In an earlier post we reviewed the mighty RTX 3080, which was widely popularized for its performance compared to the 2080ti. However in this post we will talk about Nvidia RTX 3070 vs RTX 3080 mainly oriented on a price to performance perspective. It can be a daunting task to choose one of the RTX 30 series for your build or to upgrade your current rig. Needless to say all the three newly released GPU’s are way more powerful than their predecessors.
RTX 3070 vs RTX 3080 Specs
| RTX 3070 | RTX 3080 | |
| Dimensions | 9.5″ L(242 mm)-4.4″W (112 mm) | 11.2″ L (285 mm) – 4.4 W (112mm) |
| CUDA cores | 5888 | 8704 |
| Architecture | Ampere | Ampere |
| Boost Clock speed | 1.73GHz | 1.71GHz |
| VRAM | 8 GB GDDR6 | 10GB GDDR6X |
| Tensor cores | 184 3rd Gen | 272 3rd Gen |
| Memory Clock | 14 Gbps | 19 Gbps |
| Memory Interface Width | 256-bit | 320-bit |
| Ports | HDMI 2.1, 3x DisplayPort 1.4a | HDMI 2.1, 3 x DisplayPort 1.4 |
| TDP | 220W | 320W |
You might be wondering why a review is even necessary when clearly the 3080 stands ahead of the 3070 in almost every aspect. Both these have PCIe 4.0 x16 and dual slot design. The RTX 3090 however is an absolute ultimate level powerhouse GPU! We will talk about it in a separate post.
The architecture is common for the GPU’s, while the difference is brought out by the number of transistors and cores. 28 billion of transistors vs 17. However the fact is that the 3070 is more of a budget oriented GPU if you wanna opt for the new series.
Although it doesn’t have the same monstrous power house performance of the 3090 or even the 3080, you can still enjoy all the new upgrades of the 3000 series. Among them DLSS 2.0 is the most widely discussed and praised. Since the dawn of resolution enhancement, frame rates has to be compromised.
Now with the RTX 3000 series DLSS frame rates can be in parallel with the resolution, especially at 4K. Read our post on the RTX 3080 for complete review of DLSS. And both the 3080 and 3070 are way ahead of their 2070, 2080ti predecessors. Meaning these cards aren’t just minor upgrades to the old mechanism.
Both the 3080 and 3070 supports HDMI 2.1 ports. Therefore capable of displaying 4K @ 120 Hz or 8K @60 Hz. The GDDRX6, GDDR6 VRAMs ensure fast and accurate gameplay combined with PCIe 4.0 slots. Makes sure your motherboard meets these requirements.
RTX 3070 vs 3080 Benchmark
Again we mentioned how great of an upgrade is the 3080 when compared with the 2080ti. The same applies to the 3070 vs 2070. After all how can the performance be not enhanced with the 3rd gen AI processors tensor cores, 2nd gen Ray-Tracing and DLSS? So lets take a proper look at benchmark performances for both the cards.
Although you guessed it right and definitely anticipated the performance of 3080 to overshadow the 3070 lets know by how much it actually is. In terms of multi rendering and lighting effects the 3080 is a good 104 fps and 56 fps ahead of the 3070. And its the same with the peak effects of those features.
Also in terms of reflection handling and texture detail the 3080 surpasses the 3070 by a considerable amount of frame rates. All these benchmark tests were handled by professionals to determine by how much the 3080 outperforms the 3070. However in our opinion these benchmarks are only necessary if you plan on performing tasks that require high GPU power. Such as accelerating video, 3D modeling, high resolution video editing are some such activities.
Now that we’ve seen what the benchmark tests have output, lets jump to our purpose of the GPU, Gaming the real deal!
Gaming
We have already discussed the gaming power in our review about the 3080. To summarize, the 3080 is more than capable of running any AAA title in 4K at 60 fps with the settings set high. In fact if you pair the 3080 with the correct CPU and RAM the average FPS for 4K is as high as 106!
With the 3070 the average FPS for 4K stops at somewhere around 80. But hey that for me is more than enough! Truthfully the real question here is how well does the 3070 outperform the RTX 2070? According to Nvidia the performance leap is by 60%. Lets see what that exactly means.
RTX 3070 vs 2070
With the additional cores, the 2nd gen ray-tracing and higher VRAM the 3070 is incredibly powerful than the 2070. The 3070 reaches 100+ fps in Minecraft and Control while the 2070 stops somewhere around 70 with RTX on at 1440P.
In terms of texture detail, reflection handling and lighting effects the 3070 outranks the 2070 super on an average of more than 50 fps. Therefore as a whole we can conclude that the RTX 3000 series is so much better than the 2000 series in every aspect.
3070 vs 3080 Price
The RTX 3080 starts with $699 while the RTX 3070 is priced at $499. Seems only fair considering the hardware differences in each and the performance given.
Who is the winner?
As usual this depends entirely on your requirements and needs. On a purely gaming perspective the 3070 is a super awesome upgrade from any of the 2000 series GPUs. Considering the DLSS, next gen ray-tracing, Tensor cores, HDMI 2.1, PCI 4.0 and improved loading times. Therefore we believe at 500 bucks it is a great budget oriented GPU upgrade ad you can still enjoy all the new features of the new 3000 series.
However if you plan on carrying out heavy GPU intensive tasks the 3080 might sound more of a reasonable choice. Not that the 3070 can’t handle it! But if you want the absolute best and plan on investing some serious cash for your GPU oriented workloads, the 3080 provides a little edge over the 3070.
It’s just that the 3070 won’t provide the same environment for 4K gaming as the 3080 but for 1440P it is undoubtedly the budget winner. Although at the end of the day both the GPUs are cheaper than their 2000 series predecessors.
