MSI Gaming Z RTX 2070 Graphics Card Review

MSI Gaming Z RTX 2070 The RTX launch has been packed with impressive graphics cards these last few weeks. We've seen new records being set for performance, and also some new ones for highest prices. I love the 2080 Ti, but its price is a kick in the pants, and the RTX 2080 is a much more promising price to performance ratio for those preparing for RT and DLSS style features. However, at the "entry" level of the RTX range is the RTX 2070. Offering big performance, and a much more wallet-friendly price, this is likely to be the mass-adoption card of the RTX range. Now, we have the latest MSI Gaming Z model in for testing. It comes with a massive Twin Frozr 7 cooler design, factory overclocked speeds, and a fist full of RGB for good measure. It's ticking all the right boxes for me, so let's get it on the bench and see what it can do! Features Core/Memory Boost Clock / Base Clock / Memory Speed 1830 MHz / 1410 MHz / 14Gbps 8GB GDDR6 DisplayPort x 3 / HDMI x 1 / USB Type-C x1 Twin Frozr 7 Thermal Design TORX Fan 3.0 with Double Ball Bearings - Dispersion fan blade: Steep curved blade accelerating the airflow. - Traditional fan blade: Provides steady airflow to massive heatsink below. Mastery of Aerodynamics: The heatsink is optimized for efficient heat dissipation, keeping your temperatures low and performance high. Zero Frozr technology: Stopping the fan in low-load situations, keeping a noise-free environment. RGB Mystic Light Customize colours and LED effects with exclusive MSI software and synchronize the look & feel with other components. Dragon Center 1 click to optimize all you need for smooth gaming. Specifications For in-depth specifications, please visit the official Palit product page here. What MSI Had to Say "The much anticipated return of MSI’s iconic dual fan GAMING series. Combining a mix of black and gunmetal grey with a classy brushed metal backplate, this masterpiece provides you premium design with magnificent and smooth RGB light effects on the outside. The new MSI GAMING card is designed to amaze you!" - MSI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cysBwsVXthw A Closer Look Just like many other MSI graphics cards, the RTX 2070 is a bit of a beast. It features their massive dual-fan cooler design and a rather wide design. Big means heavy, and to support that weight, you'll also find a full-length GPU brace. Not only does this help keep your card from flexing and sagging, but it also looks pretty cool too. The Twin Froze 7 design is the latest revision/evolution of their award-winning cooling system. MSI has often favoured dual fan over triple fans, and it's worked very well for them. Larger fans can move more air at lower RPM, which can mean much lower noise levels too. The top section of the card is sealed in tight too, meaning air is going to be forced right over those two radiators, and out the sides of the card. Dark and Light The card is pretty monotone, with blacks and greys making up the bulk of the design. However, there are RGB LED lights tucked into the sides of the fan housing, which will give you some customisation. It's good they went with such a dark card design though, as the lighting will be easier to match up with other components this way. So things aren't just all flat grey and black, MSI has mixed up a fair few textures here. There's an almost metallic sparkle to the fan surrounds, then both matte and rough textured blacks on the main shroud. POWER! The power delivery comes from both an 8-pin and 6-pin header. Nothing too crazy, but what we would expect from a 2070-class card. Backplate On the reverse of the card, things look even better! There's a gorgeous custom cut backplate that just oozes style; well, it does to me anyway. There are a few ventilation holes cut into it, but it's also provide passive cooling to the PCB. Of course, it also adds a lot of strength to the card overall too. Around the back, everything is pretty much as you would expect for an RTX card. There's are three DP, one HDMI, and that neat little USB Type-C display output. The most noticeable thing here is just how damn wide the card is; extending way beyond the rear bracket. How We Test Testing Procedure Here at eTeknix, we endeavour to disclose vital information regarding the benchmarking process so that readers can quantify the results and attempt to replicate them using their hardware. When it comes to our benchmarks in our reviews, the benchmarks are pretty self-explanatory although there are a few exceptions. Remember that your choice of graphics card, CPU, the silicon lottery, and other factors can yield different numbers, and there's always a margin for error when using any software. Therefore, your experience may vary. Testing Your Own System Links are provided below, as well as the settings we use. We encourage you to not just look at how one product compares to any other, but how it compares to your own. If you're looking to build a new system, you should benchmark your current PC using our benchmarks and settings where possible. You should then look at the percentage improvement from your current hardware to the hardware we tested to give you a ballpark figure of how much an upgrade this will provide you with. Graphics Card Test System Motherboard – Gigabyte Aorus Gaming 7 Z370 Processor – Intel Core i7-8700K @ 5.0 GHz RAM – Crucial Ballistix Gaming 32GB (4 x 8GB) 3000 MHz CPU Cooler – Noctua NH-D15S Power Supply – Be Quiet Power Zone 1000W Main Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis – Lian Li T80 Open Air Test Bench Operating System – Windows 10 64-bit Additional Hardware Killawatt style electricity usage meter wall plug Precision Gold N05CC Decibel meter Gaming Any technology which favours either AMD or NVIDIA is disabled where possible. More specifically, this refers to PhysX, Hairworks and similar technologies. Additionally, we also disable all forms of AA, including FXAA, to gauge performance levels which aren't impacted by sophisticated AA wherever possible. V-Sync is always disabled in our testing, as is FreeSync and G-Sync technologies or similar. Graphics card power usage set to optimised or balance, and the system power mode set to High Performance within Windows and the available GPU driver software. Identical settings are used for all resolutions unless otherwise stated. Games and Settings Used Rise of the Tomb Raider (Steam) DX12 Medium Preset Pure Hair Off Deus Ex (Steam) DX12 Medium Preset Ghost Recon: Wildlands (Uplay) Medium Preset Turf Effects Off Far Cry Primal (Uplay) Normal Preset Software Used 3DMark Fire Strike (download) FireStrike (1080p) Benchmark Unigine Superposition (download) 1080p Extreme Benchmark HWMonitor (download) Noise Everyone has a reasonable noise level preference when it comes to comes to components on a computer. Some can handle all fans at 100% load to keep temperatures down; some want an entirely silent computer. To accurately gauge the noise output of a graphics card, we position a Precision Gold N05CC one meter above our open-air test bench and take an average reading at idle and load. Noise levels in your own system or an enclosed system will likely be lower than this. Power Consumption We take power readings during idle state with no background applications running. Then again at 50% completion of the Unigine Superposition benchmark, using the average as the final published result. Temperatures We take temperature readings after 10 minutes of desktop idle with no background programs running, then take the recorded maximum delivered from Unigine Superposition after a 4K optimised run, confirming the numbers are accurate with HWMonitor. Furthermore, the ambient temperature is always kept +/- 1c from 21c. 3DMark & Unigine FireStrike The MSI Gaming Z RTX 2070 is a pretty fast card in its class. In 3DMark is performed faster than the G1 GTX 1080, and just behind the RTX 2080 class cards, which is right on the money as far as I'm concerned. It's also a bit faster than the MSI Armor RTX 2070, and given it's a little more expensive, has a bigger cooler and bigger overclock, that's exactly what we would hope for. Its performance puts it nearly slap bang in the middle of all three test runs too. At 5541, it scored just behind the Vega64 at 4K, and again ahead of the GTX 1080. FireStrike Extreme FireStrike Ultra Unigine Superposition 1080p Extreme The same is true for Unigine, with the RTX 2070 performing somewhat in the middle of the charts. Hitting 5303 at 1080p Extreme, it puts it ahead of the Armor RTX 207, and the GTX 1080. It's also quite a bit ahead of the AMD Vega 64 in this test too, and pretty close to the faster GTX 1080 Ti. In the 4K test, it scored 7006, putting it ahead of the 1070 Ti, VEGA 64, GTX 1080, and Armor 2070. The 1080 Ti still has the lead here though, but this is still an impressive score overall. Unigine Superposition 4K Optimised DirectX12 Gaming Benchmarks Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Gaming is obviously what we're all here to see, and while synthetic benchmarks only tell half the story, they do seem to have given us what we need to know. In all these benchmarks, the RTX 2070 is in the middle of the charts, with older cards sitting behind it, and the higher RTX models in front. Framerates clearly aren't an issue here, with 134.6 FPS at 1080p and 49.1 at 4K. 1080p 2160p Rise of the Tomb Raider Rise of the Tomb Raider faired even better, with a blazing 182.3 FPS at 1080p and 68.02 FPS at 4K. This is obviously a fast card, and for those who are gaming on 144 Hz monitors, you're going to get a lot of bang for your buck. If you're all about the pixels, then the RTX 2070 is looking like a strong replacement for the 1070 Ti. 1080p 2160p DirectX11 Gaming Benchmarks Far Cry Primal At 1080p, the Gaming Z RTX 2070 pulled way ahead, hitting an impressive 158 FPS that put it close to the performance of the RTX 2080 Ti. It also scored a tasty 60 FPS while gaming at 4K. The difference from one GPU to another isn't huge in this game though, but for those running it, the RTX 2070 has more than enough performance to spare. 1080p 2160p Ghost Recon: Wildlands Finally, we have Ghost Recon: Wildlands. While this is a more demanding game to run than Far Cry, its performance figures came out roughly the same this time around. It hit a 126 FPS at 1080p, and a steady 63.8 FPS while gaming at 4K. Either resolution is clearly no issue for this GPU, although if you wanted to increase fidelity settings at 4K, you're going to need a faster card to keep that 60 FPS goal in your sights. 1080p 2160p Overclocking, Noise, Heat and Power With the impressive Twin Frozr 7 cooler fitted to this card, we knew it was going to be running pretty cool and quiet. It's a fast chipset, and that does make a lot of heat, but Twin Frozr series coolers have often proved to be some of the best around. However, manufacturers like to play it safe, and rarely push the maximum OC on their hardware to improve reliability. We managed to squeeze the boost clock with a +175 MHz overclock. The memory was happy to push higher too, with a +625 MHz overclocked. This is a big speed boost and pushed our 3DMark score from 20543 to 21113, and our graphics score 22751 to 24201. Power and Heat At low load, the card is passive cooled and completely silent. However, even at full load, it was only 42 dBa stock, and 43 dBa once overclocked. At stock clocks the chipset was an insignificant 62c, and even when overclocked it only hit 66c which is pretty safe for this chipset. Meanwhile, it's able to score close to some high-end previous generation cards while using fewer watts in the process. Overall, a huge win for MSI. 3DMark Firestrike Acoustic Performance Stock Overclocked Thermal Performance Stock Overclocked Power Consumption Stock Overclocked Final Thoughts How Much Does it Cost? The launch prices of the RTX range are already started to break up a little bit, which each retailer trying to squeeze a deal out. Right now, it's anywhere from £589.99 to £633.35 on Amazon. Obviously, I'm happier at the sub £600 price range, as for £680 you're into 1080 Ti territory. Overview The MSI Gaming Z RTX 2070 is a fantastic gaming graphics card at a pretty competitive price. It performs just ever so slightly behind the 1080 Ti, but also costs up to £90 less than the 1080 Ti. However, despite the delays from Microsoft with their DirectX RT update, RTX does have a big edge. This is a newer card and has as yet untapped features such as RayTracing and DLSS. Once these taps are opened up and people get their hands on them, we're confident the appeal factor of the RTX series will improve for many. Armor or Gaming Z? As you may have seen in this review, the MSI Armor RTX 2070 performed fairly close to the Gaming Z. It's a bit cheaper and a decent entry level for the RTX 2070 series too. You can check out our review of that here. However, for a little more money, the Gaming Z is clocked higher, has a much more advanced power delivery and cooling system, and overclocks higher in our testing too. If you want more bang for your buck, the Gaming Z is by far one of the best RTX 2070 cards on the market. Of course, my point being you just have to pay more to get more; what a shocker! Should I Buy One? For gaming on high refresh rate displays at either 1080p or 1440p, the RTX 2070 will more than get the job done. It's a strong card with a solid feature set. Of course, it still has more features to come, so if you're eager to future proof for the DirectX RT update in the coming weeks, come join the fun! For 4K gaming, it'll hit that 60 FPS target in most games, with a mixture of medium to high settings too, giving you plenty of options.