RTX 2060 Super vs RTX 2070
Does the Baby-Step Up From the 2060 Super Make Much of a Difference?
So, you’re considering upgrading to the RTX series, awesome! They’re amazing. In a market defined by small steps, they were one giant leap, but even if you’ve come to the conclusion that RTX is your future, deciding which one is still quite a task.
The reason the consumer path before you is a treacherous one is because interspersed between each standard RTX incrementation are suped-up versions of each card. So, instead of having the relatively simple choice between, say, the 2060 and the 2070, you must also consider the 2060 Super.
Well, by throwing the 2060 Super in a vs match with the 2070, we’re going to investigate just how big the performative gaps are between these middlemen and the standard RTX GPUs.
Architecture
RTX GPUs, middle cards or no, have their Turing architecture in common, albeit in different variants, namely, the TU106-410-A1 variant in the Super and the TU106-400A-A1 variant in the 2070. Both variants support DirectX 12 Ultimate, meaning that they can play any modern game without a hitch. RTX Turing architecture also means these GPUs have hardware ray tracing capabilities and deep learning Tensor cores.
The difference between these variants largely comes down to the number of components, for instance, the 2060 Super’s variant contains 2176 CUDA cores, compared with the 2070’s 2304. The 2070 also features bolstered specialist core counts with 288 Tensor cores to the Super’s 272. Other defining aspects of their variants include the number of texture units. The 2070 has 144, while the Super has just 136.
There are also some similarities to consider in the form of 10.8 billion transistors, 64 render output units, and identical 64KB and 4MB L1 and L2 caches. However, with 2 extra SMs, the 2070 technically has a greater cache capacity.
It seems like the 2070 is decidedly better looking at these specs alone, but the 2060 Super shows some fighting spirit when it comes to clock speed. Its 1680MHz base clock is 60MHz faster than the 2070’s, and the boosted rate is also quicker.
Cooling
You’ll find RTX cards are predominantly axial (open-air) GPUs, but they do come as blower type cards if that’s what you prefer. Sharing the same relatively low 89°C thermal capacity, it might be worth your while putting extra focus on cooling systems when you do your shopping around.
During gaming, the 175-watt 2070 should stabilize in the mid-70s, but it’s not unheard of for them to reach well into the 80s under a full load. That’s perfectly fine, but you may be able to lower that load temp using MSI Afterburner
The 2060 Super (also 175-watt) tends to run a little cooler and pretty quiet too. There have been instances of gamers claiming their 2060 Super blowers reach 90°C, which obviously isn’t ideal, but both GPUs are designed to throttle as soon as capacities are breached. If you OC more often than not, a custom loop is the only way to go.
Dimensions
Dimensions-wise the RTX 2060 Super and the RTX 2070 are interchangeable. From their 12nm process size to 445mm2 die size, right through to overall measurements, these GPUs are exactly the same.
Measuring in at 4.435” (H) x 9” (L) x 2-slot (W), they’re pretty middling in size. They’re not massive, but they’re by no means diminutive either. They’re unlikely to be longer than your motherboard, which is nice if you like avoiding messy overhangs.
Resolution and Frames Per Second
Right, we’ve talked an awful lot about specs, but until they prove themselves in real life gaming situations, it’s all just conjecture, so let’s get down to business.
1080p
In 1080p at max settings, it can be close at times, but the 2070 really starts to show us that they’re not as close in the market as we assumed. The Super manages to snag a win here and there. In CSGO, for example, it beats the 2070 by almost 20fps, a 7% difference, but overall, at 1080p, you’re looking at an average 21% victory for the 2070.
1440p
Things don’t get any better for the 2060 S when gaming is scaled up to 1440p. To be fair, they both attain respectable 83.5 and 104.9 frames per second averages, but the percentage gap between them increases to 26%.
4K
The pixel-heavy workload of 4K gaming proves a challenge for both cards, but the 2070 keeps its head above water with a much-desired 60+fps. You’ll find the Super can stretch to around the 50fps zone. Ultimately, though, the 2070 retains that 26% lead.
Ray Tracing
Belonging to the prestigious RTX family, both the 2060 Super and the 2070 have hardware ray tracing capabilities, so whichever you pick, prepare for some truly breathtaking gaming! It’s important to note; however, that ray tracing isn’t just a have-it-or-you-don’t function. It’s actually more nuanced than that, with ray tracing performance varying depending on the hardware a GPU has.
As it does with most computational equipment, performance quality comes down to core count. The more RT cores a GPU has, the more efficiently and smoothly it will facilitate ray tracing in games. With 36 RT cores – 2 more than the Super – the 2070 is better equipped for ray tracing, how much so is a difficult question to answer or even measure. What we do know is that RT cores unburden SMs by doing their own bounding box tests and ray-triangle intersection tests, leaving the SMs to focus on other graphical processes.
VRAM
Given the 2070’s expansive architecture, Nvidia needed some way of boosting the Super beyond its standard 2060 capabilities without exceeding the 2070’s performance levels, and a big part of how they achieve this is by giving them the same memory format.
With matching 8GB GDDR6 buffers, 256-bit bus memory, 448GBps bandwidth, and an overall memory speed of 1750MHz (14GBps), both units are primed for some silky-smooth rendering. 8GB is considered a prerequisite for 4K gaming and the perfect GPU memory capacity to aim for if you’re interested in future-proofing your set up, so there are no wrong answers in this category.
Verdict
No big surprises here, folks. The RTX 2070 is the higher-performing GPU for gaming at any resolution, but there was a little surprise in just how much better the 2070 is than the 2060 Super. We didn’t quite see a 30% difference between these cards, but the 2070 did get nail-bitingly close.
Many gamers consider 30% an adequate margin to warrant upgrading to a new GPU, so if you’ve already got the 2060 Super, you might not consider selling and upgrading worth the effort. On the other hand, if you’re trying to decide which of these two to upgrade to, we’d go with the 2070. There’ll probably be a minimum of $100 difference, but you rarely see this kind of boost in performance between neighboring, half-step GPUs.