Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super: A Killer Card For The Money

AMD’s new line of “Navi” graphics cards was barely a surprise by the time the company detailed it at E3 (leakers did it in), but another GPU manufacturer still had a few shockers up its sleeve.

- Chris Stobing

With the GeForce RTX Superfamily, Nvidia unveiled three new graphics cards. (AMD’s Navi launch on July 7 added more.) Neck-deep in the world of GPUs as we are, even we were caught off-guard by the Supers’ sudden arrival.

We were also surprised by this: Providing near-GeForce RTX 2080-level speeds at a much lower price, the RTX 2070 Super is a rocket at its price point. The card consistently hit our expectations and exceeded them once we ran some overclocking tests. Perhaps Nvidia overshot the market last August with its first RTX cards, but this is a deft, impressive course correction. The GeForce RTX 2070 Super earns our Editors’ Choice as the $499 high-end card that the GeForce RTX 2080 should have been. Its stellar performance at its price makes up for the wait—and makes it without peer.

BUILDING A BETTER RTX 2070

When Nvidia first announced its GeForce RTX line of cards, the reveal was met with “ooh” and “ahh,” followed quickly by a resounding “oof” when the prices were announced: $499 for the RTX 2070, $699 for the RTX 2080, and a hefty $999 for the RTX 2080 Ti. (Those prices were the starting prices for its stock—or reference—boards, not to be confused with Nvidia’s slightly upticked Founders Edition cards.)

Good graphics cards have never been the cheapest upgrade component for your gaming PC, but the new pricing paradigm that Nvidia set with the RTX cards put the RTX 2070 and higher cards on a high shelf for most folks, with the RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti essentially establishing a new “elite” price tier.