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The RTX 3070 and RTX 2070 Super are mid-range 70-class GPUs from Nvidia. The newer 30-series offering is the spiritual successor to the older 2070 Super. Both target 1440p gaming without frame drops and stutters.
Although the 2070 Super has been discounted officially, the GPU can be bought at a steal price of around $200 to $300 from the used market via sites like eBay and Craigslist. Multiple listings of the GPU can be spotted online thanks to its popularity in the mining days.
Thus, many gamers might be confused between the Turing and Ampere cards now that they are both available at or below MSRP. The high price of the new Lovelace 70-class card is causing many to stick with the older offerings from the company.
Let's analyze the performance of the two GPUs and find out which is a better choice for gamers.
Note: This article is subjective and reflects the opinions of the writer
The competition between the RTX 2070 Super and the RTX 3070 boils down to the pricing of the GPUs
Before analyzing the performance in video games, let's check the on-paper specs and theoretical performance marks of the video cards.
Specs
The RTX 2070 Super and the 3070 are quite impressive video cards on paper. The GPUs are decked with cores to ensure they can deliver solid rasterization and ray-tracing performance. It is no wonder that the cards keep up quite well in video games.
The older 2070S is based on the TU104 graphics processor. Under the hood, the GPU packs 2,560 CUDA cores, 160 Texture Mapping Units (TMUs), 64 Render Output Units (ROPs), and 40 RT cores. It has 8 GB of 14 Gbps GDDR6 VRAM, which has a bandwidth of 448 GB/s.
The newer RTX 3070 is based on the GA104 graphics processor. The GPU packs 5,8888 CUDA cores, over 100% more than the older Turing-based card. It also comes with 184 TMUs, 96 ROPs, and 46 RT cores. All of these specs are a step up from the last-gen product.
It is worth noting that the side-by-side specs comparison of the two GPUs above is not scientific as they are based on completely different architectures.
Performance differences
It is no surprise that the RTX 2070 Super is slower than the RTX 3070 across the board. However, the question is by how much.
According to benchmarks published on the YouTube channel Benchmark, we can see that the 3070 takes a massive 25-30% lead depending on the video game it is being tested in. Thus, the extra cores and the newer architecture pay off well.
A similar trend continues across synthetic benchmark software like 3DMark Time Spy and Unigine Superposition.
Thus, gamers will gain a massive performance boost by opting for the newer Ampere-based 70-class GPU. However, one needs to consider the pricing of these GPUs before making the final decision.
Pricing
The 2070 Super can only be found in the second-hand market these days. These listings often contain used mined cards, some of which might be prone to operational issues or even failure. Thus, one can check our used GPU buying guide to find out how to avoid these cards.
Since mining or any continued load does not reduce the performance of a GPU, the cards can be easily bought in case gamers want to save a buck.
Brand-new models of the 3070 start from around $479. However, like the 2070 Super, the RTX 3070 can also be bought second-hand. The GPU starts from around $340 on eBay. Thus, the GPUs are pretty close to each other in price.
Conclusion
The 2070 Super can easily handle games at 1440p in the highest settings these days. However, the RTX 3070 is a much faster card as compared to the Turing-based offering. The GPU is a QHD gaming champion. It even handles multiple titles at 4K with ease.
In addition, the price difference between the two cards in the second-hand market is around $50 to $70. It makes sense to spend some extra money for about 30% more performance, longer driver support, and better DLSS performance. Thus, the RTX 3070 is a better option for gaming in 2023.
