Msi geforce rtx 2070 armor 8g oc review: MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Armor Review

MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Armor Review

Written by

Matthew Lambert

December 19, 2018 | 17:00

Tags: #gddr6 #geforce-rtx-2070 #gpu #graphics-card #rtx-2070 #turing

Companies: #msi #nvidia

1 — MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Armor Review2 — Test Setup3 — 3DMark and VRMark4 — Battlefield 15 — Deus Ex: Mankind Divided6 — Middle-Earth: Shadow of War7 — Total War: Warhammer II8 — Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus9 — World of Tanks Encore10 — Power and Thermals11 — Overclocking12 — Performance Analysis and Conclusion

Manufacturer: MSI

UK price (as reviewed): £459.99 (inc. VAT)

US price (as reviewed): $519.99 (exc. tax)

Given that the RTX 2070 is the cheapest means of obtaining RTX hardware, it makes sense for board partners to have offerings that are as close to the MSRP as possible, which here in the UK is £460, and this is especially true given how awesome the Founders Edition is, as competing with that card on price puts you in dangerous territory. Such cards won’t feature overclocks or fancy features – take Palit’s RTX 2070 Dual, for example – but they may still tempt that slice of the market that craves RTX hardware but not at a cost of £800 or even £1,200, however small that slice may be.

The MSI RTX 2070 Armor, then, is a rather different card to the RTX 2070 Gaming Z that we’ve already seen from the company. Coming in at £120-£140 less expensive, it uses the non-binned variant of the TU106 GPU (TU106-400) and ships with both the core and memory at stock speeds. An OC version of the same card, probably using the more expensive binned GPU (TU106-400A), is also available for £525 or thereabouts.

The black and white colour scheme keeps things simple and neutral, which is important in this RGB-crazy world we inhabit. Speaking of, the MSI/Dragon logo section along the top edge is RGB-illuminated, and as you’d expect this is compatible with MSI’s Mystic Light software.

The cooler shroud is plastic, but overall build quality is still high thanks in part to a bracing bracket on the PCB and of course the full-cover metal backplate. The card is long, tall, and exceeds two slots, so it’s important to ensure you can accommodate it properly. Some sort of anti-sag mechanism might be worth looking at too, as the card weighs over 1.1kg and doesn’t come with one or indeed any other accessory.

Despite only being rated as a 175W card, the design incorporates both a six-pin and an eight-pin PCIe power connector, meaning total power headroom with the PCIe slot delivery included amounts to 300W. That’s overkill, but most PSUs will have the necessary connectors these days.

The display outputs fall in line with the reference specifications – we haven’t seen any board partner deviate from these, and we can’t see much of a reason to do so, so all good there.

MSI has switched to Torx 3.0 fans on its premium offerings, leaving the Armor with the older-generation Torx 2.0 models. These have been used very successfully on numerous cards before, though, so that’s hardly a concern. You get two of them, each with the usual alternating blade design (one for increasing airflow, one for optimising direction), 14 blades in total, and double ball bearings. With Zero Frozr support, the fans will switch off entirely whenever the GPU is below 60°C.

Pleasingly, the backplate uses thermal pads to draw heat away from the rear of the core and memory. Meanwhile, the primary cooler comprises five heat pipes that are squared off and make contact with the GPU through a layer of what MSI calls ‘Premium Thermal Compound’. There are two aluminium fin stacks, and we like that all visible copper has been nickel-plated, as it maintains neutral tones. The heatsink fills the volume of the card well, and it’s directly connected to all memory modules and taller VRM components via thermal pads. Meanwhile, additional VRM circuitry that’s is almost flush with the PCB is cooled by the close-quarters cooling plate. MSI also says it has shaped the fins in a way that will guide airflow efficiently to the heat pipes, so it’ll be interesting to see how it does in terms of thermals.

MSI claims to be using ‘beefed up’ circuitry here, but exactly what has been given the bovine treatment isn’t specified. It seems to have opted for a 6+2 phase power delivery on its oversized PCB, which looks very similar to the one used on the RTX 2070 Gaming Z – it even has empty spots where the additional VRM components would go.

Overall the design here is solid all round; time to probe the Armor and find out how it performs where it counts.

Graphics processor Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070, 1,410MHz (1,620MHz boost)
Pipeline 2,304 stream processors, 288 Tensor Cores, 36 RT Cores, 144 texture units, 64 ROPs
Memory 8GB GDDR6, 14Gbps effective
Bandwidth 448GB/s, 256-bit interface
Compatibility DirectX 12, Vulcan, OpenGL 4.5
Outputs 3 x DisplayPort 1.4a, 1 x HDMI 2.0b, 1 x USB-C VirtualLink
Power connections 1 x eight-pin PCIe, 1 x six-pin PCIe, top-mounted
Size 309mm long, 155mm tall, 50mm deep (~2. 5-slot)
Warranty Two years

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Review: MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Armor 8G — Graphics

The performance level currently on offer from GeForce RTX 2070 is such that partners need to be precise with their positioning. Cards ought to be priced below the faster GTX 1080 Ti and should ideally sit alongside the GTX 1080 in the sub-£500 bracket. Nvidia has identified £460 as the sweet spot, and in a somewhat rare turn of events, almost every major partner has a card available for that exact fee.

We’ve already seen examples from Palit and EVGA, and today we turn our attention to MSI, whose GeForce RTX 2070 Armor 8G is in for review.

It is worth pointing out that MSI has a total of nine RTX 2070 SKUs in its portfolio, but stern competition from Nvidia’s own £550 Founders Edition is such that the £600 Gaming Z is a tough sell. The simpler, more cost-effective Armor 8G appears to be the safer bet, and first impressions of build quality are actually quite good.

We’ve seen other partners skimp on certain features at this price point, but MSI retains a decent overall standard. The dual-fan cooler employs Torx 2.0 fans that switch off when core temperature drops below 60ºC, the aluminium heatsink covers nearly the entire PCB while making good contact with the vital components, and the two-tone colour scheme works well. Fans of an all-black build are obviously going to need to look elsewhere, but the splash of white around the left fan adds something a bit different and we quite like the end result.

It is also good to see a backplate included as standard, as this is something that rival manufacturers have chosen to omit on their £460 offerings. MSI’s metal layer gives the whole card a premium feel, and though the total weight climbs to 1,177g, we didn’t notice any signs of sag in our test platform.

As far as build and construction are concerned, this is about as good as we’ve seen for a £460 GeForce RTX 2070, but of course at this price point you don’t get a factory overclock as standard. As expected, MSI’s Armor 8G is shipped with a standard boost clock of 1,620MHz, while the 8GB of GDDR6 memory operates at the reference 14Gbps. Do note that core frequency is lower than Nvidia’s Founders Edition, which is overclocked to 1,710MHz right out of the box.

We’re of the opinion that the 175W RTX 2070 GPU is ideally suited to petite, dual-slot cards that are really easy to install and compatible with smaller PCs. Custom-cooled partner cards tend to take a different approach. Putting a greater emphasis on cooling performance, MSI’s Armor 8G is both longer and taller than reference, and spills into a third expansion slot. Dimensions of 309mm x 155mm x 50mm are, in our estimation, excessive for a card of this ilk, and so too is the additional six-pin power connector, which given the likely overclock, serves only to make cabling that little bit more awkward.