Which is better – EVGA 3070 XC3 vs FTW3? The XC3 series will be available under Ultra and Black SKUs. The Ultra is the factory-overclocked SKU with a boost clock of 1770 MHz. Meanwhile, the Black edition will ship with NVIDIA reference 1725 MHz clock. Both cards are 2.2-slot design with a length of 28.5cm. Price-wise, the Ultra will cost 560 USD while the Black will retail at 530 USD.
The flagship model called FTW3 Ultra is a 2.75-slot design with three fans and dual 8-pin power connectors. This card will ship with factory-overclocking at 1815 MHz. EVGA has put a price tag of 610 USD on this SKU (110 USD over NVIDIA’s suggested retail price).
Pros & Cons – EVGA 3070 XC3 vs FTW3
EVGA 3070 XC3
Pros
- All the Ampere enhancements
- 2080 Ti performance at half the cost
- Not as power hungry as 3080
Cons
- 8GB VRAM feels stingy
- Totally sold out and/or expensive
- Can’t do 4K ultra in some games at 60 fps
EVGA 3070 FTW3
Pros
- Ray tracing at 1440p and 4K
- 2115MHz Overclock speeds
- Metal Backplate for air to pass through
- Excellent 4K and 1440p gaming
- iCX3 is Great at cooling
- Bios switch for more aggressive fan curve Normal/OC
- Fan and RGB headers, striking RGB lights
Cons
- 8GB of memory doesn’t feel future-proof for 4K gaming
- Massive size
Specs – EVGA 3070 XC3 vs FTW3
EVGA 3070 XC3
- Graphics Coprocessor GeForce RTX 3070
- Video Output Interface DisplayPort, HDMI
- Graphics Processor Manufacturer NVIDIA
- Graphics RAM Type GDDR6
- Graphics Ram Size 8.00
- Memory Clock Speed 1771 MHz
- GPU Clock Speed 1755 MHz
- Graphics Card Interface PCI-Express x4
- Fan Count 3
Performance
- NVIDIA RTX 3070
- 5888 CUDA Cores
- 1725 MHz Boost Clock
- 317.4GT/s Texture Fill Rate
Memory
- 8192 MB, 256 bit GDDR6
- 14000 MHz (effective)
- 448 GB/s Memory Bandwidth
Cooling
- iCX3 Cooling
- LED Logo: ARGB
Interface
- PCIe 4.0
- HDMI, DisplayPort, DisplayPort, DisplayPort
Dimensions
- Height: 4.38 in – 111.15 mm
- Length: 11.23 in – 285.37mm
- Width: 2.2 Slots
Operating System Support
- Windows 10 64bit
EVGA 3070 FTW3
Performance
- NVIDIA RTX 3070 Ti
- 6144 CUDA Cores
- 1860 MHz Boost Clock
- 357.1GT/s Texture Fill Rate
Memory
- 8192 MB, 256 bit GDDR6X
- 19000 MHz (effective)
- 608 GB/s Memory Bandwidth
Cooling
- iCX3 Technology
- LED Logo: ARGB
Interface
- PCIe 4.0
- HDMI, DisplayPort, DisplayPort, DisplayPort
Dimensions
- Height: 5.38 in – 136.75mm
- Length: 11.81 in – 300mm
- Width: 2.75 Slots
- GPU Interface PCIe x16
- GPU Chipset GeForce RTX 3070 Ti
- GPU Memory Size 8GB
- GPU Memory Type GDDR6X
- GPU Memory Interface 256-Bit
- GPU Clock Rate 1575MHz
- GPU Boost Clock Rate 1860MHz
- DirectX DirectX 12 Ultimate
- OpenGL OpenGL 4.6
- Max Resolution 7680 x 4320
- TDP 290W
- Length 300mm
- Cooling Type 3 Fans
- Power Connectors 2 PCIe 8-pin
- SLI Support
- CrossFire Support
- DVI-D (Dual Link) 0
- DVI-I (Dual Link) 0
- DisplayPort 3
- HDMI 1
- G-SYNC Support
- FreeSync Support
- Expansion slots required 2
EVGA 3070 XC3 vs FTW3 review
Design
EVGA 3070 XC3
We found a black-clad GPU sporting three fans and a solid metal backplate. EVGA says this card is a 2.2 slot design. The RTX 3070 XC3 measures in at 285mm (L)x 111mm (W)x 41mm( (H).
EVGA 3070 FTW3
The FTW3 Ultra measures 11.8 inches long and 5.4 inches wide, and a chunky three slots thick. The GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GPU is based on the Samsung 8nm manufacturing process and Ampere architecture. It has 8GB of GDDR6X memory at 19GHz on a 256-bit bus providing 608GB/s of memory bandwidth. Total board power is 290W. It has 6,144 CUDA Cores, 192 Tensor Cores (3rd gen), 48 RT Cores (2nd gen), 192 Texture Units, and 96 ROPs. It has a GPU Boost Clock of 1770MHz.
Ports
EVGA 3070 XC3
Three DisplayPort 1.4a and one HDMI 2.1 ports are provided as outputs. While there are hexagonal shaped vents in the I/O shield, very little heat is exhausted through these vents.
EVGA 3070 FTW3
The front of the card features three HDB 2.0 and white trim along the top that lights up with RGB goodness. It’s a full two and three-quarters PCI-e slots wide and sports three Display Port 1.4a connections and one HDMI 2.0 connection.
Frame rates
EVGA 3070 XC3
In 1080p, the RTX 3070 was able to pull out over 100 frames per second in most games and a handful of games surpassing 200 FPS. However, CPU bottlenecking still occurred in a few games. Farcry New Dawn and Mechwarrior 5 are the worst offenders and resulted in the RTX 3070 and the RTX 2080 TI matching performance of the RTX 3080.
When the games were benchmarked at 2560×1440 or 2K, the RTX 3070 gets to stretch its legs a bit. At this resolution a lot of games still reached over 144 frames per second and with a little tweaking to the in-game settings, the RTX 3070 would be a sweet 1440 144hz beast. The games that didn’t reach 100 FPS still manages to reach over 60 FPS on average and resulted in smooth gameplay.
EVGA 3070 FTW3
The EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti FTW3 ULTRA GAMING boosted up to 54.4 FPS and punched the overclocked value up to 57.4 FPS. At this point, if you find the extra eye candy brought by Ray Tracing to be good then this is a good combination. Overall for Cyberpunk 2077, we’d leave Ray Tracing and DLSS off with this card at 1440p.
Temperature
The EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 ULTRA GAMING’s default fan curve is set to maintain 67 degrees Celsius. It maintained that with the fans running but not audible without an issue. That was cooler than the AMD Radeon RX 6800 that leveled out at 70 degrees Celsius but warmer than the ASUS ROG STRIX 2080 Ti at 57 degrees Celsius. With the EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 ULTRA GAMING maxed out on both core clock and fans, it dropped to 60 degrees Celsius.
The EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti FTW3 ULTRA GAMING settled in at 65.3 degrees Celsius while gaming on our open test bench. That was cooler than the AMD Radeon RX 6800 that leveled out at 70 degrees Celsius. With the EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti FTW3 ULTRA GAMING maxed out on both core clock and fans, it dropped to 58.9 degrees Celsius.
Cooling
EVGA is utilizing its iCX3 cooling setup that consists of 3 HDB 2.0 noise motor fans with fan blades that have raised “E”s on them to reduce noise. The fans feature an asynchronous fan mode and will switch off when temperatures are under 55 degrees Celsius. The PCB features cutouts (along with the backplate having cutouts) to improve airflow and reduce exhaust recovery. EVGA claims a 5.1% improvement over the iCX2 cooling system while being 9.7% quieter.
The RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra includes a massive heat sink infused with multiple copper heat pipes. EVGA says it redesigned the heat sink to allow air to move more freely throughout. EVGA is utilizing its iCX3 cooling setup that consists of 3 HDB 2.0 noise motor fans with fan blades that have raised “E”s on them to reduce noise. The fans feature an asynchronous fan mode and will switch off when temperatures are under 55 degrees Celsius. The PCB features cutouts (along with the backplate having cutouts) to improve airflow and reduce exhaust recovery. EVGA claims a 5.1% improvement over the iCX2 cooling system while being 9.7% quieter.
Gaming
The EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 ULTRA GAMING performed well against the AMD Radeon RX 6800 and the ASUS ROG STRIX 2080 Ti. It provided a solid 1440p gaming experience with all of the image quality knobs turned up to 11 (except for Ray Tracing). If you’re rocking a 1440p monitor, the EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 ULTRA GAMING will do just fine for your gaming needs at this time.
The EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti FTW3 ULTRA GAMING performed well against the AMD Radeon RX 6800. It provided a solid 1440p gaming experience with all of the image quality knobs turned up to 11 (except for Ray Tracing). If you’re rocking a 1440p monitor, the EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti FTW3 ULTRA GAMING will do just fine for your gaming needs at this time.
Overclocking
The EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 ULTRA GAMING entered the match with a factory overclock that gave it a running start compared to the GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition. We were able to take it to the next level and stabilized it at an average 2145MHz and 15.6GHz memory. That makes the observed core clock 210MHz and the memory 800MHz faster than the maximum overclock on the Founders Edition.
The EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti FTW3 ULTRA GAMING entered the match with a factory overclock that gave it a running start compared to the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition. We were able to take it to the next level and stabilized at an average 2100MHz and 22.2GHz memory. That makes the observed core clock 45MHz and the memory 1200MHz faster than the maximum overclocks on the Founders Edition.
Editor’s recommendations
- EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 ultra gaming 08G-P5-3755-KL 8GB GDDR6 review
- EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti FTW3 ultra gaming 08G-P5-3797-KL 8GB GDDR6X review
- 2022 GPU benchmark comparison list – which is better NVIDIA or AMD?
- What is the best NVIDIA graphics cards in order of performance?
- NVIDIA 3070 graphics card comparison list – review & price
