ASUS GeForce RTX 3070 TUF Gaming OC 8GB GDDR6

The ASUS TUF RTX 3070 OC is a well-built card with exceptional cooling and solid 1080p and 1440p gaming performance. The 8GB VRAM is the main limitation, especially for newer titles and higher resolutions. US prices range from USD 290 to USD 795, so shop carefully. At the low end it's a great budget buy; at the high end, skip it and get a current-gen card instead.

The PassMark G3D score of 22099 puts this card in the middle of the pack for raster performance, around the 57th percentile. That's solid but not spectacular by today's standards. In real terms, it means 1080p gaming is a breeze and 1440p is comfortable in most titles. Our database scores it 71.5 out of 100 for 1080p gaming and 64.9 for 1440p. You'll hit high refresh rates in esports titles and stay above 60fps in most AAA games at 1440p with settings dialed in sensibly.

The ray tracing story is a bit more nuanced. The 40 RT cores put this at the 61st percentile for RT performance, which is about average. DLSS helps a lot here, and the 160 Tensor cores handle that upscaling work well. But the 8GB VRAM is the real constraint. At 39th percentile for VRAM, it's mediocre by current standards. Newer games at 1440p with ray tracing enabled and high texture settings can push past that 8GB buffer, and when that happens you'll see stutters or texture pop-in. For 1080p ray tracing, you're fine. For 1440p with RT on, you'll need to be selective about settings.

The competitive landscape has shifted a lot since this card launched. The PNY OC VCG5070T16TFXPB1-O and MSI SHADOW G5070-12S2C are both RTX 5070 variants with more VRAM and newer architecture. The PNY card has 16GB, which is double what this ASUS offers, and that matters for 1440p and 4K gaming. The MSI Shadow has 12GB, still a meaningful step up. Both will outperform this 3070 in raster and ray tracing, but they'll also cost more at retail. If you can find this ASUS at the USD 290 end, the value argument flips in its favor.

The XFX Mercury RX-97TRGBBB9 and Sapphire PULSE 11348-03-20G are AMD options with even more VRAM, 16GB and 20GB respectively. The Sapphire's 20GB is overkill for most gaming scenarios, but it's there if you're doing productivity work or playing heavily modded games. The Gigabyte Gaming GV-R9070XTGAMING-16GD is another 16GB card worth considering. The trade-off is clear: this ASUS wins on price at the low end and on cooling, but loses on VRAM capacity and raw performance to every one of these competitors. If you're playing at 1080p and don't care about future-proofing, the ASUS is fine. If you're eyeing 1440p long-term or want to dabble in 4K, the newer cards with more VRAM are the safer bet.

Here's where things get interesting. The US listings for this card span USD 290 to USD 795, a USD 505 spread. That's not a typo. The same GPU, depending on where you buy it, can cost nearly three times as much. If you're shopping in the US, the low end of that range is genuinely compelling. You're getting a card that still handles 1440p gaming well for under USD 300. The high end is a trap. At USD 795, you're within spitting distance of current-gen cards that outperform this one significantly.

European buyers face a similar situation with EUR 1,150 to EUR 1,665 across three listings. That's a EUR 515 spread, and honestly, even the low end feels steep for an RTX 3070 in 2025. The CAD 450 listing in Canada is more reasonable, and the GBP 980 price in the UK is hard to justify. The takeaway: shop around. This card's value proposition depends entirely on which listing you land on. Newegg has the refurbished listings at the lower end of the US range, and that's where the real value is if you're comfortable with refurbished hardware.

The ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 3070 OC Edition is one of those cards that aged better than most of its Ampere siblings. It's a triple-fan, all-metal shroud version of NVIDIA's 3070, and ASUS clearly spent time on the cooling side. The TUF line has a reputation for running cool and quiet, and this card backs that up with a 92nd percentile thermal score in our database. That's the absolute best right now for this class of card, and it matters more than you'd think when you're gaming for hours.

Who's this for? Someone building or upgrading a 1080p or 1440p rig who wants ray tracing and DLSS without paying current-gen prices. The 5888 CUDA cores and 1845MHz boost clock put out 15.97 TFLOPS of FP32 compute, which was a big deal when this launched and still holds up fine today. The 8GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus gives you 448 GB/s of memory bandwidth. That's the spec that's starting to show its age in newer titles, but we'll get into that.

What makes this card interesting in 2025 is the price spread. US listings run from USD 290 to USD 795, which is a wild range for the same GPU. If you can find one at the low end, you're getting a lot of card for the money. At the high end, you're paying current-gen money for last-gen performance, and that's a much harder sell.

If you're planning to game at 4K or want to keep your card for more than a couple of years, this isn't the one. The 8GB VRAM is already a constraint in some 1440p titles, and 4K gaming with ray tracing will push it past its limits quickly. Look at the Sapphire PULSE with 20GB or the PNY OC with 16GB instead.

AI enthusiasts and content creators should also look elsewhere. The 38th percentile AI score and 45th percentile compute score mean this card will struggle with local LLM inference, stable diffusion workloads, and heavy rendering tasks. If that's your use case, a card with more VRAM and better compute performance is worth the extra money. And if you're building in a small form factor case, the 300mm length and 2.7-slot width might not fit. Check your case clearance before committing.

For 1080p gamers on a budget, this card is still a genuinely good buy if you can find it at the low end of that USD 290 to USD 795 range. The cooling is best-in-class, it runs quiet, and it'll push high frame rates in esports titles without breaking a sweat. The 8GB VRAM is less of an issue at 1080p, and DLSS extends the card's useful life in supported titles. If you're building a budget rig and spot this under USD 350, grab it.

For 1440p gamers, it's a more conditional recommendation. The card handles 1440p fine in most current titles, but the 8GB VRAM is already a constraint in some newer games, and that's only going to get worse. If you're planning to keep this card for two or three years, you'll likely find yourself turning down texture settings sooner than you'd like. In that case, one of the 12GB or 16GB competitors is worth the extra money. And if you're doing AI work or heavy compute, look elsewhere. The 38th percentile AI score and 45th percentile compute score tell you everything you need to know. This is a gaming card, not a workstation card.