Review: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3070 Gaming OC

Conclusion

The launch of GeForce RTX 3070 brings Ampere goodness to a larger number of gamers. Priced from £469, the GPU offers excellent QHD and decent UHD performance.

Yet it's the very presence of Nvidia's own Founders Edition board that makes any partner's card a tougher sell. Gigabyte does well enough with the Gaming OC model, particularly if run in the Quiet BIOS mode, but two factors conspire to take the shine off the package. The first is an extra 50W TDP for a three percent gain in framerate. The other is price, which at £540 is £70 more than the admittedly marginally slower FE, and that's assuming retailers have stock and stick to the SRP. That assumption is incorrect on the day of launch as the cheapest pre-order price is £575, further denting the value argument.

We're likely to see this situation repeat itself with other partner cards. The real-world asking fee has also become troublesome in the wake of rival AMD's recent RX 6800 announcement, so Gigabyte finds itself in an awkward spot through no real fault of its own.

Bottom line: This overclocked card makes sense at £499. Any higher and its price-to-performance metric becomes distinctly less appealing.

Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3070 Gaming OC

HEXUS.where2buy

TBC.

HEXUS.right2reply

At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.