As we get closer to the RTX 3070 launch on October 29th, Gigabyte has begun to reveal its custom RTX 3070 SKUs, including the Aorus Master, Gaming, Eagle, and the new Vision series.
The RTX 3070 will be Nvidia's first true mid-range GPU for the Ampere generation, featuring 5888 CUDA cores and 8GB of GDDR6 (non-X) on a 256-bit bus. The most intriguing feature of the 3070 is its significantly lower TDP of 220W, similar to that of the RTX 20 series cards, which should make cooling this GPU much easier. We think the RTX 3070 will be roughly 40% slower than the RTX 3080, according to the specifications. However, that's just an educated guess. Be sure to check our review of the RTX 3070 next week for full performance results.
The Aorus Master is Gigabyte's 'luxury' series of graphics cards, equipped with more bells and whistles over the Gigabyte branded cards. The Aorus master RTX 3070 features an almost quadruple-slot sized heatsink, with a triple-fan cooler design. The inner fan spins in the opposite direction of the outer fans to help boost airflow. The inner fan is also recessed inwards, with the two outer fans on top overlapping the inner fan's blades. This is another technique Gigabyte uses to improve airflow efficiency.
Aesthetically, the Aorus Master is one of the prettiest cards to date, featuring a black shroud with dark aluminum accents and dashes of RGB on the top and bottom of the card. Perhaps the most intriguing feature of the Master is the LCD display on the card's edge. The LCD can display a multitude of things, including temperature data from the CPU and GPU, custom text, or a custom image/GIF.
We don't know anything about the card's internals, like power delivery, but typically Aorus-branded cards do have an upgraded power delivery system over Gigabyte's cheaper lineups, so expect good overclocking performance out of this card.
Gigabyte's Vision series is a new sub-brand aimed towards content creators and professionals instead of the traditional gaming markets. The RTX 3070 Vision features a beautiful white and silver finish. There's almost nothing 'gamery' about this card -- which is a good thing.
The RTX 3070 Vision sports a triple-fan cooler design, similar to the Windforce coolers featured in the Eagle and Gaming lineups. The cooler has four copper heat pipes running down both lengths of the card, connected to an aluminum heatsink. The five heatpipes, plus an additional heatpipe to the side of the cooler, all meet up at the GPU die to cool it. The surrounding VRM and memory units are cooled by a metal baseplate.
Aesthetically, this is another gorgeous card; the front is shaded in metal and complemented by a white shroud around the sides. The backplate is all metal as well and features a cutout at the end to push air through the heatsink, which is typical of Ampere graphics cards. The card is equipped with an 8-pin and a 6-pin connector for supplementary power from the PSU.
Of course, this card is perfectly capable of gaming as well as content creation. The aesthetic should fit in gaming builds aiming for a more mature look.
The Gigabyte RTX 3070 Gaming and Eagle cards are similar to the existing RTX 3080 variants, but feature a smaller form factor in terms of height. The 3070 Eagle is roughly 10mm shorter and the Gaming, 5mm shorter than the equivalent RTX 3080 SKUs.
The Gaming features the same heatsink and heatpipe design as the RTX 3080 vision, but the Eagle takes that down a notch to five heat pipes instead of six.
Due to the shorter height, both cards look more uniform, with no jagged edges to be seen. Besides that, the design language remains the same for both cards. The gaming has a black should, complemented by silver accents to the top right and bottom left of the cooler. The Eagle has a more generic design, where the shroud is a greyish black complemented by a blue Eagle logo.
Both cards are equipped with an 8-pin and 6-pin power connectors, which seems to be the common configuration for the RTX 3070.
Gigabyte still has yet to release its eXtreme RTX 3070 cards. Presumably they will be out in time for the RTX 3070 launch on October 29th.
