The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 is powered by the Ampere GA104 GPU. This GPU has 5,888 CUDA cores spread across 46 Streaming Multiprocessors, based on the same Nvidia Ampere architecture as the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090. And, as with those cards, there are a ton of improvements both to raw performance and to power efficiency here that drive this mid-range graphics card to performance levels matched only by the very best graphics card of the last generation.
The biggest generation-on-generation improvement from Turing to Ampere is that both data paths on the Streaming Multiprocessor (SM) now support FP32 workloads, which sees an effective doubling of CUDA cores per SM. That’s why, while the RTX 2070 had 36 SMs, it had just 2,304 CUDA cores. So, while the RTX 3070 only boosts SM count up by 27%, it more than doubles the CUDA core count, which massively boosts raw rasterization performance.
That’s impressive enough, but we’re also getting second-generation RT cores and third-generation Tensor cores, which means both ray tracing and DLSS are much more performant and efficient. Ray tracing especially is much faster, as this new RT core brings twice the throughput as the first-generation RT core found on graphics cards like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080. This is why in ray tracing-heavy workloads like the new 3DMark Port Royal benchmark, the RTX 3070 is able to keep up with the RTX 2080 Ti, even though the last-generation flagship has much more RT cores.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 is also the only graphics card in the Ampere lineup with a reasonable level of power consumption, with a TGP (total graphics power) rating of 220W, 100W less than the RTX 3080. This means that cooling requirements are going to be a whole lot less intensive than the more powerful Ampere cards, which should be excellent news for folks that don’t have a ton of room in their cases for larger graphics cards.
That’s a whole lot of jargon, but what’s important here is that while the RTX 3070 is a much smaller chip, it’s able to pack way more meat into it, at a lower price, making last-generation flagship performance available to the mainstream.
But beyond just straight generational improvements to the architecture, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 brings a ton of features that are going to be super useful whether you’re into PC gaming or are just stuck in an endless cycles of video calls.
One of the biggest features here is Nvidia Broadcast, which is aimed at folks that are streaming games, but the utility is much more broad. For instance, in video calls, this piece of software will use the AI Tensor Cores to either blur or replace your background, and do it much more effectively than built-in options in programs like Zoom. The best part is that it works no matter what video conferencing software you’re using. Whether you’re on Google Meets or Discord, OBS or Zoom, you can use this software to get rid of the background.
This software also bundles in the RTX Voice software that debuted earlier this year, masking background noise out of your microphone, or even out of the voice inputs of the other people you’re in a meeting with.
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There are also a couple of technologies that are going to directly benefit gamers, namely Nvidia Reflex and RTX IO. RTX IO is perhaps the most important, especially with the next generation PS5 and Xbox Series X around the corner, bringing with them truly next-generation data access through their SSD solutions.
Nvidia’s RTX IO will work with the upcoming Microsoft DirectStorage API to optimize the delivery of data straight from your SSD to the GPU. The way it works now is when a game needs to access data, that data goes from your storage to your CPU, then to system memory, where it’s then fed back through your CPU to your graphics card, to then finally go to your VRAM.
RTX IO, when it’s available, will cut the CPU out of that equation, cutting out one of the biggest bottlenecks in modern PC gaming. There aren’t any games that utilize this storage API yet, but when it does we should see massive cuts to both load times and to overhead in massive open world games like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.
Nvidia Reflex, on the other hand, is available now, and simply cuts latency between your CPU and GPU by clearing out the Render Queue, so frames are only rendered when they’re needed.
As with the rest of the Nvidia Ampere lineup, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 is a fully-featured product that does more than just render the best PC games. If any of this software sounds useful, an RTX graphics card should be on your list, and the RTX 3070 just so happens to be the best value RTX graphics card on the market. Until Nvidia decides to launch a GeForce RTX 3060, the RTX 3070 is going to be the graphics card we recommend to a vast majority of users.
Source – Techradar
