Overall and Final Verdict

With our testing finished up and having taken a look at the card, let’s recap. So the Gigabyte Windforce RTX 2070 is different from the RTX 2070 Founders Edition that I took a look at in just about every possible way. On the outside, the Founders Edition design is bright and in your face with its silver finish where Gigabyte went with a much subtler all blacked out look. Gigabyte also included an RGB logo up on top where the Founders Edition forced you to still run the green logo, one of my complaints about the card. The Windforce design is also a lot longer with its triple fan design, this was especially different when you compare it to other aftermarket designs. Most other aftermarket designs these days are going with two large fans that force the card to be very tall. Gigabyte went with a longer card design but stayed a lot closer to the traditional PCI height. They also kept the card a 2 slot design, not 2.5 like a lot of other aftermarket cards. While SLI isn’t available on the RTX 2070, this should allow for better fitment in cases with a vertical GPU.

As for performance, I spent a lot of time checking out how the actual stock RTX 2070 performance compared to the overclocked Founders Edition clock speeds as well as the GTX 1080 that the 2070 is priced to match. Obviously, the Founders Edition with its higher clock speeds is faster, but I was happy to see that even at stock speeds the RTX 2070 was within a fraction of an FPS of our overclocked GTX 1080 with 11 Gbps memory and it was faster than the stock clocked GTX 1080. Now we can get back into the argument that we should have seen an improvement in either pricing or performance over the GTX 1080 and I do agree. The RTX 2080 has basically just replaced the GTX 1080 price for price and performance for performance, but offering the potential for RTX support as well as the DL/AI support in the future. With Battlefield V finally being the first game available with RTX support we have learned that there will be a big performance hit to take advantage of that. But I am interested in seeing games with DLSS come out, I think using those AI focused cores is really the only area where you will see the RTX 2070 really pull ahead of the GTX 1080. Sadly that is also one of the big downsides, RTX and DL/AI support is still really not available with the exception of BFV with RTX. So we can only really speculate.

So that brings us to the pricing. Being one of Nvidia’s stock clocked RTX 2070’s the Gigabyte Windforce actually sells for the $499 price point that Nvidia pushed. In fact, it is one of only two RTX 2070s available at that price right now on Newegg. The GTX 1080, on the other hand, has started to rise in price with just one card still available at or below $500 on Newegg. I think that alone really answers the question. If you are looking in the $500 range the Gigabyte Windforce RTX 2070 is going to match or beat the performance of the GTX 1080 and actually be available. Will the RTX and Tensor cores be useful in the future? Well, I suspect the Tensor cores will be, RTX is still up in the air. But keep in mind you also have a little overclocking headroom left, especially considering the cooling performance of the Windforce cooler. The RTX 2070 is still best for people looking to game at 1440p or at higher refresh rates at 1080p so keep that in mind as well.

fv5

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Author Bio
garfi3ld
Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org
Editor-in-chief
You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.

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