While the GeForce RTX 2070 Super has been available for a few months, manufacturers have only recently begun releasing versions of this card with Samsung 16 Gbps GDDR6 memory. Thanks to NVIDIA's blessing, these cards are no longer limited to 1750 MHz (reference) memory clock speeds out of the box. MSI took their GeForce RTX 2070 Super Gaming X Trio as the base, installed the new memory, and bumped the clocks. GPU frequency has seen a small increase by 15 MHz, too, on top of what they offered with their other RTX 2070 Super Gaming cards.

Overall, averaged over our brand-new Fall 2019 graphics card test suite, which features the latest titles and latest drivers, we see a 4% performance improvement over the RTX 2070 Founders Edition, which is around 1% higher than on previous factory overclocked cards (having lower memory speeds). I'm surprised that the 188 MHz memory speed increase yields only that much extra performance; I guess NVIDIA's architecture only benefits a little from the increased memory bandwidth. MSI's low power limit might have something to do with it, too, more on that later. Compared to the Radeon RX 5700 XT, the RTX 2070 Super Gaming Z is 14% faster, and the RTX 2080 is only 4% ahead. AMD's flagship, the Radeon VII, is 10% slower, and the aging GTX 1080 Ti is 7% behind.

The large triple-slot thermal solution MSI uses has its roots in their RTX 2080 lineup, so it brings plenty of cooling power to the table. Temperatures are improved by 5°C over the Founders Edition, but the real highlight is fan noise. With only 29 dBA at full load, the MSI RTX 2070 Super Gaming Z Trio is one of the quietest high-end graphics cards we ever reviewed. Just a few years ago, it was almost unthinkable to imagine highest-details 1440p gaming with more than 60 FPS and almost no noise — other cards are louder when sitting idle at the desktop! As expected, MSI's card also includes the highly popular idle-fan stop feature, which completely shuts off the card's fans during idle, desktop work, and light gaming. What I would also like to praise MSI for is that they don't hide fan-stop and low noise levels behind a dual-BIOS feature—their card's noise levels are perfect right out of the box.

Unfortunately, MSI did not increase their card's board power limit. It sits at the exact same 215 W as the Founders Edition. This of course costs potential performance and might be the reason why the gains from the faster memory are lower than expected. What MSI did improve with this release is manual power limit adjustment, which was below FE levels for previous Gaming X releases and now matches the FE's 260 W. Still, in my opinion, these power limits are definitely too low. Temperatures are good and so are noise levels, so it would have been easy to bump the power limit a bit for more performance—the cooler can certainly take it.

Like on most other Turing cards, the power limiter complicates overclocking a bit because you can no longer dial in the exact maximum frequency your card is stable at. Still, we managed to gain another 7.3% in real-life performance from OC, which is excellent. Especially the Samsung memory chips overclock like crazy and reach frequencies we've never seen on an RTX 2070 Super before. Almost breaking the 2.3 GHz memory speed barrier is something only the more expensive RTX 2080 Super can achieve because it uses these same super-fast memory chips.

On the topic of raytracing, I'm sure you've already made up your mind on whether it's something you're interested in or not, but I don't doubt for a second that NVIDIA is pushing the technology very hard with their excellent developer relations, and it looks like the adoption rate is improving. Call of Duty Modern Warfare is right around the corner and has RTX support from day one. We're also hearing rumors that next-gen consoles will feature some sort of raytracing technology. I'd say it's not a big deal for the near future, but could become relevant in the years to come, so if you're future-proofing for many years to come, this could be a factor.

MSI hasn't decided on final pricing yet, and the on-shelf date is unknown, too. Looking at what the Gaming Z Trio offers, I'd be willing to spend another $20 over the Gaming X Trio price tag for the faster memory chips and better OC potential that comes with them. Beyond that, I'm not sure if it's a good deal, and you'd be getting close to the RTX 2080 non-Super in pricing, too. For our review, we used $570 as the price for the performance per dollar charts, which is a price point I consider realistic, and it does seem a bit high considering the RTX 2070 Super retails starting at $500. If we get new info from MSI we'll update the charts and conclusion, of course. In order to sweeten the deal, NVIDIA currently includes Call of Duty Modern Warfare for free with every graphics card purchase, and it looks to be a promising title, and has RTX support, too.