Introduction

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2070 Super launched not long ago, in July this year. The new SKU was released to counter AMD's Radeon RX 5700-series "Navi" graphics cards, which ended up faster than the plain GeForce RTX 2070. Unlike the RTX 2070, the RTX 2070 Super is based on the 13.6 billion-transistor "TU104" silicon since NVIDIA had maxed out the "TU106" with the original RTX 2070. The "TU104" is at the heart of the much pricier RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Super graphics cards.

The most interesting aspect about the RTX 2070 Super is that it's based on the 13.6 billion-transistor "TU104" silicon since NVIDIA had maxed out the "TU106" with the original RTX 2070. The "TU104" is at the heart of the much pricier RTX 2080 and upcoming RTX 2080 Super graphics cards. What this means to consumers is that most custom-design add-in card (AIC) partners would rather reuse their existing RTX 2080 board designs with a little cost-cutting on the VRM instead of spending money on developing and validating new PCBs. Another benefit is partners using heavy cooling solutions that were originally designed to handle the much hotter RTX 2080, and perhaps even the RTX 2080 Ti.




NVIDIA carved the RTX 2070 Super out of the "TU104" silicon by disabling an entire GPC worth of CUDA cores, leaving the chip with 2,560 out of its 3,072 CUDA cores enabled, besides 160 TMUs, 64 ROPs, 320 Tensor cores, and 40 RT cores. The memory subsystem is untouched. 8 GB of memory ticks at 14 Gbps and sits across a 256-bit wide GDDR6 memory interface, churning out 448 GB/s of memory bandwidth. GPU clock speeds are increased, too, with up to 1770 MHz GPU Boost frequency compared to 1620 MHz on the original RTX 2070. Another neat little perk of being based on the "TU104" silicon is NVLink support, which enables 2-way SLI.

In this review, we have with us the MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Super Gaming Z, which is MSI's third card in the RTX 2070 Super "Gaming" Series. Visually, the card is identical to the RTX 2070 Super Gaming X Trio we reviewed here). Unlike the Gaming X, the Gaming Z uses a large triple-fan thermal solution and comes with higher memory clock out of the box. It seems NVIDIA enabled out-of-the-box memory overclocking for RTX 2070 Super only recently because EVGA announced a similar product not long ago. The cornerstone for this improvement are 16 Gbps GDDR6 memory chips from Samsung, which are able to handle the new clock speeds. The card ships with a factory overclock of 1815 MHz GPU Boost (15 MHz higher than Gaming X & Gaming X Trio, 45 MHz higher than NVIDIA Founders Edition). Memory ticks at 1938 MHz, 188 MHz higher than the Founders Edition. MSI doesn't have final pricing yet, but we expect the card to retail a bit above the RTX 2070 Super Gaming X Trio, so at around $570.

Packaging and Contents

You will receive:

• Graphics card
• Documentation
• Graphics card reinforcement brace

The Card

The MSI RTX 2070 Super Gaming Z Trio looks identical to the RTX 2080 Gaming X Trio, which of course makes economical sense. On the back, you'll find a high-quality metal backplate.


Dimensions of the card are 33x14 cm.


Installation requires three slots in your system.


Display connectivity options include three standard DisplayPort 1.4a and an HDMI 2.0b. Compared to the Founders Edition, the USB-C connector has been removed, probably to reduce cost.

NVIDIA has updated their display engine with the Turing microarchitecture, which now supports DisplayPort 1.4a with support for VESA's nearly lossless Display Stream Compression (DSC). Combined, this enables support for 8K@30Hz with a single cable or 8K@60Hz when DSC is turned on. For context, DisplayPort 1.4a is the latest version of the standard that was published in April, 2018.

At CES 2019, NVIDIA announced that all their graphics cards will now support VESA Adaptive Sync (aka FreeSync). While only a small number of FreeSync monitors have been fully qualified with G-SYNC, users can enable the feature in NVIDIA's control panel regardless of whether the monitor is certified or not.


The board uses two 8-pin power connectors. This input configuration is specified for up to 375 watts of power draw.


With Turing, NVIDIA is using NVLink as a physical layer for its next-generation SLI technology. NVLink provides sufficient bandwidth for multi-GPU rendering at 8K 60 Hz, 4K 120 Hz, and other such bandwidth-heavy display resolutions. It's a point-to-point link between your GPUs, so latencies will be lower compared to pushing data through the PCI-Express bus.

Disassembly

MSI is using an elaborate system of seven heatpipes on their cooler, just like on the Gaming X Trio (the Gaming X uses six).


Once the main heatsink is removed, a black baseplate becomes visible; it provides cooling for part of the VRM circuitry and memory chips.


The backplate is made out of metal and protects the card against damage during installation and handling. Note the thermal pads, which soak up some of the heat produced by the GPU and memory.

On the next page, we dive deep into the PCB layout and VRM configuration.

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.



High-res versions are also available (front, back).