BY CHRISTIAN GUYTONWith both AMD and Nvidia pushing their new GPUs, what better to do than pit them against
each other? Looking at the five new cards available and forced to pick just three, we decided
to focus on those that occupy the middle ground: the Radeon RX 5700 XT in the red corner,
and the GeForce RTX 2060 Super and 2070 Super repping for the green team. It’s worth
noting before we start that all three are awesome 1440p GPUs, although that’s not really in
the spirit of the “Head to Head,” so instead, three cards enter, one card leaves....RX 5700 XT vs. RTX 2060 Super
vs. RTX 2070 Super
Value
The GeForce RTX 2070 Super is
a fantastic refresh of the original
2070, providing better performance
for the same price. Unfortunately,
that original price is a bit steep
when compared to the other two
cards here—always upward of $500.
Compared to the RX 5700 XT, which
costs an even $400 and comes very
close to matching the 2070 Super
in our 1440p ultra tests, it’s a no-
brainer: The 5700 XT is simply the
better card when it comes to bang for
your buck. The 2060 Super doesn’t
have much of a chance here either—
while it’s priced at $400, too, the
performance is below that of the 5700
XT in the vast majority of games.
That said, it’s worth considering the
factory-overclocked models that are
available. Because the premium you
pay for a quality factory-overclocked
card scales with the original price
of the card, the 2070 Super is once
again cut out of the running here. The
2060 Super is almost in with a shout,
thanks to some admittedly excellent
models from the likes of EVGA and
MSI, but the 5700 XT has some good-
value overclocked cards, too, and
ultimately the difference simply isn’t
enough to swing the jury (that’s us—
we’re the jury).Winner: RX 5700 XTOverclocking
Unsurprisingly, the 2060 Super struggles
to be competitive in this area. Its boost
clock is stated by Nvidia to be 1,650MHz—
only 45MHz faster than the base clock on
AMD’s RX 5700 XT, despite sharing the
same price tag. So, it’s between the 5700
XT and the 2070 Super, then.
AMD has muddied this process with its
new inclusion of a “game clock” figure,
supposedly representing an operating
overclock for most games. In reality,
this figure is quite restrained, and many
games will make the GPU clock higher
anyway. The reported maximum boost
clock on the 5700 XT is a very impressive
1,905MHz, compared to the 2070 Super’s
more conservative 1,770MHz. It would be
easy to declare the 5700 XT the winner
here, but looking at manual overclocking
tells a different story.
The superior thermal design and lower
TDP mean that the 2070 Super is a lot
more receptive to manual overclocking.
The stock cooler on the 5700 XT holds
it back; if you’re a dedicated tinkerer,
you might be able to squeeze superior
performance from it via liquid cooling,
but otherwise the 2070 Super is easier to
overclock. This is the first time for a while
that AMD has been able to properly match
pace with Nvidia in the overclocking
department, though, so we’ll call it a tie.Winners: RX 5700 XT
and RTX 2070 SuperEfficiency
A recent statement from AMD
revealed that the potential operating
temperatures for the RX 5700 XT
could—somewhat alarmingly—reach
as high as 110 C, thanks to an enhanced
thermal monitoring system introduced
in the Radeon VII card. While that might
be good news for overclockers, it’s
not so great for anyone who wants an
efficient, quiet system. The single fan
on the baseline model runs quite loudly
under load, and the power draw is fairly
monstrous, too, at 225W. That’s a whole
10W more than the RTX 2070 Super,
which is an ostensibly more powerful
card. Considering that the performance
at 1440p is slightly inferior to that of
the 2070 Super, AMD is sadly kicked
out of this bout.
AMD cards have always had issues
with power management compared to
Nvidia, typically guzzling more system
power than similar cards from the green
giant. The RTX 2070 Super is relatively
demanding, but it’s a more powerful
card. The 2060 Super, on the other hand,
has a TDP of a paltry 175W, making it by
far the most energy-efficient card we’re
looking at here. We could look at the
Super cards in terms of noise and heat
production, but the 2060 Super and 2070
Super are relatively close there anyway,
so we have a clear winner.Winner: RTX 2060 SuperROUND 1 ROUND 2 ROUND 3
quickstart
20 MAXIMUMPC OCT 2019 maximumpc.com