The GeForce RTX 3070 continues the Ampere onslaught and the march of next-gen architectures. It’s a sizeable step down from the 3080, and has less than half the VRAM of AMD’s RX 6800 series cards. While 1440p and 4K gaming are totally possible, 4K at maximum quality often drops below 60 fps. DLSS can fix that, if a game supports it, but ray tracing even with DLSS often means 40-50 fps at 4K. We’re also concerned with the 8GB of GDDR6. Explore details in EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 ultra gaming 08G-P5-3755-KL 8GB GDDR6 review.
Pros & Cons
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
Specs – EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 ultra gaming 08G-P5-3755-KL 8GB GDDR6
- 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 GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 ultra gaming 08G-P5-3755-KL 8GB GDDR6 review
Design
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).
Ports
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.
Frame rates
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.
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.
EVGA iCX3 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.
Power consumption
EVGA recommends a minimum of a 650-watt power supply. Power draw is listed at 200 watts. You’ll need dual 8-pin connectors to power the GPU.
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.
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.
EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 ultra gaming 08G-P5-3755-KL 8GB GDDR6 Performance review
In Red Dead Redemption 2, the EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 ULTRA GAMING rang up 62.8 FPS compared to the 68.8 FPS and 68.3 FPS of the AMD Radeon RX 6800 and ASUS ROG STRIX 2080 Ti respectively. Overclocking the EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 ULTRA GAMING edged it closer to the other two at 66.4 FPS but did not move up in the rankings.
In Horizon Zero Dawn the EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 ULTRA GAMING averaged 103 FPS, just a few frames behind the AMD Radeon RX 6800 and ASUS ROG STRIX 2080 Ti. Overclocking the EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 ULTRA GAMING increased performance by 3.4% bringing it ahead of the ASUS ROG STRIX 2080 Ti but still 5.7 FPS short of the RX 6800. With all cards turning in scores over 100 FPS, they’re all great choices for Horizon Zero Dawn.
In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, because all of the cards performed so well, we went ahead and turned on Ray Tracing for testing at 1440p. The EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 ULTRA GAMING jumped to the front of the line with 71.3 FPS. The ASUS ROG STRIX 2080 Ti and AMD Radeon RX 6800 turned in 70.6 FPS and 66 FPS respectively. Overclocking the EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 ULTRA GAMING increased its lead over the others by a trio of FPS.
EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 ultra gaming 08G-P5-3755-KL 8GB GDDR6 customer review
Amazing 3070 with great thermals
This is one of the best reasonably priced high quality 3070 cards out there. Its perfect for those wanting to do 1440p gaming with a high refresh rate (144hz or higher), which I honestly prefer over 4k @60hz. That said, this is still a really good entry level 4k gaming card if you decide to go that route instead.Both the Ray Tracing & the DLSS technology are incredible & noticeably improved over the last gen cards, though you do take a performance hit with RT turned on.
The thermals on air are great as its using the same cooler as their 3080 cards along with a full metal backplate. The fans aren’t overly loud either. The EVGA X1 software is great for overclocking, adjusting the fan curves, & adjusting the argb on the evga logo. The clock speeds it ships with are also really nice for those not wanting to overclock the card.
This is a large card, so make sure you have enough room to fit it in your case (if not consider the 3060 ti)
By Anubis at Best Buy
Alternate of EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 ultra gaming 08G-P5-3755-KL 8GB GDDR6
Radeon RX 6800 XT
SPECIFICATIONS
GPU: Navi 21 XTGPU Cores: 4608Boost Clock: 2,250 MHzVideo RAM: 16GB GDDR6 16 GbpsTDP: 300 watts
REASONS TO BUY
+New RDNA2 architecture provides excellent performance+Beats 3080 in rasterization games+Easily handles 4K and 1440p+Lots of VRAM for the future
REASONS TO AVOID
-Weaker ray tracing performance-FSR needs wider adoption-Supply might be even worse than Nvidia
The GPU was affectionately dubbed ‘Big Navi’ prior to launch by the enthusiast community, and we got exactly what we wanted. Navi 21 is over twice the size of Navi 10, with twice the shader cores and twice the RAM. Clock speeds are also boosted into the 2.1-2.3 GHz range (depending on the card model), the highest clocks we’ve ever seen from a reference GPU by about 300 MHz. And AMD did all this without substantially increasing power requirements: The RX 6800 XT has a 300W TDP, slightly lower than the RTX 3080’s 320W TDP.Advertisement
AMD’s Radeon RX 6800 XT is the best card for Team Red. The RX Radeon 6900 XT is technically about 5-7 percent faster, but it costs 54 percent more. That’s not a great deal, at all, especially since you don’t get more VRAM or any other extras. The RX 6800 XT provides a massive boost in performance and features relative to the previous generation RX 5700 XT. It adds ray tracing support (via DirectX Raytracing or VulkanRT), and is 70-90% faster across our test suite.
A big part of AMD’s performance comes thanks to the massive 128MB Infinity Cache. It improves the effective bandwidth by 119% (according to AMD). We’re confident that few if any games in the coming years are going to need more than 16GB, so the 6800 XT is in a great position in that area.
What’s not to like? Well, the ray tracing performance is a bit mediocre. Maybe it’s because current games are more likely to be optimized for Nvidia’s RTX GPUs, but overall the 6800 XT is just barely ahead of the RTX 3070 in ray tracing performance, and there are several games where it falls behind by up to 25%. And that’s without turning on DLSS, which even in Quality mode can improve performance of RTX cards by 20-40% (sometimes more). AMD is working on FidelityFX Super Resolution to compete with DLSS, but it’s not here yet and it’s very much needed.
Price and availability, as with all recent GPUs, remain terrible. The average going rate for an RX 6800 XT on eBay last month was nearly $1,400. That’s technically better than the RTX 3080, but still about double the AMD MSRP.
Editor’s recommendations
- 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
- Best Graphics card comparison chart 2022 – which is good for gaming?
