MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Gaming Z Review + Benchmarks

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enmsi's geforce rtx 2070 gaming z graphics card is their top tier 2070 option in their lineup at the moment so let's check it out and find out what you get for the extra money i'll be testing gaming at 4k 1440p and 1080p as well as overclocking cooling and of course retracing to show you how it performs let's start by taking a look at the card overall it's got a black and gunmetal gray look so pretty color neutral and should fit in well with most builds there are two double ball bearing fans on the front metal backplate with a nice brushed finish an msi logo on the back and eight and six pin power connectors on top it's worth noting the absence of nv link here too as the 2070 does not support sli there's rgb lighting on the front of the card but as i can't mount it vertically it's a little hard to show on camera there's also some rgb lighting on the top which shines through the msi logo and the lighting can be controlled using msi's mystic lightsync software there are around 15 different effects available or you can turn them off if you prefer for the i o there's three displayport 1.4 outputs a single hdmi 2.0 b output and one usb type-c port the card isn't too big at 307 millimeters by 155 millimeters by 50 millimeters it should fit in most cases and mine weighed around 1.45 kilos here are the specs of this particular 2070 card the boost clock is quite high 210 megahertz higher than the reference spec and 90 megahertz higher than msi's 2070 amaro c card that i recently reviewed but we'll see how much further we can push it with manual overclocking later like other rtx cards the 2070 also makes use of gddr6 memory and there's 8gb available here the system that i'm testing with has an amd ryzen 2700x cpu in an msi x470 gaming pro carbon motherboard running at stock speeds along with 16 gig of tforce nighthawk cl16 memory running a ddr4 3200 in dual channel check the links in the description for details on all of the components as well as for up-to-date pricing first up let's check out battlefield 5 a game that actually supports nvidia's new ray tracing one of the key selling points of these rtx cards for comparison i've also got the results with rtx on and off and testing was done in campaign mode rather than multiplayer as it's easy to reproduce starting at 1080p i've got the rtx on results in green and we can see that the average frame rates are less than half as much compared to running with rtx disabled in blue and purple rtx was dropping performance noticeably however despite this it was still very playable at medium and low settings but to me i found ultra without rtx to look nicer than these lower settings with rtx at 1440p with rtx on it was still playable at the lowest setting levels with low settings still able to average above 60 fps with the one percent low not too far behind the average meanwhile with rtx off the game was still playing fairly smoothly comparatively at ultra settings 4k with rtx on as a write-off with the 2070 in this game but still playable without rtx at the lower levels granted it really depends on what frame rates you're targeting i can happily play with 60 fps in this game but i'm sure others would want higher for the rest of the games i've only tested maximum settings at 1080p 1440p and 4k rather than at every single setting level like i usually do let me know what you prefer it takes significantly more time to test all setting levels at 3 resolutions this way i can include more games and the time i've got available fortnite was tested using the replay feature at 1080p even with epic settings the frame rates were very high and then still above 100 fps with 1440p 4k was playable but ideally you'd probably want a higher frame rate than this which of course could also be improved by lowering the settings overwatch was tested by completing the same test run through the practice range and we're seeing very high frame rates at 1080p and even 1440p despite the settings maxed out on epic with above 200 fps average for both even 4k was still playing smoothly at over 100 fps on average cs go was tested using the ultical benchmark and was another game that saw very high frame rates even with the settings maxed out with almost 200 fps at 4k although the one percent lows improved quite a bit in this test with low resolutions and i doubt anyone playing competitively would seriously consider 4k at high settings anyway rainbow six siege was tested using the built-in benchmark i found this test to pretty much always score high fps on any half decent hardware so even with ultra settings at 4k it's not too surprising that we're still able to average above 100 fps with much higher frame rates possible at 1440p and 1080p shadow of the tomb raider was also tested using the built-in benchmark and at 1440p and 1080p we're still able to average above 60fps in this test with maximum settings so expect pretty decent improvements at lower levels 4k wasn't great at max settings but again i'd expect lower settings to probably be somewhat playable assassin's creed odyssey was tested with a built-in benchmark too and as a fairly resource demanding game we're only just able to average 60 fps here at 1080p with ultra settings although i don't think you really need a high frame rate to play this one 1440p with good settings should still go alright pubg was tested using the replay feature and for an unoptimized game it was still giving pretty nice results at ultra settings at 1080p and 1440p pretty poor performance at 4k though but it might actually run alright with low settings but for this sort of game you'd probably want a lower resolution to maximize fps anyway far cry 5 was tested with the built-in benchmark and at ultra settings the frame rates are quite nice considering we're using ultra settings for the 1440p and 1080p tests not too terrible for 4k again considering mac settings so we could probably get decent fps with lower settings at 4k watchdogs 2 is a resource intensive game however i've found that i can play it perfectly fine with a solid 30fps and that's what we've got here at 4k although i probably would drop the settings down a bit to get a little higher frame rate as i don't think you get much of a visual improvement going from say very high to ultra 1440p and 1080p on the other hand rend very nicely even at ultra settings the witcher 3 was tested with hairworks disabled and even with 4k at ultra settings we're only just below the 60fps sweet spot with a one percent low result not too far below the average with some slight setting drops it should play pretty well at 4k and no problems at all at 1440p and 1080p shadow of war was tested using the built-in benchmark and fairly good results here too considering 4k was averaging 50fps in this test at max settings it would likely actually be playable with lower settings at 4k as we've seen we're able to get some pretty good performance in the games tested 1440p with good settings ran well for the most part while 4k wasn't a great experience at least with max settings which i've shown here in some less demanding games like overwatch you'd be able to run all right at 4k with good settings and for others it may be all right at low settings but for the most part msi's 2070 gaming z seems to be aimed towards 1440p gaming with good settings ray tracing on the other hand in battlefield v was disappointing however performance will improve in the future as it's still a new technology but the entry-level rtx 2070 is only giving us playable performance at 1080p and 1440p with medium or low settings and that's assuming you're not after high frame rates which are generally beneficial in games like this for overclocking i've retested with far cry 5. i was able to overclock the gpu core by 60 megahertz and then the memory by 400 megahertz although i didn't spend too long tweaking the memory this wasn't that much extra but keep in mind it's already overclocked pretty well out of the box i've retested with ultra settings which should be more gpu demanding and at 1080p there's only a small 0.2 improvement to the average frame rate with the overclock applied a larger 4.2 improvement at 1440p and then a 5.4 improvement of 4k better results at high resolutions as we become less cpu bound so we're seeing some decent performance but what are the thermals like these are the temperatures i measured with the heaven benchmark using hardware info with an ambient room temperature of 23 degrees celsius it wasn't getting that hot in my testing and even with the manual overclock applied it was only getting a little warmer at 70 degrees it was fairly cool at idle considering the fans weren't spinning at all they don't even spin up until it reaches 60 degrees celsius with the fan maxed out there was a large drop in thermals but the fan noise rose quite a bit too as a result just for fun here's how the backplate looked after 30 minutes of stress test running getting to about the 65 degree celsius mark i've got the average and peak clock speeds here while running the heaven benchmark for an extended period and with the overclock applied i was able to average around 143 megahertz above the stock speed by increasing the core clock by 60 megahertz and increasing the power limit to 111 using msi afterburner these are the average and peak fan speeds measured under the same tests as the temperatures just shown even at stock they were quiet compared to the rest of the system making almost no difference while gaming even once manually overclocked with the latest version of msi's afterburner i was able to boost the fans to 100 reaching over 2600 rpm and finally becoming fairly audible here's how these tests sounded so you can get an idea for yourself as i've got seven other fans in the case there's not much difference but at idle the fans on the graphics aren't spinning at all so using that as a bass line there's almost no difference between idle and the stress tests it's just not making much noise until we manually boost the fans i'll also note that while testing there was no noticeable coil one with my card here's what the total system power draw looked like in the same heaven benchmark so once manually overclocked there's a five percent increase to the power draw for a seven percent improvement to clock speed which resulted in a 5 improvement in far cry 5 at 4k with ultra settings msi recommend a 550 watt power supply or above and note that the card itself has a power consumption of 225 watts i was seeing around a 227 watt difference with my gpu stress test running though i'd expect some of this would be increased cpu activity too for up-to-date pricing check the links in the description as pricing will change over time at the time of recording here in australia the msi geforce rtx 2070 gaming z is going for around 1039 australian dollars or just under 600 us dollars on amazon for my international viewers the gaming z appears to be the top end 2070 and msi's lineup at the moment in australia this makes it 100 more expensive than msi's 2070 armor oc card i recently looked at but a lower 30 difference in the us the gaming z definitely has a nicer overall build quality there's more lighting and due to the higher boost clock out of the box it was performing a little better though this only resulted in a few frames per second extra so you'll have to decide if this more premium 2070 option is worth it for you in conclusion msi's rtx 2070 gaming z graphics card seems to be well suited to 1080p and 1440p gaming but if you're after 4k or actually looking at getting good frame rates with ray tracing outside of low settings at 1080p you may need to look at a 2080 or 2080 ti instead the card looks great in my opinion but does cost a bit more than other 2070s available so you'll have to weigh up the features and how much performance you can likely gain overclocking a cheaper card yourself so what did you guys think of msi's rtx 2070 gaming z graphics card let me know your thoughts down in the comments and leave a like on the video if you found it useful thanks for watching and don't forget to subscribe for more gpu testing including msi's rtx 2080 ti gaming x trio which is coming up nextmsi's geforce rtx 2070 gaming z graphics card is their top tier 2070 option in their lineup at the moment so let's check it out and find out what you get for the extra money i'll be testing gaming at 4k 1440p and 1080p as well as overclocking cooling and of course retracing to show you how it performs let's start by taking a look at the card overall it's got a black and gunmetal gray look so pretty color neutral and should fit in well with most builds there are two double ball bearing fans on the front metal backplate with a nice brushed finish an msi logo on the back and eight and six pin power connectors on top it's worth noting the absence of nv link here too as the 2070 does not support sli there's rgb lighting on the front of the card but as i can't mount it vertically it's a little hard to show on camera there's also some rgb lighting on the top which shines through the msi logo and the lighting can be controlled using msi's mystic lightsync software there are around 15 different effects available or you can turn them off if you prefer for the i o there's three displayport 1.4 outputs a single hdmi 2.0 b output and one usb type-c port the card isn't too big at 307 millimeters by 155 millimeters by 50 millimeters it should fit in most cases and mine weighed around 1.45 kilos here are the specs of this particular 2070 card the boost clock is quite high 210 megahertz higher than the reference spec and 90 megahertz higher than msi's 2070 amaro c card that i recently reviewed but we'll see how much further we can push it with manual overclocking later like other rtx cards the 2070 also makes use of gddr6 memory and there's 8gb available here the system that i'm testing with has an amd ryzen 2700x cpu in an msi x470 gaming pro carbon motherboard running at stock speeds along with 16 gig of tforce nighthawk cl16 memory running a ddr4 3200 in dual channel check the links in the description for details on all of the components as well as for up-to-date pricing first up let's check out battlefield 5 a game that actually supports nvidia's new ray tracing one of the key selling points of these rtx cards for comparison i've also got the results with rtx on and off and testing was done in campaign mode rather than multiplayer as it's easy to reproduce starting at 1080p i've got the rtx on results in green and we can see that the average frame rates are less than half as much compared to running with rtx disabled in blue and purple rtx was dropping performance noticeably however despite this it was still very playable at medium and low settings but to me i found ultra without rtx to look nicer than these lower settings with rtx at 1440p with rtx on it was still playable at the lowest setting levels with low settings still able to average above 60 fps with the one percent low not too far behind the average meanwhile with rtx off the game was still playing fairly smoothly comparatively at ultra settings 4k with rtx on as a write-off with the 2070 in this game but still playable without rtx at the lower levels granted it really depends on what frame rates you're targeting i can happily play with 60 fps in this game but i'm sure others would want higher for the rest of the games i've only tested maximum settings at 1080p 1440p and 4k rather than at every single setting level like i usually do let me know what you prefer it takes significantly more time to test all setting levels at 3 resolutions this way i can include more games and the time i've got available fortnite was tested using the replay feature at 1080p even with epic settings the frame rates were very high and then still above 100 fps with 1440p 4k was playable but ideally you'd probably want a higher frame rate than this which of course could also be improved by lowering the settings overwatch was tested by completing the same test run through the practice range and we're seeing very high frame rates at 1080p and even 1440p despite the settings maxed out on epic with above 200 fps average for both even 4k was still playing smoothly at over 100 fps on average cs go was tested using the ultical benchmark and was another game that saw very high frame rates even with the settings maxed out with almost 200 fps at 4k although the one percent lows improved quite a bit in this test with low resolutions and i doubt anyone playing competitively would seriously consider 4k at high settings anyway rainbow six siege was tested using the built-in benchmark i found this test to pretty much always score high fps on any half decent hardware so even with ultra settings at 4k it's not too surprising that we're still able to average above 100 fps with much higher frame rates possible at 1440p and 1080p shadow of the tomb raider was also tested using the built-in benchmark and at 1440p and 1080p we're still able to average above 60fps in this test with maximum settings so expect pretty decent improvements at lower levels 4k wasn't great at max settings but again i'd expect lower settings to probably be somewhat playable assassin's creed odyssey was tested with a built-in benchmark too and as a fairly resource demanding game we're only just able to average 60 fps here at 1080p with ultra settings although i don't think you really need a high frame rate to play this one 1440p with good settings should still go alright pubg was tested using the replay feature and for an unoptimized game it was still giving pretty nice results at ultra settings at 1080p and 1440p pretty poor performance at 4k though but it might actually run alright with low settings but for this sort of game you'd probably want a lower resolution to maximize fps anyway far cry 5 was tested with the built-in benchmark and at ultra settings the frame rates are quite nice considering we're using ultra settings for the 1440p and 1080p tests not too terrible for 4k again considering mac settings so we could probably get decent fps with lower settings at 4k watchdogs 2 is a resource intensive game however i've found that i can play it perfectly fine with a solid 30fps and that's what we've got here at 4k although i probably would drop the settings down a bit to get a little higher frame rate as i don't think you get much of a visual improvement going from say very high to ultra 1440p and 1080p on the other hand rend very nicely even at ultra settings the witcher 3 was tested with hairworks disabled and even with 4k at ultra settings we're only just below the 60fps sweet spot with a one percent low result not too far below the average with some slight setting drops it should play pretty well at 4k and no problems at all at 1440p and 1080p shadow of war was tested using the built-in benchmark and fairly good results here too considering 4k was averaging 50fps in this test at max settings it would likely actually be playable with lower settings at 4k as we've seen we're able to get some pretty good performance in the games tested 1440p with good settings ran well for the most part while 4k wasn't a great experience at least with max settings which i've shown here in some less demanding games like overwatch you'd be able to run all right at 4k with good settings and for others it may be all right at low settings but for the most part msi's 2070 gaming z seems to be aimed towards 1440p gaming with good settings ray tracing on the other hand in battlefield v was disappointing however performance will improve in the future as it's still a new technology but the entry-level rtx 2070 is only giving us playable performance at 1080p and 1440p with medium or low settings and that's assuming you're not after high frame rates which are generally beneficial in games like this for overclocking i've retested with far cry 5. i was able to overclock the gpu core by 60 megahertz and then the memory by 400 megahertz although i didn't spend too long tweaking the memory this wasn't that much extra but keep in mind it's already overclocked pretty well out of the box i've retested with ultra settings which should be more gpu demanding and at 1080p there's only a small 0.2 improvement to the average frame rate with the overclock applied a larger 4.2 improvement at 1440p and then a 5.4 improvement of 4k better results at high resolutions as we become less cpu bound so we're seeing some decent performance but what are the thermals like these are the temperatures i measured with the heaven benchmark using hardware info with an ambient room temperature of 23 degrees celsius it wasn't getting that hot in my testing and even with the manual overclock applied it was only getting a little warmer at 70 degrees it was fairly cool at idle considering the fans weren't spinning at all they don't even spin up until it reaches 60 degrees celsius with the fan maxed out there was a large drop in thermals but the fan noise rose quite a bit too as a result just for fun here's how the backplate looked after 30 minutes of stress test running getting to about the 65 degree celsius mark i've got the average and peak clock speeds here while running the heaven benchmark for an extended period and with the overclock applied i was able to average around 143 megahertz above the stock speed by increasing the core clock by 60 megahertz and increasing the power limit to 111 using msi afterburner these are the average and peak fan speeds measured under the same tests as the temperatures just shown even at stock they were quiet compared to the rest of the system making almost no difference while gaming even once manually overclocked with the latest version of msi's afterburner i was able to boost the fans to 100 reaching over 2600 rpm and finally becoming fairly audible here's how these tests sounded so you can get an idea for yourself as i've got seven other fans in the case there's not much difference but at idle the fans on the graphics aren't spinning at all so using that as a bass line there's almost no difference between idle and the stress tests it's just not making much noise until we manually boost the fans i'll also note that while testing there was no noticeable coil one with my card here's what the total system power draw looked like in the same heaven benchmark so once manually overclocked there's a five percent increase to the power draw for a seven percent improvement to clock speed which resulted in a 5 improvement in far cry 5 at 4k with ultra settings msi recommend a 550 watt power supply or above and note that the card itself has a power consumption of 225 watts i was seeing around a 227 watt difference with my gpu stress test running though i'd expect some of this would be increased cpu activity too for up-to-date pricing check the links in the description as pricing will change over time at the time of recording here in australia the msi geforce rtx 2070 gaming z is going for around 1039 australian dollars or just under 600 us dollars on amazon for my international viewers the gaming z appears to be the top end 2070 and msi's lineup at the moment in australia this makes it 100 more expensive than msi's 2070 armor oc card i recently looked at but a lower 30 difference in the us the gaming z definitely has a nicer overall build quality there's more lighting and due to the higher boost clock out of the box it was performing a little better though this only resulted in a few frames per second extra so you'll have to decide if this more premium 2070 option is worth it for you in conclusion msi's rtx 2070 gaming z graphics card seems to be well suited to 1080p and 1440p gaming but if you're after 4k or actually looking at getting good frame rates with ray tracing outside of low settings at 1080p you may need to look at a 2080 or 2080 ti instead the card looks great in my opinion but does cost a bit more than other 2070s available so you'll have to weigh up the features and how much performance you can likely gain overclocking a cheaper card yourself so what did you guys think of msi's rtx 2070 gaming z graphics card let me know your thoughts down in the comments and leave a like on the video if you found it useful thanks for watching and don't forget to subscribe for more gpu testing including msi's rtx 2080 ti gaming x trio which is coming up next\n"