ZOTAC RTX 2070 SUPER Twin Fan Review

‘Twin Fan’ aka ZT-T20710F-10P is a custom design of the new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER. While it may not endorse a factory overclock, it does have the IceStorm 2.0 cooling solution which promises low-noise and low-temperatures.

Product on Review: RTX 2070 SUPER Twin Fan
Manufacturer & Sponsor: ZOTAC
Street Price: £499 GBP – $499 USD – $859 AUD

Earlier this month NVIDIA unveiled their line of refreshed graphics cards under the SUPER banner. While nothing revolutionary was brought to the table, better bang for buck was. As tradition would have it, NVIDIA initially launched their Founders Edition for the RTX 2060 SUPER and RTX 2070 SUPER and but the market is now peppered with custom designs from the green team’s chipset partners.

Today we’ll be putting the new ZOTAC RTX 2070 SUPER Twin Fan through its paces to see if it can offer much over the NVIDIA Founders Edition. As you may have guessed, this graphics card features a dual-fan configuration but surprisingly has no factory overclock applied, so as far as performance goes it’ll be neck and neck with the FE.

Twin Fan sits near the base MSRP for this GPU but does it warrant a purchase? Let’s find out!

ZOTAC on their Twin Fan

Everything is super with the all-new ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 20 Series SUPER graphics cards. Based on the NVIDIA Turing architecture, it’s packed with more cores and ultra-fast GDDR6 memory. Integrated with more smart and optimized technologies, get ready to GET FAST and GAME STRONG.

Technical Specifications

Below are the technical specifications surrounding RTX 2070 SUPER Twin Fan supplied directly by ZOTAC:

GPU
TU104
Stream Processor
2560
Video Memory
8GB GDDR6
Memory Bus
256-bit
Engine Clock
1605MHz
Engine Clock Boost
1770MHz
Memory Clock
1750MHz – 14000MHz Effective
PCI Express
3.0
Display Outputs
3x DisplayPort 1.4
1x HDMI 2.0b
Recommended Power Supply
650W
DirectX
12 API feature level 12_1
OpenGL
4.5
Cooling
Dual-fan
Slot Size
2
Supported OS
Windows 10
Card Length
268 x 113 x 38 mm

SUPER Improvements

Info taken from Tim Harmer’s news story – NVIDIA Refreshes The GeForce RTX 20-series With A SUPER New Lineup

GEFORCE RTX 2070 SUPER

By stepping down NVIDIA’s lineup just a little we reach the GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER. Outwardly this card is another straightforward in-line replacement for its vanilla variant, but there’s quite a lot going on when you look more closely (some of which NVIDIA are strangely reticent to discuss).

The RTX 2070 SUPER is promoted to utilise the TU104 rather than TU106 GPU at the heart of its vanilla series counterpart; quite understandable given the RTX 2070 fully utilised that lesser GPU.

A TU104 is equipped with up to six Graphics Processing Clusters, each with eight Shader Modules. An SM has 64 CUDA Cores alongside other components such as Tensor Cores and RT Cores, so in theory a TU104 could have up to a total of 3072 CUDA Cores enabled. The RTX 2070 SUPER has 2560 enabled (up from 2304 on the RTX 2070) representing a total of 40 SMs of the 64 available. Normally one would assume therefore that the RTX 2070 SUPER has five of the TU104’s six GPCs unlocked.

Strangely however NVIDIA’s technical specifications list the RTX 2070 SUPER as incorporating ‘5 or 6’ GPCs, implying some variance between the configuration of particular RTX 2070 SUPER GPUs. We asked NVIDIA if this implied there would be multiple variants of the RTX 2070 SUPER (perhaps as different SKUs) and this was their response:

“The are no [SKU] variants, it is just a function of how we select the chips. We have done extensive game testing and there is no difference between 5 or 6 GPCs in the results.”

Given the minor kerfuffle caused by the binning process of the RTX 20-series, it will be fascinating to see how this particular incongruity plays out.

Other improvements from the RTX 2070 include higher Base and Boost clocks and a greater number of texture units. Boost Clocks in particular will differ between the Founder’s Edition and partner models due to differences in the power delivery infrastructure and cooler. Overall, NVIDIA expect the RTX 2070 SUPER to be up to 21% faster than the RTX 2070, with an average of 16% better FPS across a wide sample of titles.

GEFORCE RTX 2060 SUPER

Sitting at a new price point for the RTX 20-series is the GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER, a $399 MSRP graphics card that bridges the price and performance gap between the RTX 2060 and 2070. Unlike the RTX 2080 & 2070 SUPER cards however it doesn’t displace or make obsolete any particular model; instead it seems tailored to compete with the AMD Radeon RX 5700.

The TU106 once again returns but with more SMs unlocked compared to the RTX 2060. Just as significant is an increase to 8GB of GDDR6 memory which now operates over a 256-bit wide bus, helping the cards capabilities at higher resolutions and image quality settings. Base operating frequencies are higher – now up to 1470MHz – but in an interesting twist Boost Frequencies are a little lower at 1650MHz.

In combination these changes should see the card be far more accomplished at 1440p than its predecessor, and hence be a much more attractive upgrade path for GTX 970/1060 owners than the RTX 2060 turned out to be. If the Boost frequency are in fact relatively modest then it could give NVIDIA’s AIC partners an opportunity to really flex their muscles and push the card to rival the RTX 2070.

Closer Look

The RTX 2070 SUPER Twin Fan is an appealing to the eye. ZOTAC has furnished the card with a stylish shroud which looks classy but still offers the gamer an edgy feel. The card itself measures 268 x 113 x 38 mm, so while it might be quite long, it is narrow and conforms to dual-slot without overhanging.

Our GPU uses the IceStorm 2.0 cooling solution which involves 2x 90mm fans. Although these fans do not support the idle fan stop function, they are able to be independently controlled with ZOTAC’s FireStorm software.

Over on the backside of the card there is a strong metal backplate which protects the PCB from any knocks and of course, from flexing/bending.

We have triple DP 1.4 and single HDMI 2.0b on the rear IO panel, which should provide flexibility for multi-screen use.

Just like the Founders Edition, this RTX 2070 SUPER also requires a 8+6-pin connection from the PSU for power delivery. ZOTAC recommend a 650W unit.

Test Setup & Methodology

HOW WE TEST GRAPHICS CARDS

Testing a graphics card is an extremely lengthy process. We sometimes see reviews where a graphics card has been tested using out of date equipment, out of date games and even out of date drivers. While the latter can be excused due to the sheer amount of driver updates making a thorough review impossible we will however notify the reader when we have used a different driver to the normal for example a pre-release driver. For the most part however we will always use the same hardware and latest drivers so this does certainly need to be taken into consideration when viewing our testing results. Each game and benchmark is tested times with the lowest and highest scores omitted out of the 5 results and the average then taken from the three remaining to give us our final result for each resolution and setting used.

HARDWARE

Taking Intel’s High-End Desktop platform, our hardware utilises the Intel X99 chipset. Combined with this we use the Intel Core i7-5960X Extreme Edition processor clocked to a realistic and achievable 4GHz to ensure we have no CPU bottlenecks. With 16GB (4x4GB) of DDR4 at 2666MHz and a 750GB SSD there should be minimal paging so the benchmarks we run today will hopefully give a true reflection of the graphics card’s performance.

Graphics Cards on test:
NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti
NVIDIA RTX 2080
ZOTAC NVIDIA RTX 2070 SUPER Twin Fan
NVIDIA RTX 2070 SUPER
NVIDIA RTX 2070
NVIDIA RTX 2060 SUPER
NVIDIA RTX 2060
NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti
NVIDIA GTX 1080
NVIDIA GTX 1070
NVIDIA GTX 1060
AMD Radeon Vega 56
AMD Radeon RX 5700
AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT

Special thanks go to Avermedia, Intel, Corsair, MSI and AOC for providing the extreme spec components used for our test bench:

Motherboard: MSI X99A Workstation
CPU: Intel Core i7-5960X Extreme Edition @ 4GHz
RAM – 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair LPX Vengeance (Red) DDR3 @ 2666MHz 16-17-17-35 C1
Power Supply – CORSAIR HX1050
Hard Drive – Samsung 840 EVO 750GB
Cooler – CORSAIR Hydro Series™ H150i Pro 360mm Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
Monitor – AOC 28″ 4K U2879VF
Capture Card – Avermedia Live Gamer Extreme 2

BENCHMARKS

If you are a regular reader of our reviews you will know we like to test the latest hardware with the latest games and benchmarks on the market. Here are the games we’ve chosen:

Fortnite
Middle Earth: Shadow of War
Apex Legends
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
F1 2018

To capture framerates we use a combination of in-game benchmark tools and FRAPS.

We also take into consideration the benchmarkers out there so have included three of the more popular synthetic benchmarks available:

3DMark Time Spy
3DMark FireStrike
Unigine: SuperPosition
Unigine: Heaven 4.0

Let’s see how today’s graphics card performed…

Power, Temperatures, Acoustics

To test for power consumption, we take a measurement from the plug socket. It is important to note that the figures below represent total system power use and not just the GPU. The CPU was always in a fixed state (4GHz overclock) so did not affect the additional power load when the GPU was placed under 100% load using Heaven 4.0 which was ran for 20 minutes at which point a load reading was taken. Idle readings were taken 5 minutes after system boot to ensure any background services and applications had loaded.

TEMPERATURE

To test temperatures we measured idle temperatures after booting windows, letting all applications finish loading and ran a few benchmarks. Once the benchmarks were complete we left the card to reach a cooling plateau where we then took the idle temperatures. For the load tests we set Heaven 4.0 running continuously for ~30 minutes recorded the peak/maximum GPU temperature.

ACOUSTICS

Operating noise from the Twin Fan is notably better than we experienced with the 2070 SUPER FE – the ZOTAC card is inaudible during idle use and emits little noise during load periods.

Overclocking

To overclock the 2070 SUPER Twin Fan we used MSI Afterburner to modify the frequencies.

Since this graphics card has no factory overclock applied, both GPU and memory values are at stock, so this should give us a good understanding of how far the RTX 2070 SUPER can go when placed in a custom design.

We were able to achieve an outstanding result with the GAMING OC which realised a GPU boost clock of 1910MHz and a modification to the memory clock of 1880MHz. This is quite impressive – Below are the results and a performance demo:

DX12: 3DMark Time Spy

Download your copy now

With its pure DirectX 12 engine, which supports new API features like asynchronous compute, explicit multi-adapter, and multi-threading, 3DMark Time Spy is the ideal benchmark for testing the DirectX 12 performance of the latest graphics cards.

DX11: 3DMark FireStrike

Download your copy now

Fire Strike is the new showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for high-performance gaming PCs. It is UL’s most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today.

DX11: Unigine Heaven 4.0

Heaven Benchmark with its current version 4.0 is a GPU-intensive benchmark that hammers graphics cards to the limits. This powerful tool can be effectively used to determine the stability of a GPU under extremely stressful conditions, as well as check the cooling system’s potential under maximum heat output. It provides completely unbiased results and generates true in-game rendering workloads across all platforms.

DX11: Unigine SuperPosition

Superposition is a new-generation benchmark tailored for testing reliability and performance of the latest GPUs. Top-notch visuals, support for VR-devices and an interactive mode with mini-games — the list of features built into Superposition could go on and on.

DX11: Fortnite

Fortnite Battle Royale is the FREE 100-player PvP mode in Fortnite. One giant map. A battle bus. Fortnite building skills and destructible environments combined with intense PvP combat. The last one standing wins.

DX11: Middle Earth: Shadow of War

Middle-earth: Shadow of War is an action role-playing video game developed by Monolith Productions and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. It is the sequel to 2014’s Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor.

DX11: Kingdom Come: Deliverance

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a story-driven open-world RPG that immerses you in an epic adventure in the Holy Roman Empire. Avenge your parents’ death as you battle invading forces, go on game-changing quests, and make influential choices.

DX12: Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is an action-adventure video game developed by Eidos Montréal in conjunction with Crystal Dynamics and published by Square Enix. It continues the narrative from the 2013 game Tomb Raider and its sequel Rise of the Tomb Raider, and is the twelfth mainline entry in the Tomb Raider series.

DX11: F1 2018

F1 2018 is a racing video game and the tenth instalment in the Formula One video game franchise developed and published by Codemasters. The game is based on the 2018 Formula One World Championship and includes all twenty-one circuits from the calendar and all twenty drivers and ten teams competing in the season.

Overall Performance

Here we take a look at the overall performance of the graphics card. This figure is determined by finding the average FPS across all of the settings used in a particular benchmark(game) to give us an overall value.

Value For Money

We make a simple calculation for this set of results. For each game we add all of the resulting FPS totals together and then divide by the four sets to give us an overall performance figure. While the figures alone do not give you an accurate picture of how the card will perform in any given scenario, they do tell you, when averaged, which GPU is the more capable across all of the benchmarks and settings tested.

Please note: we’ve used GBP for currency but since this is relative – regardless of which currency you use, this will give you a good indication of value for money.

Conclusion

In times gone by we’ve been treated to ZOTAC’s crème de la crème courtesy of the AMP and AMP Extreme Series, so today’s vanilla offering is somewhat underwhelming.

The RTX 2070 SUPER Twin Fan is a basic solution and as such it hits the MSRP aggressively – holding on at £499 GBP – $499 USD – $859 AUD. Due to such a pricepoint, ZOTAC has made a variety of cutbacks, some of which may not concern a number of gamers.

This graphics card features no factory overclock and therefore follows after the Founders Edition, having the GPU and memory values all at stock. The RTX 2070 SUPER Twin Fan does however allow for a substantial manual overclock to both these attributes, which in return will offer between 5-10 fps boost in-game.

Turning to the thermal solution on our card, ZOTAC are using their IceStorm 2.0 cooler which blends a large aluminium heatsink, metal thermal brace and the two 90mm cooling fans. In reality, under sustained load, this design will only shave off a marginal figure compared to the NVIDIA Founders Edition – the latter actually does an admirable job at alleviating heat. So, it is the operating noise where the IceStorm 2.0 really shines, it performs particularly well by keeping noise levels to a minimum during gaming sessions – though it doesn’t offer idle fan stop, which is disappointing.

Performance won’t come as any surprise since this graphics card has the same attributes as the RTX 2070 SUPER Founders Edition. This GPU will deliver solid performance, similar to that of the RTX 2080.

ZOTAC’s RTX 2070 SUPER Twin Fan offers little over the NVIDIA Founders Edition, but it does add in different styling, subtle RGB lighting and a cooler which will emit less noise.

Pros
+ Clean aesthetics
+ Backplate with PCB support
+ Sticks to the 2070 SUPER MSRP
+ Quiet fan operation
+ Subtle RGB LED lighting
+ Fans can be controlled independently
+ Overclocks reasonably well

Cons
– No idle fan stop
– No factory overclock

Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.

Stay connected with the Vortez Social Media pages:
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

Join in with the discussions on Discord