Msi geforce rtx 2070 armor review in Spanish (full analysis)

MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Armor presents us as one of the most balanced RTX 2070 between price and power. MSI has wanted to build a card that, without having an overclocking as strong as the Gaming Z, both a heatsink of superior features such as its T win Frozr to support its maximum frequency of 1740 MHz and its 8 GB GDDR6 of 14 Gbps.

Now we will see what it is capable of doing in our test bench, because we will exceed that serial frequency to know the maximum benefits of it in overclocking. Let's start!

We thank MSI for trusting us to transfer the product to us in this review.

MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Armor technical features

Unboxing and design

The presentation of this new version MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Armor is perfectly at the level of the other products of the brand, consisting of a thick cardboard box with a thinner packaging and very well decorated for the occasion. We distinguish the logo of the brand and distinctive Armor that gives its name to this version.

In the rear area, as always, a lot of information is gathered about the graphics card, with special emphasis on its powerful Twin FROZR heatsink. In addition, we find information about the basic features of this card, the presence of Mystic Light lighting and other qualities.

We are now going to unpack this MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Armor, for this, we remove the outer carton and we find a card arranged horizontally protected by a thick mold and an antistatic bag. In addition to it, inside we find a bit of brand advertising, a CD-ROM with the drivers (we recommend downloading them from the most updated website), and the user instruction book. As with other cards today, we do not have the presence of any type of cable or anything like that.

Speaking a little more about this card, the MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Armor is positioned as the intermediate step of the brand between the RTX 2070 Ventus, the cheapest model, and the RTX 2070 Gaming Z, which is the most expensive model and with increased overclocking. In this way, the difference between the three, in terms of frequency, would be 1620 MHz for the Ventus, 1740 MHz for the Armor and 1830 MHz for the Gaming Z.

To these differences, we will also have to add the configuration of its heatsink, although in this case we are practically the level of the Gaming Z, with a whole Twin FROZR and a construction of PCB and quality components. We must not forget that this card has dimensions of 295 mm long, 140 mm wide and 51 mm thick, being only 5 mm thinner than the Gaming Z.

If anything sets Nvidia's core cards apart, it's definitely the cooling system. MSI has provided a spectacular design to this card, which reminds us of metal on all sides. Although we must say that the housing of this Twin FROZR is not metal, but PVC plastic imitating brushed aluminum.

It houses two large TORX FAN 2.0 fans , which have done so much good for the brand, with numerous accolades and community recognition. These are designed with deeper fins to improve the pressure of the air flow to the radiator. Also the durability and noise are improved with the double ball bearings that implement these TORX. As in the other models of the brand such as the Gaming Z, the fans will be kept off when we have a temperature below 60 degrees in order to provide the maximum possible silence in low-stress tasks, and of course to save life on them.

We are located on the side to see the elevation presented by this model and to appreciate how robust the dissipation block is, provided with two strong aluminum blocks with high-density finning and joined by a total of 5 copper heatpipes. This design is slightly lower in range than the Gaming Z, since it has 6 heatpipes and a height of 5 mm higher.

On the other side that is visible to the user when the card is installed, we have the MSI brand logo and the distinctive GeForce RTX architecture. Best of all, they have RGB lighting with MSI Mystic Light technology that we can customize with the brand's software, both in color and in animations. And if we have more MSI products we can synchronize it with them.

We take advantage of this image to see the gold - plated contacts of the PCIe 3.0 x16 slot on which this card is connected. In addition, in other previous images we have been able to observe that the PCB of this MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Armor occupies the complete plane of the heatsink, what does this mean? Because the manufacturer has used the maximum space available to design a PCB where the electronic components will be more separated from each other and the heat will influence less.

At the rear of the PCB we have a robust aluminum backplate that provides maximum firmness to a graphics card that weighs a considerable 1, 177 grams. The finish of this plate is very striking, with a large brand logo on a matte black background. In this case we will not find lighting in it, although we will find four holes for the screws that hold the heatsink socket to the GPU.

Once again we remember that both the MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Armor and other models in this range do not have the NVLink bridge. Nvidia has decided to implement this functionality only on its two top of the range cards, the 2080 and 2080 Ti.

The set is completed with a steel chassis that connects heatsink and backplate to configure a set where the PCB will be in the center of it well supported and more rigid. In addition, this will help to better distribute the heat between elements thanks to the higher thermal conductivity of the metallic elements.

The MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Armor is a graphics card with a consumption of 185 W, so the manufacturer has chosen to introduce an 8-pin and a 6-pin connector so that at no time we have a lack of power in it. It is an unlocked device, so if we decide to overclock the GPU even more we will need extra power, and these 6 + 8 will provide it to us.

We have not forgotten the connections, in this MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Armor we have available two HDMI 2.0b ports and a DisplayPort 1.4a port, but it also includes a USB Type-C port, something that many users will appreciate if they want to connect VR glasses for example, or any devices, as this works as a standard USB port.

The new video decoding engine with lossless DSC support is one of the many capabilities of the Turing architecture. Thanks to this we will be able to reach resolutions 8K at 30 Hz and 8K at 60 Hz with DSC activated.

Heatsink, PCB and features

Now it is time to see more comprehensively the technical characteristics of this MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Armor. For this we have disassembled the heatsink leaving exposed the entire PCB of this graphics card. A PCB that is made of highly durable components and electrical tracks spread across several layers of this board to improve energy transport between electronics.

Here we see the heatsink in all its glory, an element consisting of two blocks with a high density of fins and a total of five copper heatpipes that are responsible for capturing the heat from the GPU and transferring it to the finned blocks. We must say that the finish is not as refined as that of the Gaming Z, with tubes with a slight separation between them and a somewhat rough and slightly polished finish.

We also have the presence of numerous good quality thermal pads, but placed quite in a hurry for what we see in their distribution. These elements will collect heat from the memory chips and the power phases to cool the components. Later in the tests we will see the effectiveness of this system.

We appreciate the rest of the thermal pads attached to the power supply phases and capacitors to stabilize the electrical signal. This VRM is provided with 6 main chokes compared to the 8 that the Gaming Z version brings. The lower price and overclock implies the decrease in number of these.

The power specified by the manufacturer for this MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Armor is approximately 185 W, which is not bad. We already know the efficiency in terms of consumption that these RTX present, especially those of design Max-Q for laptops. It is also recommended to use a power supply of at least 550W of power for the entire set of the PC, although better than 600W, to go leftover, you understand.

The benefits of this GPU should already be known by now, but it is worth remembering them again. It is a GPU with a Turing architecture chip in TU106 specification of 12 nm FinFET in terms of chipset, capable of providing in this model a base frequency of 1410 MHz and 1740 MHz in Boost mode. This GPU is made up of 2304 CUDA Cores, 288 Tensor Cores and 36 RT Cores that will be responsible for rendering the image using DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) with the Tensor, and for real-time ray tracing using the RT, giving a power of 6 Giga Rays per second.

For graphics memory Nvidia has mounted a single configuration on its RTX 2070, consisting of 8 GB of GDDR6 memory. It is capable of working at a speed of no less than 14 Gbps under a 256-bit bus width and a bandwidth speed of 448 GB / s, compared to the 192 bits of the RTX 2060.

We will have a capacity to connect four monitors, compatibility with HDCP 2.2 and we will be able to reach a digital resolution of 8K (7680 × 4320 pixels), which with DSC activated, we will be able to reach a refresh rate of 60 Hz.

In the first instance we have the two 4-pin connectors for the two heatsink fans in this graph. In addition to these, we will not have more headers for extra fans or headers for RGB lighting.

Test bench and performance tests

TESTING BENCH
Processor:	Intel Core i9-9900K
Base plate:	Asus Maximus XI Formula
Memory:	Corsair Vengeance PRO RGB 16 GB @ 3600 MHz
Heatsink	Corsair H100i V2
HDD	Kingston UV400
Graphic card	MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Armor
Power supply	Corsair RM1000X

For benchmarks we will use the following titles:

• 3DMark Fire Strike normal. 3Mark Fire Strike 4K version. Time Spy.VRMARK.

All tests have been passed with the filters to the maximum unless we indicate otherwise. In order to have adequate performance, we have carried out three types of tests: the first is the most common at Full HD 1920 x 1080, the second resolution is making the leap for 2K or 1440P (2560 x 1440P) gamers and the most enthusiastic with 4K (3840 x 2160). The operating system we have used has been Windows 10 Pro 64 bit and the latest drivers available from the Nvidia website.

What are we looking for in the tests?

First, the best possible image quality. The most important value for us is the average FPS (Frames per second), the higher the number of FPS the more fluid the game will go. To differentiate the quality a bit, we leave you a table to assess the quality in FPS, but we will also have the minimum Fps in the tests that were thus possible:

FRAMES BY SECONDS
Frames for Seconds. (FPS)	Gameplay
Less than 30 FPS	Limited
30 ~ 40 FPS	Playable
40 ~ 60 FPS	Good
Greater than 60 FPS	Fairly Good or Excellent

Game Testing

We have decided to make the leap to checking various games manually. The reason? Very simple, we want to give a much more realistic vision and cover tests with current games. We've revamped the old 2016 Tomb Raider for this new Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

Overclocking

Note: Each graphics card can go up at different frequencies. Does it depend a little on how lucky you are?

At the overclocking level we have been able to give it a little tug on the memories (+2000 MHz) and in the core up to 1610 MHz. As standard it runs from 1955 MHz, with this improvement we have reached ~ 2040 MHz. At the benchmark level We see a great improvement and in games we think it is very worthwhile. At least with Shadow Of the Tomb Raider he shows us one more time.

Shadow Of The Tomb Raider - DX12	Stock	@ Overclock
1920 x 1080 (Full HD)	116 FPS	124 FPS
2560 x 1440 (WQHD)	82 FPS	89 FPS
3840 x 2160 (4K)	46 FPS	51 FPS

Temperature and consumption

We have obtained 38 ºC at rest because the fans are deactivated until they reach 60 degrees . Once the fans are started at full load, we obtain an average of 63 ºC. You can see the good work of MSI in this new heatsink. You would lie that with overclock temperatures rise to 66 ºC at maximum power.

Consumption is for the entire team *

The consumption of the equipment is 68 W which when we upload the work to the GPU amounts to 261 W. Although if we stress the processor we get approximately 388 W. If they tell us a few years ago, it would be crazy to see these low consumption with such power. The consumption at maximum power amounts to 286 W without stressing the CPU.

Final words and conclusion about MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Armor

MSI has done a very good job with this new ARMOR range , at least in this new RTX series. The new ARMOR can no longer be considered a model that lacks good cooling or does not measure up to the Gaming X series. Quite the contrary! It is at the same level.

In performance, once again the RTX 2070 shows us that it is an ideal graphics card to play at Full HD and WQHD resolutions. Being one step behind in 4K than her older sisters. The temperatures and consumption are great. It is noted that MSI has put a lot of care in this model.

We recommend reading our guide on the best graphics cards

Regarding overclocking, we have been able to reach 1, 610 MHz in the core and 2, 000 MHz in the memories. Obtaining an improvement of up to 8 FPS in the best scenario (FULL HD) and 5 FPS in 4K. This way we have 50 stable FPS in a very well optimized game for Nvidia: Shadow Of The Tomb Raider.

Currently we find this model for a price of 609.90 euros. The difference from the Gaming X series is just 30 euros. In my particular case, I would choose the Gaming X before this model for pure aesthetics and internal components, but if you are short on budget and every euro counts, this model will not disappoint you?

ADVANTAGE	DISADVANTAGES
+ MINIMALIST DESIGN	- NO FOUND
+ VERY GOOD COMPONENTS AND DISSIPATION
+ LOW CONSUMPTION
+ OVERCLOCK CAPACITY
+ GOOD PRICE

The professional review team awards you the gold medal and recommended product.

MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Armor

COMPONENT QUALITY - 85%

DISSIPATION - 80%

GAMING EXPERIENCE - 85%

SOUNDING - 81%

PRICE - 84%

83%