Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super benchmarks: solid upgrade

The RTX 2070 Super is the new high-end graphics card to get, boasting a level of graphics performance that outstrips anything from AMD - apart from perhaps the outgoing Radeon 7 - at a rather reasonable price: £479/$499/€529. That's the same sum as the original RTX 2070 Founders Edition released in October last year, so we're seeing a considerable upgrade in value after less than twelve months. If you're considering the card or one of its competitors, you'll need to know how it performs - so that's where these benchmarks come into play. We've tested the 2070 Super in a smörgåsbord of recent and not-so-recent titles at resolutions from 1080p to 4K, so you'll be well equipped to make the right decision.

As well as replacing the RTX 2070, the 2070 Super was also designed to head off AMD's new upper mid-range card, the RX 5700 XT. The XT saw a price drop to $399/£379/€419 just hours before its launch, meaning the two cards aren't in direct competition, but it's still interesting to see how they compare. We've also included the Radeon 7 in our charts, as even though this card isn't being made any more, it is still AMD's nominal flagship with a recommended retail price of around $699/£669/€739 - substantially more than the 2070 Super.

Before we start looking at the results, it's helpful to know how exactly the RTX 2070 Super compares to its predecessors. Probably the most critical nugget of information is this: this new card is built around the same TU104 graphics processor as the RTX 2080, rather than the TU106 GPU used by the RTX 2060, RTX 2060 Super and RTX 2070. That means the 2070 Super is essentially a cut-down RTX 2080 instead of a scaled-up RTX 2070, so we can expect a generous boost in performance - at the expense of higher power consumption and heat generation. That's reflected in the specs chart below, where you can see the new card boasts more CUDA cores and a substantially higher boost clock than the original RTX 2070 design, but moves to the same 215W TDP of the RTX 2080. Unlike the RTX 2060 Super, there's no VRAM upgrade to mention here - it's the same 8GB of GDDR6 and 448GB/s of memory bandwidth across the board.

The RTX 2070 Super is available as a reference Founders Edition card direct from Nvidia, but most people will opt for a custom card made by Nvidia's partners. These cards don't always have the best overclocking performance, but they often offer a more robust cooling solution and are available in a wider variety of form factors. In the US, custom 2070 Super cards begin at $499, while in the UK these are supposed to be around £479 - but most models we've seen at the time of writing cost £499 and up. In any case, here's how Nvidia and AMD's product lineups look when compared to one another:

If you've seen our benchmark pages on a desktop browser before, you'll know they look a different to those of most other sites. Instead of static bar charts or YouTube videos with burnt in video metrics, we use a dynamic system that lets you see just the cards and resolutions you're interested in. Select the data points you want using the controls to the right of the video embed, then hit play to see how each card handles the test scene as it plays out in real time. For quick summaries, you can see a bar chart below each video. Hover to swap between best, worst and average frame-rates for each card, and click on the chart to go from frame-rate counts to percentages or vice versa. With that covered, let's begin.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey

We begin with Assassins Creed Odyssey, a lush open-world game with a very convenient built-in benchmark. The RTX 2070 Super shows its chops right out of the gate here, scoring a very slightly higher average at 1080p than the full-fat RTX 2080. The average is nine percentage points higher than the original 2070, ten points higher than the RTX 2060 Super. Things change a bit at 1440p and 4K, where the RTX 2080 pulls out to a six to seven per cent lead over the 2070 Super, which itself is only about five per cent faster than the original RTX 2070. AMD cards don't perform great in AC Odyssey, so it's not surprising to see a sizeable 13 per cent advantage for the RTX 2070 Super over the RX 5700 XT at 1440p.

Assassin's Creed Unity

We continue with another AC title, 2014's Unity. This game's ultra high preset still provides a reasonable challenge to modern GPUs, although it's not until we hit 4K that achieving 60fps becomes difficult. At 1440p, there's a 13 per cent advantage for the 2070 Super over the original 2070 and the Radeon RX 5700 XT, with the RTX 2080 leading the 2070 Super by seven per cent. If you're trying to decide between the 2060 Super and 2070 Super, there's around a 13 per cent advantage for going with the more expensive card at 1080p or 1440p.

Battlefield 1

Battlefield 1 is a traditional strong point for Radeon hardware, so it's worth looking at a best-case scenario for the RX 5700 XT against the RTX 2070 Super. These cards are almost inseparable at 1440p and 4K, with averages of 130fps and 74fps, respectively. However, AMD's less CPU-efficient driver causes a slightly lower score for the RX 5700 XT at 1080p. Returning our focus to Nvidia now, the 2070 Super shows around a 15 per cent advantage over the vanilla 2070, while the RTX 2080 remains four per cent ahead of the Super card.

Crysis 3

Crysis 3 continues to be a standard against which new graphics hardware is judged, with only one card - the RTX 2080 Ti - managing to deliver a 60fps average at very high settings and 4K resolution. The 2070 Super is still some distance from achieving that with a 48fps average, sitting neatly ahead of the original 2070 (43fps) and behind the full-fat 2080 (53fps). All told, the performance uplift from 2070 to 2070 Super is 12 per cent; from the 2060 Super to 2070 Super it's 17 per cent.

Far Cry 5

Fun fact: the Far Cry 5 benchmark plays out differently every so often, with the plane that flies through the scene sometimes being shot down before the final frame. It's not enough to change our performance measurements, thankfully, which show the 2070 Super with a 13 per cent advantage over the RTX 2070 and a 15 per cent lead over the RTX 2060 Super. Meanwhile, the RTX 2080 still leads the subject of this benchmark page by seven per cent.

Ghost Recon Wildlands

If you had to name the most challenging games of this generation, Ghost Recon Wildlands might not even get a look in - after all, this game runs great at high or very high while providing a strong level of graphical fidelity. Crank it to the ultra preset though, and you're left with the most challenging title in our arsenal. The RTX 2070 Super is just one frame per second ahead of the Radeon RX 5700 XT at 1440p, with an average of 57fps, while the RTX 2080 leads both cards by around seven per cent. Looking back to the RTX 2060 Super and RTX 2070, the RTX 2070 Super performs about 12 per cent better.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider comes next, a game with a demanding three-part benchmark (+) that doesn't actually simulate in-game performance (-). The bench is still a good point of comparison for graphics cards though, so let's take a look at the results. Focusing on 1440p, where the RTX 2070 really sings, we're looking at a result of 110fps here - six per cent behind the RTX 2080 but a whopping 16 per cent ahead of the original RTX 2070. That lead grows to 19 per cent when compared to the new RTX 2060 Super, although that card does cost around $100 less. Checking in with the RX 5700 XT for a second, the RTX 2070 Super holds a reasonable eight per cent lead at 1440p.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Shadow of the Tomb Raider solves the major issues with the Rise of the Tomb Raider benchmark, offering a stern challenge that actually predicts in-game performance in the game's most demanding scenes. The RTX 2070 Super leads the stock 2070 by seven per cent, while falling behind the RTX 2080 by nine per cent. Compared to the RTX 2060 Super, the new card offers a 15 per cent advantage.

The Witcher 3

The final game in our traditional benchmark suite, The Witcher 3 sees us take to the back of Roach and the streets of Novigrad city for another jaunt. The RTX 2070 Super repeats its Assassins Creed Odyssey feat, showing equal performance to the RTX 2080 by the slimmest of margins. Compared to the RTX 2060 Super, we're seeing a 15 per cent advantage for 2070 Super, while the RX 5700 XT trails by 11 per cent.

Strange Brigade

Strange Brigade is another DirectX 12 title that favours AMD hardware, and here the RX 5700 XT should have a strong chance of tying - or beating - the RTX 2070 Super. Indeed, at 1440p we can see the Radeon card has a 1fps lead, despite costing significantly less. The differential from 2070 to 2070 Super is seven per cent.

Metro Exodus

Another DirectX 12 game, 4A Games' Metro Exodus is a fine recent release that excellently leverages the standout features of the RTX lineup with support for DLSS and ray-traced global illumination. Without these features running, the opening scene of the Volga level provides a good test for both AMD and Nvidia graphics cards. At 1440p, the RTX 2070 and RX 5700 XT are perfectly tied, with the RTX 2070 Super a further nine percentage points to the good.

Battlefield 5

We conclude with Battlefield 5, another benchmark that originated with our ray tracing performance testing but still provides a good test of rasterised horsepower. The RTX 2070 Super trails the RX 5700 XT by two per cent at 1440p, seven per cent ahead of the RTX 2070 and 13 per cent ahead of the RTX 2060 Super.

For more information on this new graphics card, you can check out our full 2070 Super review in article or video form. Also handy are our RX 5700 and 5700 XT reviews, which were released just afterwards. You can also hit us up on Twitter (@digitalfoundry or @wsjudd) or in the comments below if you have a question or want to share your thoughts.