Palit GeForce RTX 2070 Dual Analysis

Manufacturer: Palit

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

US price (as reviewed): Currently unavailable

Next to the triple-slot, triple-fan monsters we’ve seen of late, the dual-fan Palit cooler looks rather modest, but it is still 292mm long. That said, it’s no taller than a PCIe bracket, and it truly is a dual-slot card (none of this 2.5-slot nonsense), so it will have broad case compatibility.

This is very much a reference-specced unit, sporting a base clock of 1,410MHz and boost clock of 1,620MHz and coming with the standard TDP of 175W (up to 210W including the USB Type-C VirtualLink connector). Palit does also have two other versions of the same card with overclocked cores, though you are unlikely to get these for the entry MSRP.

The black shroud with red and silver highlights is neither ugly nor a masterpiece in design, but we do like that the red and silver bits are metal rather than plastic. Oddly, though, the tiny RGB LED strip along the top edge defaults to green. Honestly, this card doesn’t need LEDs at all, and we’d much rather have seen a simple metal backplate. While this is a feature often overlooked by entry-level cards, this is still a £460 graphics card.

The six-pin/eight-pin power input combination is excessive for the TDP, but most power supplies these days won’t bat an eyelid.

A trio of DisplayPort 1.4a headers are joined by one HDMI 2.0b and the aforementioned VirtualLink USB-C port. This setup is the same across the RTX family, and fine by us. Naturally, G-Sync is supported.

The two nine-blade fans spin in the same direction and most heat will be recycled into your case thanks to the arrangement of the heatsink fins. Unfortunately, these fans are not semi-passive, idling instead at a very quiet 1,000 RPM or so.

The PCB is the same reference design that we’ve seen on the RTX 2080, meaning the RTX 2070 gets the same beefy 8+2 phase power with DrMOS components as its more powerful sibling.

Palit’s heatsink comprises a copper base plate for contact with the GPU, and this then feeds heat to five copper heat pipes. The copper lacks nickel plating, sadly, but the important thing is that the VRM components and all memory modules are suitably covered with thermal pads that connect them directly to the arrays of aluminium fins.

The warranty that comes with this card is a simple standard retailer warranty, which means two years for those of us in the EU.

Ensuring the RTX 2070 Dual can be sold for entry-level pricing has clearly led to a no-frills approach from Palit, but now it’s time to see how a basic RTX 2070 holds up performance wise.

Specifications

• 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 292mm long, 112mm tall, 40mm deep (dual-slot)
  
• Warranty Two years