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How do you choose an RTX 2070 manufacturer, make and model for overclocking ?

Denna
Level 11
When selecting a video card for GPU intensive gaming, how can you tell which card is durably built to last while overclocked ?

Nearly every GPU manufacturer has a gaming brand meant for demanding GPU applications. For Asus, it's the Strix lineup.

I don't think many people consider how overclocking affects the life expectancy of a video card.

It's all about trying to get a video card to support an application's highest settings.

The selection process usually begins with finding the most performance within a specific price range.

After having read many GPU reviews over the years, it appears component quality can vary on the same video card.

Do you have to use an Nvidia 80's series card to have better component quality ?

Is there a video card manufacturer that routinely over engineers their video cards to support a long life expectancy while overclocked ?
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6 REPLIES 6

Nate152
Moderator
Hey Denna !

To answer some of your questions

Nvidia has the voltage capped (1.093v for pascal) and GPU Boost 3.0 will throttle your gpu if the power target or a certain temperature is met, so basically it is Nvidia's way of idiot proofing them. Aside from that any overclock you can get is free performance, the Strix 1070 averages a 10 FPS gain at 1440p.

With GPU Boost 3.0 you want one that has good cooling, otherwise you could run into temp issues which leads to throttling. A water block will help sustain high overclocks if fans can't do the job, the Strix gpu's have great coolers and have a reputation as being one of the best.

As far as longevity goes, it will still last a lifetime because Nvidia limits the voltage, (1.063v stock to 1.093v isn't much) and will throttle clock speed if temp gets too high. I'm not sure what it will be for Turing but I imagine those will use GPU Boost 3.0 - 4.0 too.

The cooler, the better !

Korth
Level 14
You usually can't tell a whole lot in advance, only enough to narrow your list by excluding products which fall outside your specs or budget.

Reference cards are built to reference spec, of course, while factory-overclocked cards will have higher clocks than reference, of course. But no real way to tell beforehand how much higher they can go.

Good reviews will give you an idea of what to expect, especially if many reviews compare many cards. The best reviews will provide some takeapart/analysis to show you what sort of hardware is involved. The card maker rarely modifies the core basics - GPU ASIC and VRAM, etc - but often improves the VRMs and cooling hardware so that the core parts can reliably be pushed harder and faster. Nonreference ASUS cards tend to have quite robust power and cooling hardwares, STRIX and MATRIX/POSEIDON/etc cards tend to consistently do well on overclocking.

My personal experience - which is not truly extensive - is that when a manufacturer offers different tiers of the same product then you'll almost never be able to push a lower-rated and cheaper version to the specs offered by the next-higher-rated and more costly one, the manufacturer binned parts and of course doesn't use the best ones on products which sell at lower costs. Yes, an argument can be made that sometimes manufacturers will deliberately low-bin the better stuff to fill demand on the faster-selling stuff ... but don't count on it and don't be disappointed if you lose a gamble based on this hope/expectation, some people always win this game (and some try to play the multiple-RMA-reroll game until they get better results) but the vast majority only get exactly what they paid for. The corollary is that when you buy a card from a manufacturer which doesn't pre-bin for multiple card models then your chances of lucking out on epic parts are (theoretically) better.

Silicon yields - so-called "ASIC qualities" - also improve over time. Later-run parts tend to have better overclocking thresholds and power efficiencies than early-run parts. Later-run parts also tend to have more reviews and "under the hood" information available online. There's just no real way to know how well first-wave cards are going to overclock in advance. The premium on factory overclocks is highest on the very earliest products and on the very best of the best of the latest products within any card family - you could pay +100% price for +15% performance, it would be smarter to SLI/CF a second card!
"All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others." - Douglas Adams

[/Korth]

Heini
Level 11
For OC'ing with temps and mfg support in mind I'd choose between ASUS & EVGA. ASUS cards run cooler and OC a little better (on avg.) but EVGA's rma procedure is great.

Denna
Level 11
Nate152, Korth and Heini,

Thanks for the detailed responses.

Does anyone see reduced video card life expectancy when increasing power and voltage with a vBIOS mod - with adaptive power management enabled ?

Korth
Level 14
Short answer: warranty is usually 3 years and usually requires that the card isn't ever operated outside rated limits or ever taken apart. Different manufacturers have different products and different warranty policies, it's worth comparing all your alternatives because even if you never make a warranty claim you can at least get a rough measure in how confident the manufacturers are in their own products (or in sustaining customer loyalty).

Yes, overclocking your card voids warranty in the strictest definition, but the manufacturer may choose to honor warranty on failed OC parts nonetheless - at their discretion, on a case-by-case basis.

These days there are tamperproofing indicators built into firmware. They know if you've deliberately explicitly clicked YES YES YES on the software, they know if you've bridged that LN2 jumper, they know if you've modded the VBIOS. They probably don't know if you've physically volt-modded the thing, but it's probably a safe bet to assume they do if you plan to lean on warranty coverage to replace/repair failed parts.
"All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others." - Douglas Adams

[/Korth]

Silent_Scone
Super Moderator
It can be difficult pre-launch to make an informed decision, which is why it's always a good idea to wait. NVIDIA are now opposed to vendors touting hire clock speeds out of the box, too. So it's down to both cooling performance and build quality.


The Dual, Turbo and even the Strix to an extent have the benefit of being shorter in length than some of the other vendor parts. One model from MSI comes in at over a whopping 33cm, which will be too big for some builds.
13900KS / 8000 CAS36 / ROG APEX Z790 / ROG TUF RTX 4090