Bjorn3D.com Bjorn3d.com – Satisfying Your Daily Tech Cravings Since 1996
Overclocking
Overclocking the GTX 2000 Series cards are very similar to 10 series but there have been some improvements in how the boost works in version 4 over version 3 which was on Pascal. We discussed this earlier in the features section.
The Zotac RTX 2070 Mini was really a question in our minds when it came to overclocking as the “Non A” sku of GPU which is supposedly not spec’d for overclocks. Needless to say I was very apprehensive when I started exploring overclocks. Zotac offers their own software called Firestorm which is similar to EVGA Precision and MSI Afterburner as far as functionality but in a more futuristic skin.
I first tested overclocking on precision as I know what it does before diving into the Firestorm tool. Much to my delight the Firestorm utility worked just as well as the other tools once you get used to where everything is controlled.
As for the overclocks, to say the Zotac RTX 2070 Mini impressed me, would be a massive understatement. Maybe I am saying this because I was thinking the GPU would not overclock at all, but not only did it overclock but upon doing so, continued its trend of smoking the Founders Edition model when overclocked. Just to clarify, the manual overclock of the Zotac RTX 2070 Mini beat the manual overclock we achieved on the Founders edition card and I can only assume that has to do with the thermals and the capabilities of the Zotac cooler.
Pushing the GPU I was able to get 100% stable +195 GPU which when reaching steady state hit 1995-2010MHz (stock: 1785 – 1800MHz boost steady state) and approximate 11% overclock on measured boost
Memory I was able to achieve +1150 fully stable which translates to 8151 or 16,302MHz effective. (Stock: 7001MHz – 14002MHz Effective) an approximate 15% overclock.
Time Spy showed a graphics score increase of a little over 7% with the overclock.
Time Spy Extreme showed a graphics score increase of a little over 8% with the overclock.
So, with that, I think its safe to say that while Nvidia may not spec the GPU for factory overclock it still does a damn good job of handling clocks if you wanna push it.
It seems that the Zotac LAGS the reference card in every single chart?
Yes, it does at stock speeds. This is because as explained in the review the “reference” or “Founders Edition” is a pre-overclocked card whereas this GPU uses a non A-die GPU which Nvidia spec’s as not designed for out of teh box overclocked card models. As you can see from my overclock testing it overclocks just fine so, im not really sure what the non A designator reasoning is or if its lower yield and possibly may have some that do not overclock as well.
This allows Zotac to price the card competitively while still being able to overclock to meet and even exceed the overclock of the FE model.
I hope this helps clear things up.
Thanks for this review. I have a 280X Corsair case and I was looking for a 2070 card that wouldn’t take over my build. I have a Strix 570 card now and the dimensions are almost identicle between these 2 cards. This looks like the perfect option for performance and size.