NVIDIA
GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition
AUTHOR:Onie T.
TESTED BY:James L.
Published:

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition offers performance close to the RTX 3070 Ti, with a slight trade-off in efficiency and gaming performance. It handles 1080p gaming smoothly but demonstrates only average results at 4K.

Launched with a $499 USD MSRP, it is currently priced around $700 USD from partner manufacturers across various online retailers. While it remains a strong contender for mid-range gaming, the 8GDDR6 VRAM could limit its capabilities in more demanding future titles. For those considering an upgrade, the newer 40-series cards may offer better value in terms of price-to-performance.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

THE GOOD

  • Performance

    Performed very similarly to the RTX 3070 Ti across all gaming and synthetic tests.

THE BAD

  • Memory

    Limited to 8GB GDDR6 VRAM, affecting 4K gameplay performance.

THE REST

  • Overall

    Adequate for most current games but may struggle with newer titles at higher settings.

Hardware
HardwareNotes

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition utilizes 8nm technology and is built on NVIDIA's Ampere architecture. The card is based on the GA104 graphics processor, which has 17,400 million transistors within a 392 mm² die. It features 96 Render Output Units (ROPs), 184 texture mapping units, 5888 shading units, and 46 ray tracing cores. With a typical board power of 220W, the card tested by Labs is manufactured by NVIDIA, and has a dual-slot, dual-fan design that fits in most computer cases. It has the standard RTX 30-series 3 x DisplayPort v1.4 output, and 1 x HDMI v2.1 ports.

In the Box

1 of 4

Front of the box.

Graphics Processor

1 of 3

Architecture
Processor Release Date
GPU Chip
Technology
Transistors
Die Size
Interface
L1 Cache
L2 Cache
L3 Cache
Board Design

1 of 5

Front of the card.

Length
Width
Height
Weight
Slot Width
TDP
Fan Size
Number of Fans
HDMI
Display Port
USB-C
Cores & Clocks
Rasterization Cores
Ray Tracing Cores
AI Acceleration Cores
Base Clock
Game Clock
Boost Clock
Memory Type
Memory Size
Memory Data Rate
Memory Bandwidth
Memory Bus
Features & Software
Features & SoftwareNotes

The RTX 3070 supports DirectX 12 Ultimate and NVIDIA's GeForce Experience and G-SYNC features. As well as NVIDIA's full suite of DLSS 3 and ray tracing technologies.

It features NVIDIA's 7th Generation Encode, and 5th Generation Decode, with full support for H264 Encode/Decode, H265/HEVC Encode/Decode, but only AV1 Decode.

Supported Features
Adaptive Sync
DirectX
OpenGL
Vulkan
Ray Tracing
DirectML
OpenCL
CUDA
ReBar
Encode / Decode
H.264
H.265 (HEVC)
AV1
VP9
Performance
PerformanceNotes

The RTX 3070 fits snugly in the middle of the 30-series performance spectrum. Although it is outperformed by the RTX 3070 Ti (as expected), the difference is minimal, with the 3070 delivering near-equal results in most gaming tests.

Gaming Performance
Ray Tracing Performance
Productivity & Efficiency
Productivity
Synthetics
Test Configuration
Test ConfigurationNotes

We will periodically retest graphics cards with updated drivers. We continuously monitor and update our results for accuracy. Stay tuned for the latest test results and insights on this product and others as we aim to provide up-to-date information on a consistent basis.

We actively address test bench variance in our evaluation process. Our methodology involved validation and calibration procedures to ensure consistency and reliability across all tests. The verified testbed variance for benchmarks in this product page is +/- 0.25%. 

By monitoring and controlling variables such as hardware configurations, ambient temperatures, and system settings, we minimize potential sources of variance that could affect our results. This detailed approach enables us to deliver the most objective and accurate assessment.

Tested Settings
Drivers

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