forum posts.