The Performance and Value of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 30 Series Cards

As we delve into the world of high-performance graphics cards, it's essential to consider various factors that contribute to their overall performance and value. In this article, we'll be examining the GeForce RTX 3070 Turf, Strix, Tough, and OC versions, as well as their counterparts in the Nvidia Founders Edition lineup.

The GeForce RTX 3070 Turf card is a mid-range option that offers impressive performance at lower resolutions. Compared to its Turb counterpart, it's around 20% faster in synthetic tests but performs slightly worse in real-world scenarios. However, when compared to the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, the Turf version provides significant gains in terms of performance and power efficiency.

Moving on to the Strix and Tough models, these third-party cards are known for their exceptional cooling systems and improved airflow. The Strix is six percent faster than the standard 3070 at 1440p and 4K resolutions, while the Tough offers a more subtle improvement of three percent across all resolutions. It's essential to note that both of these models have slightly higher power consumption compared to the standard 3070.

The OC version of the 3090 is an attractive option for those who want to push their graphics card to its limits. However, when compared to its Turb counterpart, it offers only a one-to-three percent difference in performance across resolutions. The OC model also has higher power consumption and generates more heat due to its increased overclocking capabilities.

In our tests, the Strix and Tough models performed better than expected, with the Strix offering nine percent faster frame rates at 4K resolutions. However, when compared to the Nvidia Founders Edition 3090, the difference is not as significant, with only a one-to-three percent gain in performance across all resolutions.

The real value of these third-party cards lies in their ability to maintain clock speeds for longer periods and offer improved cooling systems. The Strix model, in particular, excels in this area, providing a more stable experience than the standard 3070.

When considering which card to purchase, it's essential to think about your specific needs and preferences. If you play at resolutions above 1440p or have high refresh rates, the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti may be the better choice. However, if you're playing at lower resolutions or want a more compact design, the Strix model might be worth considering.

One aspect that's not often discussed is the acoustic performance of these graphics cards. The Strix and Tough models offer significantly improved airflow and reduced noise levels compared to their standard counterparts. This makes them an excellent choice for those who value quiet operation and low temperatures.

As we move forward, it's essential to consider the competition from AMD's new RX 6000 series cards. These powerful graphics solutions will undoubtedly push the boundaries of performance and value in the market. We'll be keeping a close eye on these developments and providing our expert analysis as they become available.

In conclusion, the GeForce RTX 3070 Turf, Strix, Tough, and OC models offer impressive performance and value for gamers who want to experience high-quality graphics without breaking the bank. While there may not be significant gains in terms of performance compared to Nvidia's Founders Edition lineup, these third-party cards make up for it with their exceptional cooling systems and compact designs.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys i'm tomorrow techchap and i would like to start this video with an apology because obviously everyone is struggling to actually buy a 30 series card and that may be because i have them all with me here in the studio i've got six asus 30 series cards they've got the tough and the strix 3070 3080 and 3090 i've also got a couple of the fe versions as well so as you can probably tell this is gonna be a pretty big round up and buying guide video this is the best part of like six grams worth of graphics cards unfortunately these are all being collected tomorrow which is kind of sad i'm getting quite attached to them but obviously these are just review samples and hopefully uh the stock issues will improve but a big thank you to asus for sponsoring this video but of course as always all opinions all tests and conclusions are my own so all these are the oc editions of asus cards uh obviously which come with a factory overclock if you want the best performance possible but for a small saving you can also get the non-oc versions which still comes with the better fan the better cooling if you maybe want to overclock it yourself or not that bothered and just want the cooler temperatures so first question what exactly are the main benefits of going with something like an asus or third-party card rather than a founder's edition version so versus the fe the tough oc versions of the cards get a boost to core clock speed uh they also get a little bit of rgb although not as much as the strix we have much better cooling and also quieter fans we also get an extra hdmi 2.1 port which is quite nice because you only get one on the fe version and we also get higher power limits so you can potentially overclock these a little bit further than you would be able to with the fe however the rog strix and strix oc versions take it to the next level with slightly higher clock speeds improved heat sink and fans there's more go faster rgb lighting on this and overall it's just a bit more of a premium design plus you get dual bios modes with this for switching between performance profiles and finally the power limit is a little bit higher on the strix versus the tough and while i don't have the exact info on this higher end models tend to get higher binned which basically means slightly better performing versions of the cards one more thing to consider is unlike the founders cards which get nvidia's new 12 pin power connector which you have to use an adapter with the asus cards here use regular eight pin connectors or actually three of them on the strix 3080 and 3090. so we'll get into the all-important gaming performance in just a second but first i want to sort of look at how these compare in terms of acoustics and thermals do these fans really make much of a difference well compared to the new push through fan design we get on the founders models these asus cards have gone down the more traditional three fans and a massive heatsink route and actually each tough card here has pretty much the same dimensions from the 37t all the way up to 3090 and it's the same case with the slightly larger strix cards so they are all a fair bit bigger than the founders edition models especially when you compare the little 30 70 fe versus the strix version so the idea is the larger heatsink and the more robust sort of cooling fan system we have on here helps to dissipate heat better on the card so it runs cooler the fans don't have to spin as fast and so actually means that the card can maintain that top performance for longer without any or with any minimal throttling so as usual i test my gpus in an actual pc rather than a test bench so thermals are more realistic and starting with the 3080 in my sustained heavy load test which runs time spy and fermark at the same time for around 20 minutes my fe version hits 74 celsius while the tough and the strix models hit 64 and 67 degrees celsius respectively with the latter likely being higher due to the higher out of the box oc and also the much higher power limit idle temperatures were also lower too so i actually didn't see much in the way of throttling on any 3080 but the founders was a lot noisier at 54 decibels thanks to the fans hitting a max of 3 800 rpm compared to just over 2 000 rpm on the tuff and the strix cards which meant they were noticeably quieter especially the tough on the 3070 i saw similar drops in load and idle temperatures and while the founders 37t throttled back by around 250 megahertz in sustained heavy use the asus cards were able to maintain their slightly higher clock speeds now to its credit the founders 3070 is already a pretty quiet car to begin with and i didn't see any real improvements in acoustics using either of the asus cards and that highlights one important difference the 3080 here can draw anything from 320 to 370 watts of power so there's a lot more heat to dissipate whereas the 30 70 is anything between 220 and 280 watts which means the fans don't need to speed up as much or as often as the higher power 3080 and 3090 so you're really not getting as much of an acoustic improvement on the less powerful 3070 cards as you are from its bigger brothers as for the 3090 while i unfortunately don't have a founders edition to compare them with both the tough and the strix models are some of the quietest here and low temperatures are similar to what i saw on the strix 3070 and the 3080 which is impressive though we do get slightly lower clock speeds with this all right let's get to the good bit let's talk about gaming performance and i want to find out since the 3070 here is probably gonna be the most popular card it is of course the cheapest of all of them how this compares to the 3080 and the 3090 starting with all just the tough oc versions starting at 1080p and the gains don't really justify the price increase but at 1440p the 3080 tuff was about 20 faster than the 3070 turf but as you would expect it's at 4k where the turf 3080 and the turf 3090 really shine being 36 and 51 faster than the turf 3070 respectively and i got similar results in my synthetic tests so i think playing at 4k justifies the extra cost of the 3080 but maybe not the 3090 which is three times the price of the 30-70 but the next question is how do the tough and the strix cards compare with their respective fans editions again with average results and things aren't exactly as compelling the tough is on average three percent faster at all three resolutions while the strix is six percent faster at full hd and 4k but five percent faster at 1440. moving on to the 3080 and at 1080p the turf and strix is between two and four percent faster respectively and it's a similar story at 1440 while at 4k we're looking at a four percent higher average frame rate for the tough and a whopping nine percent for the strix now since i don't have a 30 90 fe with me here i'll compare the oc 3090 tough and strix and overall between these guys there's only a one to three percent difference across the resolutions so what would i buy well i haven't had a chance to test other third-party cards yet although generally asus is pretty competitive and these tough and strix are some of the best third-party cards you can buy but of course you are paying a premium for these third party cars over the founders but that's always the case but is it worth it well the performance uptake out of the box isn't anything mind-blowing but that's not where the value lies in this case it's the acoustics the lower temperatures and also its ability to maintain clock speeds for longer uh that is the real value of going for one of these cards and of course if you do want to do more overclocking yourself uh it'll be much better with these uh third-party cards which have higher power limits again the strix is the best for that although we have seen that generally the oc headroom with these 30 series cards isn't that much of all the cards here if i were to buy one myself i would probably go with the rtx 3080 and that's because i play it 3840x1600 which is almost 4k it's a well not that one but an ultra wide usually and we did see a bigger benefit with the cooling and the acoustics on the 3080 and the 90 rather than the 70 because it's just got a lower power draw but if you're playing at 1440 or maybe high refresh 1080p then i think the 3070 is your best bet and if i had to buy one i would probably honestly sorry asus i'd probably go with the fe version just because it's so much smaller and as i say you don't see quite as big a gain in terms of the acoustics as you do with the higher end cards so i think for the compact size as well and also the slightly lower price this is probably the one i would personally go for but if you're after a 380 or 90 then i would go with one of the third party cards but if you want the absolute best of the best or as i say use other software that can take advantage of the extra gpu and vram then the 30 90 could be worth it and if you're gonna pay 1400 pounds anyway for a founder's edition card uh then you may as well pay that a little bit extra and go for one of these guys with the overclock and they're all important better cooling the elephant in the room though of course is that these are all nvidia cards and we're gonna have to wait and see how these stack up with amd's new rx 6000 series cards i can't wait to get those in and test them properly and see how they compare to these in terms of performance and of course the all-important value for money just as a bit of a personal footnote i feel incredibly privileged that i have these cards with me to test as i say i can't keep them which is a bit sad but throughout my teenage and adult life i've always wanted to have you know the latest or the best graphics cards so this setup for me is so ridiculous and over the top but yeah incredibly awesome as well so thank you asus for sending them over also nvidia for the fe models thank you so much for watching guys if you do want to see more from me then don't forget to hit that little subscribe button below and i'll see you next time right here on the tech chathey guys i'm tomorrow techchap and i would like to start this video with an apology because obviously everyone is struggling to actually buy a 30 series card and that may be because i have them all with me here in the studio i've got six asus 30 series cards they've got the tough and the strix 3070 3080 and 3090 i've also got a couple of the fe versions as well so as you can probably tell this is gonna be a pretty big round up and buying guide video this is the best part of like six grams worth of graphics cards unfortunately these are all being collected tomorrow which is kind of sad i'm getting quite attached to them but obviously these are just review samples and hopefully uh the stock issues will improve but a big thank you to asus for sponsoring this video but of course as always all opinions all tests and conclusions are my own so all these are the oc editions of asus cards uh obviously which come with a factory overclock if you want the best performance possible but for a small saving you can also get the non-oc versions which still comes with the better fan the better cooling if you maybe want to overclock it yourself or not that bothered and just want the cooler temperatures so first question what exactly are the main benefits of going with something like an asus or third-party card rather than a founder's edition version so versus the fe the tough oc versions of the cards get a boost to core clock speed uh they also get a little bit of rgb although not as much as the strix we have much better cooling and also quieter fans we also get an extra hdmi 2.1 port which is quite nice because you only get one on the fe version and we also get higher power limits so you can potentially overclock these a little bit further than you would be able to with the fe however the rog strix and strix oc versions take it to the next level with slightly higher clock speeds improved heat sink and fans there's more go faster rgb lighting on this and overall it's just a bit more of a premium design plus you get dual bios modes with this for switching between performance profiles and finally the power limit is a little bit higher on the strix versus the tough and while i don't have the exact info on this higher end models tend to get higher binned which basically means slightly better performing versions of the cards one more thing to consider is unlike the founders cards which get nvidia's new 12 pin power connector which you have to use an adapter with the asus cards here use regular eight pin connectors or actually three of them on the strix 3080 and 3090. so we'll get into the all-important gaming performance in just a second but first i want to sort of look at how these compare in terms of acoustics and thermals do these fans really make much of a difference well compared to the new push through fan design we get on the founders models these asus cards have gone down the more traditional three fans and a massive heatsink route and actually each tough card here has pretty much the same dimensions from the 37t all the way up to 3090 and it's the same case with the slightly larger strix cards so they are all a fair bit bigger than the founders edition models especially when you compare the little 30 70 fe versus the strix version so the idea is the larger heatsink and the more robust sort of cooling fan system we have on here helps to dissipate heat better on the card so it runs cooler the fans don't have to spin as fast and so actually means that the card can maintain that top performance for longer without any or with any minimal throttling so as usual i test my gpus in an actual pc rather than a test bench so thermals are more realistic and starting with the 3080 in my sustained heavy load test which runs time spy and fermark at the same time for around 20 minutes my fe version hits 74 celsius while the tough and the strix models hit 64 and 67 degrees celsius respectively with the latter likely being higher due to the higher out of the box oc and also the much higher power limit idle temperatures were also lower too so i actually didn't see much in the way of throttling on any 3080 but the founders was a lot noisier at 54 decibels thanks to the fans hitting a max of 3 800 rpm compared to just over 2 000 rpm on the tuff and the strix cards which meant they were noticeably quieter especially the tough on the 3070 i saw similar drops in load and idle temperatures and while the founders 37t throttled back by around 250 megahertz in sustained heavy use the asus cards were able to maintain their slightly higher clock speeds now to its credit the founders 3070 is already a pretty quiet car to begin with and i didn't see any real improvements in acoustics using either of the asus cards and that highlights one important difference the 3080 here can draw anything from 320 to 370 watts of power so there's a lot more heat to dissipate whereas the 30 70 is anything between 220 and 280 watts which means the fans don't need to speed up as much or as often as the higher power 3080 and 3090 so you're really not getting as much of an acoustic improvement on the less powerful 3070 cards as you are from its bigger brothers as for the 3090 while i unfortunately don't have a founders edition to compare them with both the tough and the strix models are some of the quietest here and low temperatures are similar to what i saw on the strix 3070 and the 3080 which is impressive though we do get slightly lower clock speeds with this all right let's get to the good bit let's talk about gaming performance and i want to find out since the 3070 here is probably gonna be the most popular card it is of course the cheapest of all of them how this compares to the 3080 and the 3090 starting with all just the tough oc versions starting at 1080p and the gains don't really justify the price increase but at 1440p the 3080 tuff was about 20 faster than the 3070 turf but as you would expect it's at 4k where the turf 3080 and the turf 3090 really shine being 36 and 51 faster than the turf 3070 respectively and i got similar results in my synthetic tests so i think playing at 4k justifies the extra cost of the 3080 but maybe not the 3090 which is three times the price of the 30-70 but the next question is how do the tough and the strix cards compare with their respective fans editions again with average results and things aren't exactly as compelling the tough is on average three percent faster at all three resolutions while the strix is six percent faster at full hd and 4k but five percent faster at 1440. moving on to the 3080 and at 1080p the turf and strix is between two and four percent faster respectively and it's a similar story at 1440 while at 4k we're looking at a four percent higher average frame rate for the tough and a whopping nine percent for the strix now since i don't have a 30 90 fe with me here i'll compare the oc 3090 tough and strix and overall between these guys there's only a one to three percent difference across the resolutions so what would i buy well i haven't had a chance to test other third-party cards yet although generally asus is pretty competitive and these tough and strix are some of the best third-party cards you can buy but of course you are paying a premium for these third party cars over the founders but that's always the case but is it worth it well the performance uptake out of the box isn't anything mind-blowing but that's not where the value lies in this case it's the acoustics the lower temperatures and also its ability to maintain clock speeds for longer uh that is the real value of going for one of these cards and of course if you do want to do more overclocking yourself uh it'll be much better with these uh third-party cards which have higher power limits again the strix is the best for that although we have seen that generally the oc headroom with these 30 series cards isn't that much of all the cards here if i were to buy one myself i would probably go with the rtx 3080 and that's because i play it 3840x1600 which is almost 4k it's a well not that one but an ultra wide usually and we did see a bigger benefit with the cooling and the acoustics on the 3080 and the 90 rather than the 70 because it's just got a lower power draw but if you're playing at 1440 or maybe high refresh 1080p then i think the 3070 is your best bet and if i had to buy one i would probably honestly sorry asus i'd probably go with the fe version just because it's so much smaller and as i say you don't see quite as big a gain in terms of the acoustics as you do with the higher end cards so i think for the compact size as well and also the slightly lower price this is probably the one i would personally go for but if you're after a 380 or 90 then i would go with one of the third party cards but if you want the absolute best of the best or as i say use other software that can take advantage of the extra gpu and vram then the 30 90 could be worth it and if you're gonna pay 1400 pounds anyway for a founder's edition card uh then you may as well pay that a little bit extra and go for one of these guys with the overclock and they're all important better cooling the elephant in the room though of course is that these are all nvidia cards and we're gonna have to wait and see how these stack up with amd's new rx 6000 series cards i can't wait to get those in and test them properly and see how they compare to these in terms of performance and of course the all-important value for money just as a bit of a personal footnote i feel incredibly privileged that i have these cards with me to test as i say i can't keep them which is a bit sad but throughout my teenage and adult life i've always wanted to have you know the latest or the best graphics cards so this setup for me is so ridiculous and over the top but yeah incredibly awesome as well so thank you asus for sending them over also nvidia for the fe models thank you so much for watching guys if you do want to see more from me then don't forget to hit that little subscribe button below and i'll see you next time right here on the tech chat\n"