Review gtx 1070: The GeForce GTX 1070 Review

The GeForce GTX 1070 Review

Our Verdict

Forget the GTX 1080; this is the Pascal GPU you can actually afford.

For

• Faster than Titan X…
• …at less than half the price
• Excellent 1440p performance

Against

• Founders Edition costs more
• Waiting for custom cards

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In case you missed our preview earlier this week, the GTX 1070 is coming…next week. As they did with the GTX 1080 launch, Nvidia is staggering the release of information with the retail launch of hardware. On the one hand, it’s nice because it means anyone looking to buy a card on day one will know exactly what to expect; however, it also means you can’t buy the cards just yet.

Spoiler alert: The GTX 1070 is really fast—not quite as fast as the GTX 1080, but it beats the GTX 980 Ti, GTX Titan X, R9 Fury X, and every other currently available single-GPU solution. More importantly, it does this with an expected retail price of $380-$450. But as we suspected with the GTX 1080, all of the cards at launch are likely to be Founders Edition models priced at $450, with custom cards coming later…and that’s assuming any of the cards can stay in stock for long. The good news is that Newegg at least has a few cards in stock for the 1080 FE now, at the $700 price point , and since they’re all FE models, the only difference is manufacturer warranty and support. Amazon on the other hand only has ‘Scalpers Edition’ cards priced significantly higher right now.

We’ve already covered most of the technological aspects of the GTX 1070 in previous articles, so if you want to know more about what makes this card tick, check out our GTX 1080 review and discussion of the new Pascal features. 2
Process: TSMC 16nm FinFET
CUDA cores: 1920
Texture units: 120
ROPs: 64
Base clock: 1506MHz
Boost clock: 1683MHz
GFLOPS (boost): 6463
Texel fill-rate: 180.7 GT/s
Memory: 8GB GDDR5
Memory bus: 256-bit
GDDR5 speed: 8000 MT/s
Bandwidth: 256GB/s
L2 cache: 2048KB
TDP: 150W

One other thing the current GTX 1070 has in common with the GTX 1080 is this whole ‘Founders Edition’ business. The short summary is that Founders Edition is simply a new name for the reference design, with a blower fan and a metal backplate. Except, where the reference designs on previous Nvidia GPUs were primarily made to help get product on store shelves at launch, the Founders Edition cards will remain available as long as Nvidia continues to sell GTX 1070/1080 cards.

What are the potential benefits of these Founders Edition cards? Probably the biggest selling point is that they use blower fans, which makes them a better fit for smaller cases where airflow might be limited. The blowers are also useful in SLI scenarios, but the top card will still run hotter than the bottom card. Note that half of the metal backplate on the cards can be removed for those who want a bit of extra breathing room in SLI.

Certainly there are scenarios where having a FE card would be useful, but the pricing does limit the utility of these cards. For the 1080, it’s currently creating a $100 price premium for being first in line to upgrade. The 1070 drops the price premium down to $70, but you’re still paying more for a card that may not even be the best of the breed. Factory overclocked cards are coming, and those who prefer running a single card and using an open air cooler—not to mention those who want to get lower priced hardware—are advised to wait a bit.

Because the Founders Edition will be a retail product, Nvidia had to increase the price, or they’d be going up against their AIB partners. The fact that it also improves profit margins on the initial batches of hardware is purely coincidence, right? (That’s sarcasm, if you’re wondering.) But like it or not, this round of Nvidia hardware is taking a new approach, and we can at least review the card as something end users will actually be able to purchase.

The GTX 1070, stripped down to the bare essentials.

The full monty

Earlier this week, we posted a chart showing the overall average performance of the GTX 1070 compared to other graphics cards. We were still collecting overclocked performance results, not to mention working on a Broadwell-E preview, but we’re now ready to present our full suite of testing results. We’ve also retested a few games/cards and changed a couple settings, so the results here are slightly different than our earlier chart. We’re using our ‘normal’ test hardware, an overclocked 4.2GHz i7-5930K.

GPU test bed hardware

CPU: Intel Core i7-5930K @ 4. 2GHz
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-X99-UD4
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws 16GB DDR4-2666
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO 2TB
PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 1300 G2
CPU cooler: Cooler Master Nepton 280L
Case: Cooler Master CM Storm Trooper
OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
Drivers: AMD Crimson 16.5.2/3, Nvidia 365.19/.25

One item that’s important to note is that we’re using a large case with plenty of ventilation for our testing; I’ve seen claims that the GTX 1070/1080 are hitting thermal limits and throttling after a few minutes, but in my testing I didn’t see that. As an example, I left GTAV running for three hours, testing performance once at the start, once after an hour, and a third time after three hours; the first result was actually the slowest of the three scores, but only by one percent. Does that mean the cards will always run at maximum GPU Boost clocks? No, and that’s never been the case on any Nvidia GPU. But if you want to define a higher fan speed target to cool the card better, or tweak the power and thermal targets, you can certainly improve performance a bit over stock.

Cutting straight to the heart of the matter, the GTX 1070 ends up being the second fastest GPU in average frame rates, regardless of resolution. It’s 9-10 percent faster than the Titan X and 980 Ti, and more importantly, it’s 36 percent faster than the GTX 980. (That’s running stock clocks on all of the cards, so you can easily close the gap with overclocked cards—we’ve seen as high as 25 percent factory overclocks on 980/980 Ti cards.) AMD’s Fury X is in the interesting position of losing to the 980 Ti at 1080p, tying it at 1440p, and winning at 4K, which means depending on resolution it’s either just barely behind the 1070 or as much as 20 percent slower. And how about the GTX 970; we normally advise skipping a generation, and the prices are a bit higher this round compared to the 970/980, but you can get a very respectable 70 percent increase in performance over a 970.

I’m going to dispense with detailed commentaries on most of the remaining charts, but there are cases where the 1070 is only a hair faster than a Titan X and others where the gap widens. Some games also favor AMD hardware (e.g., Ashes of the Singularity and the new Hitman) while others favor Nvidia hardware (e.g., Rise of the Tomb Raider and GTAV). That’s why I start with the overall performance chart, though, as looking at a broad selection of games can tell us a lot about what to expect. Here are the remaining fifteen charts:

Tested using the Extreme preset.

One of two games we’re testing in DX12 mode, we changed our settings from the GTX 1080 review where we used Crazy on 1080p/1440p and High on 4K. It was a bit weird to have 4K outperform 1080p/1440p, not to mention failing to break 60 fps on almost all cards at 1080p, so we retested at Extreme across all resolutions. This is one of the few games where the Fury X can match the 1070, though it’s effectively a tie. As for DX12 vs. DX11, Nvidia often loses a bit of performance (1-3 percent) compared to DX11, though DX12 helps with multi-GPU.

Tested with max quality, 4xMSAA, no PhysX.

1080p/1440p tested using Ultra preset; 4K used the High preset.

Tested at Ultra with SMAA.

Doom seems to like memory bandwidth, which as we’ll see later means good things for overclocking VRAM. We’re also still waiting for the Vulkan patch for the game, which AMD and Nvidia have both talked about, so hopefully it won’t be biased toward one side.

Tested using the Ultra preset.

Tested using the Ultra preset with the HD texture pack.

1080p/1440p used maximum quality (High/Very High/Ultra) settings with 4xMSAA, on the reflections as well. For 4K, we turned off MSAA (also off on reflections) and enabled FXAA. The Advanced Graphics settings are all ‘off.’

Tested using DX12 mode with SMAA; 1080p/1440p used maximum (High/Ultra) settings while 4K used High.

Our second DX12 game, not all cards do better in DX12 vs. DX11, but AMD benefits, and Nvidia’s newer cards do as well, if only by a few percent. The engine clearly favors AMD right now, though, with the Fury X able to outperform the 1070, the only time we’ll see this happen.

Tested with 4xMSAA and Ultra preset.

All settings at max but without SSAA of Advanced PhysX.

Despite being a rather old game, Metro: Last Light remains rather demanding at maximum settings—even without PhysX or SSAA. This is also about as close as the Titan X and 980 Ti get to matching the 1070, tying in frame rates at 1440p and 4K.

Tested using the Ultra preset.

DX11 mode; 1080p/1440p at Very High with MSAA; 4K at High with FXAA.

Last time we checked (a few weeks ago), Rise of the Tomb Raider still performed better with DX11 than DX12 on all GPUs—AMD as well as Nvidia. It feels as though it was more of a proof of concept rather than a concerted effort to do something useful with the new API.

Tested using DX11 and Ultra settings with ‘Unlimited’ (native) rendering resolution, and with 4xMSAA.

Much like Rise of the Tomb Raider, The Talos Principle adds support for a low-level API, this time Vulkan instead of DX12. Unfortunately, while the game generally runs okay using Vulkan, performance is slower than the DX11 mode, so we’ve stuck with DX11 for now.

Tested using the Ultimate preset.

Tested using Ultra preset but with HairWorks turned off.

The Founders Edition cooling is good, but we expect custom designs to be quieter if you don’t want a blower fan.

Kicking the clocks into high gear

Stock performance is all well and good, but everyone wants to see what the new cards can do with a bit of fine tuning. As with the GTX 1080, we used EVGA’s Precision X16, but the per-voltage tuning still isn’t working quite right—hopefully a public release that addresses this will come sooner rather than later. So we settled on a linear overclock, and just like the GTX 1080, our card could do about +200MHz on the GPU core, and not much more. In fact, a few games (Hitman and Ashes) both crashed at +200, but they ran fine at +190. As with all overclocking, your mileage may vary.

Here’s where things get interesting. The 1080 uses GDDR5X memory, which transfers four bits per clock compared to two bits per clock on normal GDDR5. The GTX Titan X and 980 Ti used GDDR5 running at 7010 MT/s (3505MHz with two bits per clock), and we were often able to hit 8000-8400 MT/s. With the 1070, Nvidia has increased the GDDR5 clock to 4000MHz (8000 MT/s), so that’s already pretty close to our previous limit. We didn’t really expect to be able to push much further, whereas on the GTX 1080’s GDDR5X we were able to reach 11500 MT/s. Well…turns out the ‘craftsmanship’ Nvidia talked about at their Pascal Editors’ Day comes into play on GDDR5 clocks as well.

We pushed the VRAM up by +250 and then +350 without incident. Next was +500MHz, or 9000 MT/s, a new record for GDDR5 speed in my experience…and the card still ran flawlessly. At this point, I actually questioned Nvidia on whether or not the 1070 was actually using GDDR5X, since GDDR5 requires a different PCB; they said it’s really GDDR5, and there’s no reason to lie—using GDDR5X would actually be something to advertise, not hide.

Throwing caution to the wind, I tried maxing out the memory overclock at +1000MHz, and finally crashed, to my amusement. But dropping to 750MHz was nearly stable (a few graphical glitches followed by an eventual crash), and I finally ended at +700MHz—9400 MT/s. That’s a 17.5 percent memory overclock, and over 10 percent higher than our previous best GDDR5 speed. Nice!

Here’s what we ended up using for our overclocked settings (this image was captured while running Rise of the Tomb Raider in a Window, so those are real-time clocks and temperatures). Notice that we’ve set the power/temp target to the maximum of 112%/91C, with fan speed to a static 85%. A custom fan curve would have been better, but this preview build of Precision X16 doesn’t support custom fan curves. By default, Nvidia seems to be targeting lower noise rather than maximum performance, so you’ll see lower clocks after a few minutes if you don’t manually increase the fan speed. We hit our overclock with temperatures staying less than 65C, but leaving the fan on «Auto» would periodically crash and GPU temperatures could exceed 80C, not to mention larger fluctuations in GPU clocks.

The extra 200MHz on the GPU clock might not seem like much, but with the other adjustments we’re typically seeing clock speeds of 1950-2000MHz. At stock, the typical boost clock is ~1650MHz, so all told we end up with about 20 percent higher core clocks, with 17.5 percent higher VRAM clocks. It’s not enough to close the gap with the GTX 1080, but we do see about 15 percent higher performance on average (less at 1080p where we bump into CPU bottlenecks).

A new middleweight champion

And there you have it: fifteen games tested, covering a variety of game engines and genres. Out of those games, the GTX 1070 manages to match or exceed the GTX Titan X and GTX 980 Ti in every single title. And it does so while potentially lowering the entry price to $380—though it will almost certainly be a month or so before we see such prices readily available. And if you’re willing to overclock, you can add about 15 percent more performance, which is pretty similar to what we’ve seen with GTX 1080 and slightly less than the reference GTX 980 Ti.

But even $380—never mind the expected $450+ prices we’re likely to see at launch—is a lot of money to spend on a graphics card. Is the GTX 1070 worth that? It depends on the user, but we can provide a bit more insight on the relative value. We’ve rated the cards in terms of bang for the buck, or FPS per dollar spent on the GPU. That doesn’t account for the cost of the rest of your system, obviously, but it’s a start. Using the $380 MSRP, the 1070 ends up being a better value than all but three cards, and those cards are only a slightly better value but with far lower performance. The 1070 is over twice as fast (on average), allowing for higher resolutions and higher quality settings.

Until we see additional new GPUs, Nvidia clinches the top two performance spots with the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070. That doesn’t mean you need up upgrade, of course—even a GTX 950 (the slowest GPU we tested for this article) handles most games at 1080p High at close to 60 fps. But if you’re looking to upgrade, not surprisingly, all the new GPUs are supplanting the previous generation models. It’s the evolution we expected to see when GPUs moved from 28nm to 14/16nm; hopefully the next process update won’t require quite so long.

For the performance conscious, the custom (non-FE) versions of the GTX 1070 are the cards to beat, as they’ll handle everything up to 1440p Ultra without too much trouble, and they’re better at 4K in most cases than the previous generation heavyweights (980 Ti and Fury X)…but you’ll still need two cards in SLI if you want to consistently break 60 fps. AMD’s Fury X beats the 1070 in one instance, and it’s a Gaming Evolved release at that: Hitman, in DX12. Even if all DX12 games were to follow suit, there just aren’t enough of them right now to balance out all the clear wins in DX11 games.

However, we’re not done with the new GPUs just yet. Those who want something priced even lower than the GTX 1070 should keep their eyes on AMD’s upcoming RX 480, which should also show up in other Polaris 10/11 cards. The RX 480 will start at $199 and is launching on June 29. We don’t have benchmarks yet, but all signs point to this being an amazing bang-for-the-buck card. And if you’re waiting for the GTX 1070 to hit non-FE prices anyway, there’s no rush. Check back again later this month when we’ll wrap up this story…at least until the fall when we expect to see additional new GPUs come out.

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GeForce GTX 1070

Forget the GTX 1080; this is the Pascal GPU you can actually afford.

Jarred’s love of computers dates back to the dark ages when his dad brought home a DOS 2.3 PC and he left his C-64 behind. He eventually built his first custom PC in 1990 with a 286 12MHz, only to discover it was already woefully outdated when Wing Commander was released a few months later. He holds a BS in Computer Science from Brigham Young University and has been working as a tech journalist since 2004, writing for AnandTech, Maximum PC, and PC Gamer. From the first S3 Virge ‘3D decelerators’ to today’s GPUs, Jarred keeps up with all the latest graphics trends and is the one to ask about game performance.  

Revisiting the GeForce GTX 1070 in 2021

Over the past few weeks we’ve been checking out previous-gen graphics cards, which could be used as a stop-gap solution to the GPU shortage if you can get them second hand for a good price. It all started with the Radeon RX 580 8GB which was $300 when we started recommending it earlier in the year, but sadly by the time we got to it, the asking price had skyrocketed to $400-500 a piece. Most recently it seems to be going back down, so something to watch.

Later we moved on to the much more affordable GeForce GTX 1060 6GB which could comfortably be had for around $300, or $50 above the MSRP set 5 years prior. As ridiculous as that sounds — and it is — this is a decent deal and makes the GTX 1060 one of the cheaper and better value graphics cards you can pick up at the moment.

However, if you’re willing to spend what should be RTX 3060 Ti money ($400) on an old GeForce GTX 1070, that means you could get to enjoy all the latest and greatest games using respectable quality settings. The GTX 1070 launched in mid 2016 with an MSRP of $380 and today you’re paying roughly that price for a used model.

In a normal market, that’s a laughably bad deal, but today it’s actually decent and it certainly beats buying a RX 580 for the same money, especially given that model was selling brand new for ~$150 about two years ago.

Just to make sure nothing’s changed in that time, we’ll be comparing the GTX 1070 head-to-head with the RX 580 8GB in 15 games at 1080p and 1440p using a range of quality settings.

Before we jump into all the blue bar graphs, a few quick notes on the test system.

All testing has been conducted on our Ryzen 9 5950X test system using 32GB of DDR4-3200 CL14 memory and the latest available display driver, so the results are going to be entirely GPU limited. Let’s get into it…

Gaming Benchmarks

Starting with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla we see that at 1080p the GTX 1070 is around 15% faster than the RX 580 and around 10% faster at 1440p. That’s a great result for the aging GeForce GPU as it means it was good for around 60 fps at 1080p using the medium quality settings and then 70 fps with low.

It also means that you can get decent experience at 1440p using the low quality settings, which is not amazing, but it’s a nice step up from the Radeon RX 580 and with both priced very competitively right now on the second hand market, it does make the GeForce GPU a much better buy.

Next up we have Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege and here the GTX 1070 was blistering fast, leaving the RX 580 behind by a 16% margin at 1080p and 1440p when using the medium and high quality settings.

For those seeking 200+ fps the medium quality preset at 1080p will work, and for the slightly more casual 120+ gamers you’ll get away with high even at 1440p.

Biomutant was a bit of a struggle to run on the RX 580, especially with the high quality preset. This was far less of an issue with the GTX 1070 which was between 35 and 45% faster at 1080p, and then around 40-50% faster at 1440p.

This meant that at 1080p it was possible to achieve over 80 fps even with the high quality preset, while comparable performance was possible at 1440p using low. So excellent performance overall, especially for 1080p gamers.

The GTX 1070 proves once again that it’s still very capable of tackling the latest games, this time pushing well over 60 fps in Outriders using the high quality preset. Even at 1440p performance was good, 66 fps using medium was a great experience and even 53 fps with the high quality settings wasn’t bad, it was also an impressive 61% performance increase over the RX 580.

The GTX 1070 was also in a completely different class when testing with Horizon Zero Dawn. We’re looking at a ~35% performance boost and that meant well over 60 fps at 1080p using even the favor quality preset and then over 60 fps at 1440p using the original quality preset. That’s a solid result and plenty of performance at respectable quality settings for gamers to enjoy this title.

We’re looking at around 25-30% more performance in Shadow of the Tomb Raider with the GTX 1070 and that allows for well over 60 fps at 1080p using respectable quality settings, such as the medium preset which still looks very good.

Then at 1440p the 1070 dips below 60 fps using the medium preset and therefore those seeking more frames will require the low or lowest preset.

We’ve seen previously that Doom Eternal runs exceptionally well on the RX 580 and even the older R9 390. So it comes as little surprise to find the GTX 1070 makes out just fine, delivering over 100 fps even at 1440p using the nightmare settings.

Death Stranding plays well using the Radeon RX 580 and here the GTX 1070 offers 25-30% more performance at well over 60 fps, even at 1440p using the second highest quality preset. That being the case the GTX 1070 is more than capable of delivering an enjoyable gaming experience at either 1080p or 1440p in Death Stranding.

If these results look a bit odd to you it’s because they are. The RX 580 runs into some kind of bug in Dirt 5, which is humorous given this is an AMD sponsored title. So the margins to the GTX 1070 are significantly larger than they should be, but that’s not an issue for the GeForce GPU as it was able to deliver more than 60 fps at 1440p using the medium quality preset. The 1070 is a great second hand option for those looking to do some rally driving.

Moving on, we have Watch Dogs: Legion and here the GTX 1070 offered ~20-25% more performance and the extra frames came in particularly handy when using the high quality preset which saw the GeForce GPU render 73 fps on average at 1080p and 51 fps at 1440p.

Resident Evil Village played exceptionally well on the RX 580, but even so the GTX 1070 has a little extra to offer, at least when not CPU limited which is what we see at 1080p using the performance preset, capping us at around 120 fps. Using the maximum quality preset we’re looking at up to a 17% performance improvement with 84 fps on average and then 12% at 1440p, jumping up from 50 to 56 fps.

Now, Cyberpunk 2077 didn’t play all that well on the RX 580 as the best we could achieve was 55 fps using the low quality preset. The GTX 1070 wasn’t much better, but the 16% boost at 1080p using the low quality preset was welcomed as it did make the game noticeably smoother. Alternatively, you could aim for the same 50-ish frame rate but increase the visuals with the medium preset, so the GTX 1070 is a little more flexible here.

Given what we’ve seen so far it will probably come as little surprise that the GTX 1070 is able to run Forza Horizon 4 with ease, averaging 87 fps at 1440p using the highest in-game quality preset. For high refresh rate gaming, the medium quality preset will work at 1440p, but if for some reason you require even more performance the Pascal GPU was able to render 165 fps using the very low quality preset.

The second last game tested is Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order where the GTX 1070 is simply in another league, offering 40-50% more performance than the RX 580.

As a result, we’re almost able to achieve a 60 fps average at 1440p using the highest quality visual settings. That meant 66 fps was possible using the high quality preset at 1440p, or 102 fps at 1080p, so exceptional performance in this title from the old Pascal GPU.

Finally we have F1 2020, where the GTX 1070 provides over 60 fps at 1440p using the highest quality preset. That being the case, 1080p gamers will be able to receive a high refresh rate experience using even the highest quality settings, so for this title you don’t need anything more than a 1070.

Average Performance

On average, the GeForce GTX 1070 offers ~27% more performance than the Radeon RX 580 at both tested resolutions across a range of quality presets. This means for 1080p gaming the GTX 1070 is still for the most part able to deliver 60 fps or better, with very few exceptions.

Those gaming at 1440p will be able to achieve 60 fps or better for the most part with medium quality settings. For what is now an older mid-range product, that’s a great result.

Hot or Not?

As expected, the GeForce GTX 1070 is not only faster than the RX 580 for gaming, but it’s also very capable in 2021, delivering highly playable performance in almost every game using a respectable level of quality settings. Of course, paying $400 for a used GTX 1070 is a hard pill to swallow, but if you’ve been unable to game for the better part of a year now, it might be worth pulling the trigger.

It’s hard to put a dollar figure on something you enjoy and rely on to unwind, and I know from experience that a big part of my week is catching up with friends online and enjoying some gaming.

In a normal market, for $400 you should have access to the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, a product that offers around 80% more performance. Heck, for $400 you got over 50% more performance with the 5700 XT two years ago now, but of course, we’re faced with a volatile market at the moment.

Today the 5700 XT typically sells on the second hand market for $700 to $800, so in terms of cost per frame it’s actually much worse than the GTX 1070 we just showed. Not to mention, it’s simply less attainable overall.

Another alternative is to snap up an RTX 2060 Super for around $600, but that’s still 50% more expensive than what the GTX 1070 are typically going for and you’ll only be looking at ~25% more performance. In other words, for desperate gamers looking at the second hand market, for a good level of performance the GTX 1070 does look like a decent deal right now.

Shopping Shortcuts:

• Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 on Amazon
• AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT on Amazon
• Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 on Amazon
• AMD Radeon RX 6800 on Amazon
• AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT on Amazon
• AMD Ryzen 9 5950X on Amazon
• AMD Ryzen 5 5600X on Amazon

Review and testing of MSI GeForce GTX 1070 GAMING X 8G video card on NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 GECID.com. Page 1

::>Video cards
>2016
> MSI GeForce GTX 1070 GAMING X 8G

11-07-2016

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In May 2016, NVIDIA pleased its fans not only with the announcement of the flagship video card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080, which has already established itself as the fastest solution in the consumer segment, but also with the more affordable NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 , designed to replace the market, perhaps , the best solution for Full HD gaming is NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970.

Unlike the older model on NVIDIA Pascal, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 is offered at a much more affordable price. So, the reference modifications of the Founders Edition have a recommended cost for the US market at $449., while versions from partners will cost a minimum of $379. Of course, at the start of sales, stores raised prices, but over time, the situation should normalize. Let’s see what the new product has lost compared to the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080, and what made it possible to reduce its final cost.

NVIDIA GP104-400-A1 ( NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 )

At the heart of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 also lies the graphic nucleus of the NVIDIA GP104, made at 16-nm of the tech-technical but in the NVIDIA GP104-200-A1 modification, which lost one of the four GPC computing clusters, and, accordingly, 5 SM units, 640 CUDA cores and 40 texture units.

The final performance comparison table is as follows:

Model	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080
Technical process, nm	16 (FinFET)	16 (FinFET)
GPU	NVIDIA GP104-200-A1	NVIDIA GP104-400-A1
Microarchitecture	NVIDIA Pascal	NVIDIA Pascal
Crystal area, mm 2	314	314
Number of transistors, billion	7. 2	7.2
Number of CUDA cores	1920	2560
Number of texture units	120	160
Number of raster blocks	64	64
GPU base / dynamic frequency, MHz	1506 / 1683	1607 / 1733
Video memory type	GDDR5	GDDR5X
Volume, GB	8	8
Effective memory frequency, MHz	8008	10 008
Bus width, bit	256	256
Bandwidth, GB/s	256. 3	320
Computing power, TFLOPS	5.783	8.228
TDP, W	150	180
Recommended price at the start of sales, $	379 / 449	599 / 699

As you can see, another important difference is the use of the usual GDDR5 video memory instead of GDDR5X in NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080. We also note the reduced TDP level from 180 to 150 W, which imposes certain restrictions during overclocking, so to achieve ultra-high results at the moment quite difficult.

Let’s move on to a more detailed study of new items using the MSI GeForce GTX 1070 GAMING X 8G video card as an example.

Specification

Model		MSI GeForce GTX 1070 GAMING X 8G
Graphics core		NVIDIA GP104-200-A1
Number of CUDA cores		1920
Rated/dynamic frequency of the graphics core, MHz	Silent mode	1506 / 1683
	Gaming mode	1582 / 1771
	«OC» mode	1607 / 1797
Memory frequency (effective), MHz	«OC» mode	2027 (8108)
	Gaming and Silent modes	2002 (8010)
Memory size, GB		8
Memory type		GDDR5
Memory bus width, bit		256
Memory bandwidth, GB/s		259. 5
Tire type		PCI Express 3.0 x16
Image output interfaces		1 x DVI-D 1 x HDMI 3 x DisplayPort
Minimum power supply unit, W		500
Additional PCIe power connectors		1 x 6-pin 1 x 8-pin
Dimensions from the official website (measured in our test lab), mm		279 x 140 x 42 (292 x 141)
Drivers		Latest drivers can be downloaded from MSI website or GPU manufacturer website
Manufacturer website		MSI

Packing and contents

The MSI GeForce GTX 1070 GAMING X 8G video card comes in a fairly large box made of thick cardboard with an excellent design in the corporate style of the MSI GAMING line and good information content.

The list of system requirements for the computer where you plan to install the video card is located on the back of the box. Based on the recommendations, the power supply in such a system should be at least 500 W and support one 6-pin and one 8-pin PCIe cable.

Included with the graphics adapter, we found the standard documentation, software CD and a nice bonus in the form of branded stickers.

To output an image on the tested novelty, a reference set of interfaces is used:

• 1 x DVI-D;
• 1 x HDMI;
• 3 x DisplayPort.

Simultaneous monitor connection is limited to four video outputs with a maximum resolution of 7680 x 4320 at 60 Hz.

Appearance and element base

The MSI GeForce GTX 1070 GAMING X 8G video card is made on the original black printed circuit board with a matte finish. As you can see, the logic of the location of key components is quite familiar: all memory chips are soldered around the graphics core, and the components of the power subsystem are located on the right side of it. As for the element base, it corresponds to the proprietary concept of Military Class 4. It included solid-state and tantalum-polymer capacitors, as well as chokes with a ferrite core (Super Ferrite Chokes).

The novelty is powered by an enhanced ten-phase circuit, where eight phases are responsible for powering the graphics core, and two are for the video memory subsystem. Recall that the reference video card works according to a five-phase scheme (4 + 1).

The core power subsystem is implemented on the uP9511P digital PWM controller manufactured by uPI Semiconductor, which we have already seen on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080.

8-pin) located on the side of the board. In turn, the reference version manages only one 8-pin connector. Note that the cooler does not interfere with disconnecting PCIe cables.

To enable NVIDIA SLI technology, the MSI GeForce GTX 1070 GAMING X 8G uses two connectors to connect the corresponding bridges.

The reverse side of the novelty, originally covered by a support plate, is almost completely devoid of significant elements, with the exception of a couple of the tantalum-polymer capacitors mentioned above.

The video accelerator is based on the NVIDIA GP104-200-A1 graphics chip, which is manufactured using a 16-nm process technology. It consists of 1920 CUDA cores, 120 texture units and 64 raster units. Testing was carried out in the «OC» mode, in which the base frequency of the GPU is increased from the nominal 1506 to 1607 MHz, and the dynamic frequency from 1683 to 1797 MHz.

The memory of the tested video card, with a total capacity of 8 GB, was built using eight Samsung K4G80325FB-HC25 chips with a capacity of 8 Gb each. The effective frequency of their operation in the «OC» mode has been increased to 8108 MHz. Data exchange between the graphics core and memory is carried out through a 256-bit bus, which is capable of passing 259. 5 GB of information per second.

Cooling System

New with MSI Twin Frozr VI Cooling System installed, it occupies two expansion slots and has a total length of 279mm according to MSI’s website (292mm as measured by our test lab).

The cooler itself consists of a rather large heatsink made of 58 nickel-plated aluminum plates, two fans with TORX 2.0 design and a blade diameter of 95 mm, as well as from a plastic casing that covers the entire structure from above.

The turntables themselves are manufactured by Power Logic and are marked «PLD10010B12HH». They are built on the basis of double rolling bearings with increased service life. They have a nominal operating voltage of 12V and a current of 0.4A.

Five heat pipes (four 6mm and one 8mm) are used to improve heat transfer efficiency. They are plated with nickel, which is used to minimize performance degradation due to copper oxidation.

Heatpipe contact with heatsink fins and base improved with solder.

Two separate low-profile radiators are designed to remove heat from the elements of the power subsystem and video memory chips.

With automatic fan speed control, in the maximum load mode, the graphics core heated up to 74°C, and the cooler, judging by the monitoring readings, worked at 62% of its maximum power. According to subjective feelings, the noise was below the average level, it did not stand out at all against the background of other components and in no way interfered with the use of the video card.

In the maximum fan speed mode, the GPU temperature dropped to 62°C. At the same time, the noise volume increased to an average level, but was still acceptable for everyday use.

In the absence of load, the frequencies of the graphics core and memory are automatically reduced, allowing you to reduce power consumption and heat dissipation of the video accelerator as a whole. In this mode, the temperature of the GPU does not exceed 50°C, since the fans stop spinning altogether, and the cooling system operates in a completely passive mode. This is where the MSI Zero Frozr technology comes into play, which ensures that the graphics card works silently at low loads.

An example of the operation of the customizable LED — illumination of the inscription and the casing of the video card

In general, the MSI Twin Frozr VI cooling system showed its best side, providing not only comfortable temperature indicators, but also demonstrating a very low noise level both in everyday use and at maximum fan speeds.

Review and testing MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Ti GAMING

Monday, 26 February 2018

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Video cards

Author

Alexander

The GeForce GTX 1070 Ti is the latest gaming solution based on the Pascal architecture. This model appeared at the end of 2017. A certain incentive for the release of such a model was the release of AMD Vega video cards. Initially, the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti and Radeon RX Vega 56 should be direct competitors with a slight lag behind the older GeForce GTX 1080 and Radeon RX Vega 64. In this review, we will study the capabilities of MSI’s GeForce GTX 1070 Ti, check the overclocking potential and compare with older video cards . Let’s find out if the increased frequencies will help to get an analogue of the GeForce GTX 1080 from the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti.0003

First, briefly about the characteristics of the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti. This is the third graphics accelerator based on the NVIDIA GP104 processor, and in terms of characteristics it is close to the GeForce GTX 1080.

You can compare the characteristics of the entire line of video cards based on the GP104 core in the table.

	GeForce GTX 1080	GeForce GTX 1070 Ti	GeForce GTX 1070
Architecture	Pascal	Pascal	Pascal
GPU codename	GP104	GP104	GP104
Number of transistors, million	7200	7200	7200
Technical process, nm	16	16	16
Core area, sq. mm	314	314	314
Number of stream processors	2560	2432	1920
Number of texture units	160	152	140
Number of ROPs	64	64	64
Core frequency, MHz	1607-1733	1607-1683	1506-1683
Memory bus, bit	256	256	256
Memory type	GDDR5X	GDDR5	GDDR5
Effective memory frequency, MHz	10012	8014	8014
Memory size, GB	8	8	8
Interface	PCI-E 3. 0	PCI-E 3.0	PCI-E 3.0
TDP level, W	180	180	150

If the older brother is equipped with 2560 CUDA cores, then the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti has 2432 active cores, and the number of texture units has been reduced from 160 to 152. For comparison, the GeForce GTX 1070 has 19 active20 CUDA cores and 140 texture units. Even the declared core frequencies differ little from the older version — the base level is 1607 MHz with an average Boost Clock frequency of 1683 MHz. The more important change is the introduction of 8GHz GDDR5 memory instead of the faster 10GHz GDDR5X. In terms of memory frequencies, the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti no longer differs from the GeForce GTX 1070. The declared TDP level is 180 W, which is identical to the thermal package of the older brother.

GeForce GTX 1070 Ti are produced strictly with the same frequencies without factory overclocking. This hints at a small performance gap with the GeForce GTX 1080. Limiting the potential of the new version was a necessary measure in order not to create internal competition in the older GeForce GTX series. But there are no technical restrictions on overclocking, so any GeForce GTX 1070 Ti can be accelerated by manually changing such frequencies through specialized utilities.

Consider a video card from MSI.

MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Ti GAMING 8G

This model comes in a standard box for the GAMING line — in red tones, with a picture of a video card on the front side. The package includes a disc in an envelope, there are no additional adapters.

This is a standard video card from the GAMING series, there are no visual differences from the MSI GeForce GTX 1070 GAMING X. Black textolite is combined with large two-slot cooling and red inserts in the case. Looks aggressive and classy. The total length of the graphics card is 28 cm.

The case has an intricate design with jagged sides, fans with a special curved shape with dragon logos in the center.

The reverse side is protected by a metal plate. In the area above the GPU, there are holes for the free movement of heated air. A stylized image of a dragon is applied to the surface of the backplate.

On the side of the MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Ti there is a small illuminated logo, and red teeth around the fan are also highlighted. As an illustration, we will use a picture from the official site.

Connectors are identical to older MSI cards: three DisplayPort, one HDMI and one DVI.

The cooling system is identical to that used in the MSI GeForce GTX 1070. A massive nickel-plated base contacts the chip. Five heatpipes permeate the array of fins, distributing heat evenly across the heatsink.

Two large fans are screwed directly onto the radiator, which meet the 100 mm standard (the impeller diameter is slightly smaller). The fans are made using MSI Torx 2.0 technology. The blades are specially shaped for powerful airflow and better dispersion.

Small brackets are provided for mounting the fans. There are no bulky large elements on the radiator that interfere with the air flow.

There are two separate heatsinks for electronic components on the board. The power unit is covered with a ribbed heatsink, memory chips are covered with a wide flat plate, which turns into a stiffening rib.

Contact is made through elastic thermal pads.

The massive PCB is made in the same design as the MSI GeForce GTX 1070/1080 GAMING. The power system occupies a significant part of the board. The graphics chip is powered by an 8-phase power system, the memory is from 2 phases.

There are two power connectors in the corner, in an 8-pin plus 6-pin configuration. They are latched up to make it easy to connect the appropriate cables. There are two SLI connectors. To ensure maximum throughput when working with two video cards, a double bridge-connector SLI HB is used.

The GTX 1070 Ti series graphics cards have the full processor marking GP104-300-A1. Eight gigabytes of memory is provided by the same number of GDDR5 chips from Micron (7QA47 D9TCB).

The factory frequencies are identical to the standard ones. This is 1607/1683 MHz for the core and 2000 (8000) MHz for the memory.

MSI GAMING graphics card demonstrated excellent temperature and noise characteristics in outdoor operation (24°C indoors). The peak core temperature was kept at 68 ° C, and the fans were spinning up to 1150-1200 rpm. This is illustrated in a screenshot from MSI Afterburner with parameter monitoring in Gears of War 4.

Boost frequencies close to 1800 MHz with peaks up to 1860 MHz. In some games, the frequency was stable at 1823 MHz, but there were also drawdowns up to 1775 MHz. Among such heavy games is Project CARS 2 (bottom screenshot).

It is worth noting that the reference GeForce GTX 1080 has approximately the same Boost frequencies, but due to the rapid achievement of the threshold temperature, the drawdown is even stronger.

The cheapest models of the turbine-cooled GeForce GTX 1070 Ti can be slightly slower than the MSI due to high temperatures, but in general the overall performance level is about the same. Therefore, testing MSI GAMING will allow you to judge the entire series.

The overclocking potential of the core is at the level of other video cards with GP104. We managed to achieve frequencies in Boost mode at the level of 2025-2076 MHz with a base value of 1812 MHz. The memory was overclocked to 9028 MHz.

The overclocking numbers are close to those of the GeForce GTX 1070. The memory is not the best result for GDDR5, but the gain is good. For better cooling during overclocking, the fan speed was manually increased to 1600 rpm, and this provided a very modest heating to 65-66 ° C.

Let’s compare the MSI video card with older models — GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition and Radeon RX Vega 64.

Characteristics of test participants The graphs show the full core frequency range, including peak values. Therefore, the maximum frequencies for GeForce GTX and Radeon are higher than those indicated in the table. The Radeon RX Vega 64 graphics card has been tested in Standard mode with the main BIOS and in a more economical mode with the second BIOS.

	GeForce GTX 1080	GeForce GTX 1070 Ti	Radeon RX Vega 64
Architecture	Pascal	Pascal	Vega
GPU codename	GP104	GP104	Vega 10
Number of transistors, million	7200	7200	12500
Technical process, nm	16	16	14
Core area, sq. mm	314	314	486
Number of stream processors	2560	2432	4096
Number of texture units	160	152	256
Number of ROPs	64	64	64
Core frequency, MHz	1607-1733	1607-1683	1274-1546
Memory bus, bit	256	256	2048
Memory type	GDDR5X	GDDR5	HBM2
Effective memory frequency, MHz	10012	8014	1890
Memory size, GB	8	8	8
Interface	PCI-E 3. 0	PCI-E 3.0	PCI-E 3.0
TDP level, W	180	180	295

Test Bench

• Processor: Intel Core i7-6950X @4.1GHz
• motherboard: MSI X99S MPOWER
• Memory: DDR4 Kingston HyperX HX430C15SB2K4/16, 3000MHz, 4x4GB
• hard drive: Hitachi HDS721010CLA332, 1 TB
• power supply: Seasonic SS-750KM
• operating system: Windows 10 Ultimate x64
• GeForce driver: NVIDIA GeForce 388.13
• Radeon: Crimson Edition 17.11.1

The tests were carried out at 2560×1440 with the modes and settings from our testing of the GeForce GTX 1080 and Radeon RX Vega 64. The description of the technique is here. Added test scores to Assassin’s Creed Origins.

More in this category:

« GeForce GTX 1080 vs Radeon RX Vega 64 Benchmarking

Testing the budget video card GeForce GT 1030.