Gtx 1070 ti vram: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Specs

Nvidia GTX 1070 Ti review: A fine graphics card—but price remains high

Tech —

Vega 56 should have led to lower prices. Instead, the 1070 Ti maintains the status quo.

Mark Walton

Enlarge / A tale of two graphics cards (GPUs): here’s the Nvidia GTX 1070 Ti (from fall 2017).

Mark Walton

Specs at a glance: GeForce GTX 1070 Ti
CUDA CORES 2432
TEXTURE UNITS 152
ROPS 64
CORE CLOCK 1,607MHz
BOOST CLOCK 1,683MHz
MEMORY BUS WIDTH 256-bit
MEMORY BANDWIDTH 256GB/s
MEMORY SIZE 8GB GDDR5
Outputs 3x DisplayPort 1. 4, 1x HDMI 2.0b with support for 4K60 HDR 10/12b HEVC Decode, 1x dual-link DVI
Release date November 2
PRICE Founders Edition (as reviewed): £419/$449/€469

The GTX 1070 Ti is a great graphics card but a frustrating product. In the year and a half since the GTX 1080 and the GTX 1070 launched, Nvidia has faced little competition from rival AMD, which has been stretched thin across the launch of mainstream graphics cards like the RX 480 and high-end processors like Ryzen Threadripper. As brilliant as those products are, particularly Threadripper, it took until August of this year for AMD to launch a competitor to Nvidia’s year-old graphics cards. The resulting RX Vega 64 wasn’t the graphical powerhouse many were hoping for, with high power consumption and performance that couldn’t quite top a GTX 1080.

The one bright spot was Vega 56, which handily beat the GTX 1070’s performance across a wide range of games for around the same price (Ethereum mining price inflation notwithstanding). Given the age of Nvidia’s products, a price drop seemed like a natural solution. But this is Nvidia—and Nvidia won’t let AMD have nice things. And so we have the GTX 1070 Ti, a «kick a man when he’s down» kind of product that shatters the sole success story of the Vega lineup. For around a £20/$20 premium over Vega 56, the GTX 1070 Ti offers tangible boost in performance over a GTX 1070 and, when overclocked, performance as good as (if not better) than a GTX 1080.

Specs

The GTX 1070 Ti is based on the same GP104 GPU used in GTX 1070, but with a CUDA core count much closer to the GTX 1080—2,432 instead of 2,560. The GTX 1070 Ti isn’t a pumped-up GTX 1070; instead, it’s a cut-down GTX 1080, the key difference being the use of 8GB of standard GDRR5 memory instead of faster GDDR5X memory. Stock clocks are rated at 1,607MHz base and 1,683MHz boost, but as with all Nvidia graphics cards, the boost clock is typically much higher in real-world use with reasonable cooling. The Founders Edition card reviewed, which recycles Nvidia’s unremarkable if visually appealing blower-style vapor chamber cooler from the GTX 1080, consistently runs at 1,847MHz under load.

GTX 1080 GTX 1070 Ti GTX 1070 GTX 1060 GTX Titan X GTX 980 Ti GTX 980 GTX 970
CUDA Cores 2,560 2,432 1,920 1,280 3,072 2,816 2,048 1,664
Texture Units 160 152 120 80 192 176 128 104
ROPs 64 64 64 48 96 96 64 56
Core Clock 1,607MHz 1,607MHz 1,506MHz 1,506MHz 1,000MHz 1,000MHz 1,126MHz 1,050MHz
Boost Clock 1,733MHz 1,683MHz 1,683MHz 1,708MHz 1,050MHz 1,050MHz 1,216MHz 1,178MHz
Memory Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit 192-bit 384-bit 384-bit 256-bit 256-bit
Memory Speed 10GHz 8GHz 8GHz 8GHz 7GHz 7GHz 7GHz 7GHz
Memory Bandwidth 320GB/s 256GB/s 256GB/s 192GB/s 336GB/s 336GB/s 224GB/s 196GB/s
Memory Size 8GB GDDR5X 8GB GDDR5 8GB GDDR5 6GB GDDR5 12GB GDDR5 6GB GDDR5 4GB GDDR5 4GB GDDR5
TDP 180W 180W 150W 120W 250W 250W 165W 145W

The likes of Asus, MSI, and EVGA have their own take on the GTX 1070 Ti complete with complex heat pipes and triple-fan arrangements for superior cooling. All offer some form of factory overclock, which pushes the boost clock further still, but—contrary to some questionable reports earlier this year—user overclocking is fully supported in standard applications like EVGA Precision XOC and MSI Afterburner. Naturally, there’s a premium attached to the third-party cards that makes some of them more expensive than GTX 1080s (here’s looking at you, Asus). Go for a cheaper model with good cooling and apply the overclock yourself, otherwise you might as well just buy a GTX 1080.

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Connectivity varies, but the Founders Edition GTX 1070 Ti features three DisplayPort 1.4a ports, one HDMI 2.0b port (with support for HDR), and one dual-link DVI port for those rocking classic high-res monitors. SLI up to two cards is supported, while TDP is the same as the GTX 1080 at 180W. While TDPs can’t be directly compared between manufacturers, numerous reviews show Vega 56 to have much higher power consumption than even the GTX 1080. Nvidia’s Pascal architecture is simply more efficient than Vega, despite having been released almost a year and a half earlier.

Performance

Test system specifications
OS Windows 10
CPU Intel Core i7-5930K, 6-core @ 4.5GHz
RAM 32GB Corsair DDR4 @ 3,000MHz
HDD 512GB Samsung SM951 M.2 PCI-e 3.0 SSD, 500GB Samsung Evo SSD
Motherboard ASUS X99 Deluxe USB 3.1
Power Supply Corsair HX1200i
Cooling Corsair h210i GT liquid cooler
Monitor Asus ROG Swift PG27AQ 4K

With the Pascal architecture being so much of a known quantity at this point (for more on Pascal, check out the GTX 1080 review), there are few surprises when it comes to performance and overclocking. With a few clicks, it’s easy to get the Founders Edition GTX 1070 Ti up to 2012MHz on the core clock and 8100MHz on memory. There’s definitely a little more headroom there for those willing to tweak voltages or watercool, but for the vast majority of people, firing up MSI Afterburner and moving a couple of sliders around nets a substantial boost in performance.

As always I pushed the GTX 1070 Ti through a range of games and synthetic benchmarks on the standard graphics card test system. Both the benchmarks and the system are in need of an overhaul after a couple of years of testing (a large project, as you can imagine) but remain relevant for this generation of GPUs. Each game was tested at 1080p, 1440p, and UHD (4K) resolutions at high or ultra settings at stock speeds. On the synthetics and science side there’s the standard 3DMark Firestrike benchmark (again, run across three resolutions), as well as LuxMark 3.0 and CompuBench to test compute performance.

At stock speeds, performance is exactly where you’d expect it to be, particularly given the price. The GTX 1070 Ti is much faster than a GTX 1070 and a wee bit slower than a GTX 1080. Depending on the game and resolution, it’s as much as a 25 percent boost over the GTX 1070 and as much as a 10 percent decrease over the GTX 1080. The sweet spot is certainly 1440p gaming, where there are substantial performance gains to be had from the extra CUDA cores. Unfortunately, I have not been able to get hold of any AMD RX Vega cards to test, but the swathe of reviews at dedicated hardware sites show that the GTX 1070 Ti is at least as good, if not a little better, at stock speeds.

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The GTX 1070 Ti comes into its own when overclocked. With the 2012MHz core clock and 8100MHz memory clock in place, performance is as good as a stock GTX 1080, and in some cases even better. The biggest gains are at 1080p, but even at 1440p and 4K an overclocked GTX 1070 Ti comes close to a GTX 1080. Then again, if you’re overclocking anyway, an overclocked GTX 1080 is even better still.

Who is this for anyway?

While the GTX 1070 Ti is great, the GTX 1070 didn’t stop being a brilliant graphics card overnight. It’s more power efficient than Vega 56, which makes it easier to cool and quieter under load, and in recent months the price has come down to as little as £370/$400 for one of Zotac’s neat mini variants, making it a good value, too. For those looking to game at 1440p without breaking the bank, it’s a no-brainer.

If you can stretch the budget a little further, the GTX 1070 Ti offers an even better 1440p experience at a similar cost per frame. While it’s great that the price didn’t go up, it didn’t go down either. Instead of a GTX 1070 price drop, Nvidia has maintained the status quo. That’s good business for Nvidia, but disappointing for consumers.

The biggest loser, however, is AMD. Even if it was always part of Nvidia’s grand marketing plan, it’s hard to shake the feeling that GTX 1070 Ti is little more than a way to lure over a few potential RX Vega 56 customers that are on the fence or struggling to get hold of a card due to short supply (if you’re particularly cynical, you could say it’s a neat way to use up some slightly off GP104 GPUs, too). The AMD ecosystem might be a better value overall thanks to offerings like Freesync, but Nvidia continues to have it licked on performance. Ultimately, when buying a graphics card, that’s what matters most.

The good

  • As much as 25 percent faster than a GTX 1070 at stock speeds
  • As fast as, if not a wee bit faster, than a GTX 1080 when overclocked
  • Pascal remains an impressively power efficient architecture

The bad

  • A GTX 1070 price cut would have been better value for consumers
  • Some partner cards are as expensive as the GTX 1080

The ugly

  • There are some launch cards available for MSRP of £419, but how long until miners or greedy retailers push up the price?

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Ti review: The best 1440p graphics card

At a Glance

Expert’s Rating

Pros

  • Superb 1440p performance
  • Much quieter than Radeon Vega cards
  • Nearly as powerful as GTX 1080

Cons

  • Nvidia restricts out-of-box clock speeds on custom cards
  • Curious value vs. GTX 1070 and GTX 1080

Our Verdict

Nvidia’s GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition is a good card turned great in a graphics card market upset by cryptocurrency miners and wild prices.

Best Prices Today: GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition

This GeForce GTX 1070 Ti review probably exists only because AMD’s Radeon Vega 56 exists.

Nvidia’s GTX-10 series debuted nearly a year and a half ago with the launch of the GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 in May, 2016. The more powerful card received price cuts since then—to $500, theoretically—but we never heard a whisper about a GeForce GTX 1070 Ti designed to slot between the two. Until AMD’s Radeon RX Vega graphics cards launched.

The disappointing Vega 64 ran hot and loud while failing to best the GTX 1080. But the (theoretically) $400 Radeon Vega 56 proved much more appealing—and its performance outpunches the GTX 1070 in many games. Surprise! Two months later the $450 GeForce GTX 1070 Ti appears, at a price just below what the $470 Vega 56 is actually selling for on the street.

But the quest to beat AMD puts the new hardware uncomfortably close to the GTX 1080—and Nvidia surprisingly restricted the card’s clock speeds to keep the GTX 1070 Ti from cannibalizing its bigger sibling. Well, kind of. Find out all in our Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition ($450 on Nvidia) and EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition ($470 on Amazon) review.

Brad Chacos/IDG

The EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition.

GeForce GTX 1070 Ti specs and features

The only truly surprising technical feature of the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti is how little Nvidia pared down its year-and-a-half-old “GP104” GPU compared to the GTX 1080. The full version of GP104 inside the GTX 1080 consists of 20 streaming multiprocessors (SMs) with 2,560 CUDA cores, while the GTX 1070 Ti’s chip has 19 SMs and a whopping 2,432 CUDA cores active. By comparison, the base GTX 1070 packs 15 SMs and just 1,920 CUDA cores.

The GTX 1070 Ti’s clock speeds swipe aspects from both sides. Nvidia’s new graphics card ships with a 1,607MHz base clock and 1,683MHz boost clock. By comparison, the GTX 1070 clocks at 1,506/1,683MHz, and the GTX 1080 hums along at 1,607/1,733MHz—at least on paper. In reality, Nvidia’s GPU Boost 3 technology runs these cards as fast as they’ll go while staying within optimal heat and power limits, especially in custom cards with powerful cooling solutions. But there’s an interesting twist to custom GTX 1070 Ti cards, which we’ll get into when we look at EVGA’s GTX 1070 Ti Black Edition in just a bit.

Nvidia

The GeForce GTX 1070 Ti’s tech specs. 

Nvidia built the GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition to overclock well, despite some (slightly) misguided early rumors that suggested clock speeds would be locked down. It’s equipped with the same vapor chamber cooler and five-phase dual-FET power design as the GTX 1080 has, both of which aren’t found in the GTX 1070 vanilla.

But the GTX 1070 Ti’s memory subsystem mirrors the baseline GTX 1070’s, ditching the GTX 1080’s speedy GDDR5X memory for standard GDDR5 VRAM over a 256-bit bus. Like the vanilla version, the GTX 1070 Ti offers 256GBps of overall memory bandwidth, versus the GTX 1080’s 320GBps.

The Founders Edition card draws its 180W TDP through a single 8-pin power connector, and sports three DisplayPorts, an HDMI 2.0b port, and a dual-link DVI connection. The GTX 1070 Ti also supports Nvidia’s GeForce Experience software, including GFE’s stellar Ansel and ShadowPlay Highlights tools—features that actively makes your gaming experience more fun.

Next page: EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition and Precision XOC auto-overclocking

EVGA GTX 1070 Ti Black Edition specs and features

Brad Chacos/IDG

The EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition.

Nvidia’s aiming to eradicate the Radeon Vega 56’s lead in yet another way. While customized RX Vega graphics cards have yet to appear, months after AMD’s GPU released, a full range of custom GTX 1070 Ti cards will be available at launch.

Mentioned in this article

GTX 1080 FTW

We’re also reviewing the EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition, which costs $20 more than Nvidia’s Founders Edition. The GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition carries over the design from EVGA’s other Black Edition cards. In addition to a fancy LED logo and a 5+1 power phase configuration that noses out the Founders Edition’s setup, it sports the same ACX 3.0 cooler that impressed us so much on the EVGA GTX 1080 FTW.

Here’s how we described ACX 3.0 in that review:

“The new generation of EVGA’s vaunted custom-cooling solution features a pair of massive 100mm fans that shut off in low power scenarios and contain double ball-bearings that help them last up to four times longer than competing cards, EVGA claims. Those sit over a full-sized set of heat sink fans, with the GPU itself covered by a large copper plate with six heat pipes of various sizes snaking out of it.”

EVGA

EVGA’s custom ACX 3.0 cooling solution.

You’ll see how effective ACX 3.0 performs later in our review. But perhaps the most interesting part of the EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition’s spec sheet is its clock speed rating: 1,607MHz base/1,683MHz boost “plus. ” In fact, every card in EVGA’s GTX 1070 Ti lineup—including the beefy, high-end $500 FTW2 model—lists the exact same clock speeds. And if you look at the clock speeds on custom GTX 1070 Ti graphics cards from other manufacturers, they all do too. What gives?

Simple: Nvidia isn’t allowing customized GTX 1070 Ti cards to be overclocked out of the box—presumably to keep overclocked versions of this step-down card from challenging the top-end GTX 1080. Here’s what Nvidia’s Bryan Del Rizzo said when I asked about it.

“GeForce GTX 1070 Ti lives in the small price band between the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080. Given the number of products in this category we are aiming to simplify the stack-up, and let gamers get the extra performance through manual overclocking.”

Massive, massive bummer. But as he says, manual overclocking is still allowed, and because of that the restriction isn’t stopping Nvidia’s hardware partners from developing workarounds to drive their graphics cards to faster speeds.

How to use EVGA’s GTX 1070 Ti auto-overclocking tool

EVGA’s Precision XOC software is typically used by enthusiasts to overclock their GeForce graphics cards manually. But EVGA developed a new version of its Precision XOC overclocking and monitoring software with “an exclusive feature for the GTX 1070 Ti”: an auto-overclocking tool that scans your card and automatically applies an “optimal overclock” with no technical know-how needed on your end.

Brad Chacos/IDG

The Precision XOC tool lets EVGA work around the GTX 1070 Ti’s clock speed lockdown, and the packaging materials make sure you know it.

The packaging for the EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition (and its other GTX 1070 Ti models) includes a slip of paper with a QR code emblazoned on it, directing you to the company’s Precision XOC software. You’ll have to register with your name and email address to use the software, and the auto-overclocking process requires you to input your card’s serial number, in case Q. A. help winds up being required. You can find the serial number on a sticker on the back of the EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition as well as on the card’s box.

Precision XOC will automatically detect your GTX 1070 Ti the first time it launches and offer to “Run EVGA Precision XOC scanner” on it—that’s the auto-overclocking tool. Agree and you’ll be presented with three options. The quick scan cycles through preset overclocking ranges appropriate to your card, and takes 15 to 20 minutes. A full scan thoroughly tests your hardware to create a custom overclock more precisely tuned to your particular graphics card, but it can take up to an hour. Finally, as always, you can manually overclock the EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition.

EVGA

Using Precision XOC’s auto-overclocking tool for the EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition is easy-peasy.

I ran the quick scan on my model, as I’m guessing that’s what most people will do—and it was dead simple. The EVGA Precision XOC Scanner ran for 17 minutes, and then applied a solid +101MHz overclock to the card. In practice, that resulted in clock speeds of 1,924MHz to 1,949MHz running The Division at 4K resolution, and up to 1,974MHz at 1440p.

Mentioned in this article

EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti FTW2

You could no doubt push performance higher by manually tinkering with the card’s power target, overclock, and memory speeds, but a 101MHz boost is respectable indeed, and we used EVGA’s configured overclock to test the GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition in our performance benchmarks. A card like the EVGA GTX 1070 Ti FTW2 ($500 on Amazon) could presumably hit even higher marks, as it includes EVGA’s revolutionary iCX cooling technology and a 235-watt maximum power draw, compared to the SC Black Edition’s 217W. Cooling and available power can play a major difference in overclocking.

If you accidentally close the Precision XOC Scanner or want to run the auto-overclocking tool again, you can do so by clicking the yellow arrow icons in the software’s interface until you’re on the Basic OC Scanner page, then clicking Run. It’ll restart the process.

Whew, that was a long diversion—but a necessary one if you buy a custom GTX 1070 Ti. Let’s dig into how this hardware handles!

Next page: Our test system, performance benchmarks begin!

Our test system

We tested the GTX 1070 Ti and EVGA’s GTX 1070 Ti Black Edition on PCWorld’s dedicated graphics card benchmark system. Our testbed’s loaded with high-end components to avoid bottlenecks in other parts of the system and show unfettered graphics performance.

  • Intel’s Core i7-5960X with a Corsair Hydro Series h200i closed-loop water cooler ($110 on Amazon).
  • An Asus X99 Deluxe motherboard.
  • 16GB Corsair’s Vengeance LPX DDR4 memory ($195 on Amazon).
  • EVGA Supernova 1000 G3 power supply ($190 on Amazon).
  • A 500GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, PCWorld’s pick for the best SSD ($150 on Amazon).
  • Corsair Crystal Series 570X case, deemed Full Nerd’s favorite case of 2016 ($180 on Amazon).
  • Windows 10 Pro ($190 on Amazon).

We’re comparing the GTX 1070 cards against AMD’s Vega duo, the $399 Radeon RX Vega 56 and $499 air-cooled RX Vega 64. Both were benchmarked using the Balanced power profile on the stock BIOS. Of course, because the GTX 1070 Ti was designed to slot between the (theoretically) $350 Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 and $500 GTX 1080, we’re testing those as well. All of the cards are reference models except the EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition (obviously), which we tested in both its out-of-the-box configuration as well as with Precision XOC’s new one-button overclock feature. We discussed the details of our overclock in the previous section.

Each game is tested using its in-game benchmark at the mentioned graphics presets, with VSync, frame rate caps, and all GPU vendor-specific technologies—like AMD TressFX, Nvidia GameWorks options, and FreeSync/G-Sync—disabled. Given the capabilities of these particular cards, we’re testing at 1440p and 4K resolutions alone. They’d all scream at 1080p. Every card was tested using the most current drivers available from AMD and Nvidia.

GeForce GTX 1070 Ti benchmarks

The Division

The Division ($50 on Amazon), a gorgeous third-person shooter/RPG that mixes elements of Destiny and Gears of War, kicks things off with Ubisoft’s Snowdrop engine. We test the game in DirectX 11 mode.

Brad Chacos/IDG

The GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition essentially draws even with the Radeon Vega 56 here, and splits the performance difference between the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080. Out of the box, the EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition does the same, but with Precision XOC’s auto-overclock applied, it squeezes out a 4.5-percent frame rate increase at 1440p resolution.

Next page: Ghost Recon: Wildlands

Ghost Recon: Wildlands

Next up: Ghost Recon: Wildlands ($60 on Amazon), a stunningly beautiful and notoriously punishing game based on Ubisoft’s Anvil engine. Not even the GTX 1080 Ti can put in a decent showing at Ultra graphics settings at 4K, so we test at Very High, which “is targeted to high-end hardware. ” It’s a game that includes some Nvidia GameWorks features, but again, we test with those disabled.

Brad Chacos/IDG

This strenuous game challenges all of these cards at 4K resolution. While the Radeon Vega 56 barely surpassed the original GTX 1070 in performance, the GTX 1070 Ti pushes straight past it, though once again the difference is less noticeable at 4K resolution. Once again, Nvidia’s GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition falls squarely in between its cousins. EVGA’s custom card doesn’t provide much uplift in this game even with the auto-applied overclock, but this game’s a beast.

Next page: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Now it’s time for another graphically punishing game, but this one favors AMD hardware. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided ($15 on Amazon) replaces Hitman in our test suite because its Dawn engine is based upon the Glacier Engine at Hitman’s heart. We dropped all the way down to the High graphics preset for this one and still struggled at 4K. We tested in DirectX 12 as that mode lifts all performance boats regardless of which brand’s GPU sits at the heart of your graphics card.

Brad Chacos/IDG

Like I said: Deus Ex heavily favors AMD hardware, to the extent that the GTX 1080 barely stays ahead of even the Radeon Vega 56 at 1440p. That said, the GTX 1070 Ti puts up admirable numbers versus its AMD rival, which flat-out pummels the vanilla GTX 1070.

Next page: Rise of the Tomb Raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider ($60 on Amazon) tends to perform better on GeForce cards, on the other hand. It’s utterly gorgeous and one of the first games to receive specific optimizations for AMD’s new Ryzen processors (not that it matters in this comparison, as we’re using an Intel processor). 

Brad Chacos/IDG Brad Chacos/IDG

Like I said: Rise of the Tomb Raider heavily favors Nvidia hardware. While the Radeon Vega 56 managed to beat the baseline GTX 1070 by the barest of margins, the GTX 1070 Ti comes close to Vega 64 levels of performance at 4K—especially EVGA’s overclocked-boosted Black Edition. And it outright bests the flagship Vega 64 at 1440p.

Next page: Far Cry Primal

Far Cry Primal

Far Cry Primal ($55 on Amazon) is yet another Ubisoft game, but it’s powered by the latest version of the long-running and well-respected Dunia engine. We benchmark the game with the optional Ultra HD texture pack enabled for high-end cards like these.

Brad Chacos/IDG Brad Chacos/IDG

The GTX 1070 Ti manages to match or slightly beat the Radeon Vega 56 depending on the resolution and settings you’re using, and the OC’d EVGA GTX 1070 Ti Black Edition manages to nudge that. We’re talking imperceptible zero to 4-fps differences from worst to best, though.

Next page: Ashes of the Singularity

Ashes of the Singularity

Ashes of the Singularity ($40 on Steam), running on Oxide’s custom Nitrous engine, was an early standard-bearer for DirectX 12. Many months later it’s still the premier game for seeing what next-gen graphics technologies have to offer. Nvidia drivers have greatly improved GeForce performance in Ashes over the past several months. We test the game using the High graphics setting, as the wildly strenuous Crazy and Extreme presets aren’t reflective of real-world usage scenarios.

Brad Chacos/IDG Brad Chacos/IDG

This game traditionally favored Radeon hardware, but after a slew of DirectX 12 driver improvements by Nvidia, the GTX 1070 Ti trounces the Vega 56 and matches Vega 64 in performance. The difference is even more pronounced if you don’t have Windows 10 and thus can’t utilize DX12. In DirectX 11, the GTX 1070 Ti beats Vega 56 by nearly 20 fps. Hot damn.

Next page: Synthetic benchmarks

Power, heat, noise, clock speeds

Power

We test power under load by plugging the entire system into a Watts Up meter, running the intensive Division benchmark at 4K resolution, and noting the peak power draw. Idle power is measured after sitting on the Windows desktop for three minutes with no extra programs or processes running.

Brad Chacos/IDG

The Vega 64 still stands out as a ridiculous power hog here, but the differences—or lack thereof—between the GTX 1070 Ti and Radeon Vega 56 are much more interesting. Because the GTX 1070 Ti largely matches the GTX 1080’s GPU layout and uses GDDR5 memory instead of power-efficient GDDR5X, it draws a lot more power than the vanilla GTX 1070 does. In fact, it essentially ties the Vega 56 on that front.

Heat and noise

We test heat during the same intensive Division benchmark at a strenuous 4K resolution, by running SpeedFan in the background and noting the maximum GPU temperature once the run is over.

Brad Chacos/IDG

Again, the GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition and Vega 56 are in a dead heat. (Get it?) Both cards use blower-style coolers, but despite the equality in temperature, Nvidia’s implementation is vastly superior to AMD’s. The ghastly Vega coolers are the loudest I’ve heard since the old Radeon 290X days. Seriously, it’s loud enough to distract you unless you’re wearing noise-proof headphones, and that’s a rare find in modern GPUs.

But the EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition’s superb ACX 3.0 cooling solution stands heads-and-shoulders above the reference cards. It not only runs far, far chillier, it manages to run much quieter than the others while doing so. Two fans are better than one, it seems.

Next page: Bottom line and buying advice

GeForce GTX 1070 Ti vs Radeon Vega 56

How does the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti compare to the Radeon Vega 56? The answer’s complicated, and made more so by cryptocurrency miners driving up prices in this market segment.

Nvidia met its goal. The GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition ($450 on Nvidia) matches or beats the Radeon Vega 56 in every game we tested except Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, which skews heavily towards AMD hardware. And it bests the AMD card heavily in Rise of the Tomb Raider and Ashes of the Singularity. But power and heat are a wash and the performance victories are minimal in most situations we’ve tested. Given that AMD’s glorious, tear- and stutter-killing FreeSync variable refresh rate monitors are much more affordable than Nvidia’s comparable G-Sync displays, and the GTX 1070 Ti starts at $50 more than the Radeon RX Vega 56’s $400 suggested pricing, you can make an argument for these cards being of roughly equal value.

At least in theory.

Brad Chacos/IDG

Mentioned in this article

XFX Radeon RX Vega 56

In reality, the Radeon Vega 56 has barely come close to approaching its suggested pricing since five minutes after the card launched in August. Sure, there’s a Sapphire Vega 56 for $400 at Microcenter right now, but that’s in-store pickup only and on “sale” from $530. As I’m writing this on November 1, there’s a single XFX Vega 56 available for $400 on Amazon and $420 on Newegg, but all others cost more than $500… and it just turned up at those prices today. I’ve been tracking Vega 56 prices on Newegg since the GTX 1070 Ti’s announcement last week, and most sold for $470—$20 more than Nvidia’s Founders Edition card, and the same price as the superior EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition.  

The GTX 1070 Ti probably wouldn’t exist if Vega 56 didn’t exist, but it’s cards like the EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition that make Vega 56 moot in today’s bizarre market. The world is still waiting for custom cards month after Vega’s launch. In the meantime, the Radeon Vega reference cooler sounds like a damned hurricane. That alone makes it impossible to recommend over EVGA’s (in reality) identically priced GTX 1070 Ti, which delivers more performance while staying cool and running awfully quiet.

If Radeon Vega 56 ever hits its suggested price and custom Vega cards become available for $450 or less, the FreeSync variable may tip the scales back in AMD’s favor. But that’s not the way of the world today.

Should I buy the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti?

So should you buy the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti? Even though we recommend it over the Radeon RX Vega 56, it’s still a complicated question influenced by the cryptocurrency problem, as miners drive up prices. Why do men decide?

If you look at PCWorld’s guide to the best graphics cards—or the benchmarks in this very article—you’ll see that the vanilla $380 GTX 1070 already excels for 60-fps gaming at 2560×1440 resolution. The GTX 1080, on the other hand, is best for high refresh-rate 1440p gaming. It can handle entry-level 4K gaming if you turn down some graphics settings, but true single-card 4K/60 gaming requires the beastly $700 GTX 1080 Ti.

Brad Chacos/IDG

The EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition uses a custom ACX 3.0 cooler.

But most full-sized versions of the GTX 1070 are selling for $430 or more on Newegg right now. (Damned miners!) The significant performance increase offered by the GTX 1070 Ti is well worth the $20 to $30 extra. But saving up even more pennies for the $500-plus GTX 1080 makes less sense. The GTX 1070 Ti is plenty fast for 1440p gaming, and the biggest performance differences between the GTX 1070 Ti and GTX 1080 in our 4K tests are only about 5 fps. If you’re already turning down graphics settings to play games at 4K with the GTX 1080, you could save $50 and just turn anti-aliasing options down another notch on the GTX 1070 Ti instead.

Mentioned in this article

GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition

In an ideal world—where the GTX 1070, GTX 1080, and Radeon RX Vega 56 all sold for suggested pricing, and custom Vega cards were on store shelves—the GTX 1070 Ti would be a weird and largely irrelevant release, hampered by the crap Nvidia’s pulling with the clock speeds of custom cards. But here in the real world of today’s graphics card market, it’s the best 1440p graphics card option around. Unless cryptocurrency miners drive up its prices too, of course.

The slick-looking EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition ($470 on Amazon) easily justifies its modest $20 upcharge thanks to its excellent ACX 3.0 cooler and the one-touch ease with which Precision XOC negates Nvidia’s ugly, artificial clock speed lockdown in customized graphics cards. But be sure to download that overclocking software to get the most out of your hardware.

GeForce GTX 1070 video card, outperforming GeForce Titan X, estimated at $379

For many gamers, the GeForce GTX 1070 will be much more interesting, which also outperforms the GeForce Titan X. Its performance is 6.5 TFLOPS, it is equipped with 2048 CUDA cores and 8 GB of video memory.

Yesterday, Nvidia announced two flagship video cards Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 and GeForce GTX 1070, which use the Pascal architecture.

The more expensive Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 outperforms two GeForce GTX 980s in SLI mode, as well as the GeForce Titan X. It contains 2560 active CUDA cores, its performance is 9 TFLOPS, the core can operate at a frequency of 1.6 to 2.1 GHz, and 8 GB of GDDR5X video memory operate at 5.5 GHz. In overclocked mode, when demonstrating various games, the temperature did not exceed 67 ° C.

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 will go on sale May 27 for $599, and the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition will also go on sale for $699.

However, for many gamers, the GeForce GTX 1070 will be much more interesting, which also outperforms the GeForce Titan X. Its performance is 6.5 TFLOPS, it is equipped with 2048 CUDA cores and 8 GB of video memory.

GeForce GTX 1070 Standard Edition Coming June 10th for $379, and the Founders Edition will cost $449.

2016-05-08 09:01:00

Editorial

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Yearning.

God of War Ragnarok review

Ironically, there is no God of War in the game called God of War at all. In places, Ragnarok resembles some kind of talk show in which people with a troubled past talk about how they were beaten by their parents and disliked by their peers in childhood, because of which they grew up angry

The waifu factor. Review of the mobile shooter Goddess of Victory: Nikke

A new mobile thriller from Korean developers quickly won a million audience. In just one week, the project was installed on smartphones 10 million times, and the ratings of the game in mobile marketplaces are surprising in a good way. Do not rush to attribute this success to beautiful waifu, that is, anime girls. The game catches with well-tuned gameplay, albeit exciting only for a short time.

Fairy capitalism. Overview of Potionomics

Potionomics is a game where you have to keep your store afloat, brew potions and go on dates. The task is complex, requires the ability to plan and do several things at the same time. If you fail, you will live in a box.

Yes! Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord review

There is a type of game that takes up all your free time. It seems that he sat down in the evening, for a couple of hours, to drive the knights around the screen, as you find yourself with disheveled hair on your head and lips bitten from nerves in the middle of a castle siege. That’s what Bannerlord is all about — and it’s the most unique game of 2022 that has no equal.

The main game of autumn! Who Should Play God of War: Ragnarok

Results

Nov 08 17:34

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94 on Metacritic. 98% of critics recommend playing it, according to Opencritic. None of the scores are less than 80 points. It’s all about God of War: Ragnarok — the final chapter of the legendary action series, in which Kratos and his son Atreus confront the gods and bring the Scandinavian Apocalypse closer. Who should play the main Sony exclusive this year, and who should bypass the project, you will find out in our material.

Review of ten GeForce GTX 1070 Ti video cards: choosing the best model

Table of contents

  • Introduction
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Ti
  • ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1070 Ti
  • ASUS Cerberus GeForce GTX 1070 Ti
  • Inno3D GeForce GTX 1070 Ti iChill X3
  • Inno3D GeForce GTX 1070 Ti iChill X4
  • KFA2 GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Hall of Fame
  • KFA2 GeForce GTX 1070 Ti EX
  • MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Gaming 8G
  • MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Armor
  • Palit GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Super JetStream
  • Characteristics of tested graphics cards
  • Performance GeForce GTX 1070 Ti
  • Conclusion

Introduction

The laboratory continues the series of summary materials on Nvidia graphics accelerators.

The GeForce GTX 1070 Ti series is next in line. This is an intermediate link with performance almost like the GeForce GTX 1080, but with more affordable and cheaper GDDR5 memory.

It is precisely because of these characteristics that the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti has become an interesting solution for games and a good purchase. Well-established technical process, balanced parameters, printed circuit boards and cooling systems that have been in production for a long time made it possible to put the new product on stream, and the built-in overclocking potential — to catch up and overtake its older sister.

Previously, the lab has already summed up the results of the confrontation between Nvidia GeForce GTX 1xxx and GeForce GTX 9xx and chose the best models among the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti and GeForce GTX 1070.

recommendations

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Ti

Full name: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Ti, manufacturer code: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Ti. Description on the company’s website — link.

Nvidia did not reinvent the wheel, and endowed the reference version of the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti in familiar armor.

We have long known the main advantages of this approach: a tangential fan draws air from the PC, blows through all the important elements and blows hot heat outside the system unit.

Like the GeForce GTX 1080, the video card is equipped with a five-phase GPU power system, leaving a margin of safety and TDP. The circuitry remained unchanged, but the usual GDDR5 memory of the same volume was installed.

We’ve reviewed Nvidia’s reference variant a number of times, so let’s move on to more interesting variations.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Ti review in our lab.

ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1070 Ti

Full name: ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1070 Ti 8GB GDDR5 Advanced Edition, manufacturer code: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Ti. Description on the company’s website — link.

As a representative of the famous line, ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1070 Ti stands out with a black design and a three-fan CO with a wide heatsink responsible for efficient heat dissipation from the GP104-300’s flaming motor.

The design of the Republic of Gamers series has become one of the recognizable features of the new generation. The decorative casing hides the ASUS Aura branded backlight, which is synchronized through the application of the same name, by default it pulsates in bright red.

Voltage measuring points will pleasantly surprise not only users, but also connoisseurs of overclocking, allowing you to get accurate data on vGPU, vMem and vPLL, and achieve a few very useful megahertz.

ASUS introduced a performance cooler, and following the ASUS ROG GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Strix Gaming OC, installed it on the hero of the review, which has a lower TDP level, and carried out important optimizations in the design.

The cooler is a two-section radiator assembled with 64 and 65 nickel-plated aluminum plates.

Engineers used a nickel-plated copper base plate to cover the GPU and transfer heat to six 6mm heatpipes. Moreover, the power subsystem is in contact with the main radiator, or rather, its second section. The imprint of the thermal pad is clear and even, which indicates good and even pressure.

The ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1070 Ti video card is built on the original printed circuit board of the younger model GeForce GTX 1070, with the only difference being that the engineers made the binding of almost all elements, especially the VRM power subsystem.

The general formula of the power subsystem has eight phases: six phases are assigned to the graphics processor, one to the video memory, and one to the PLL.

ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1070 Ti review in our lab.

ASUS Cerberus GeForce GTX 1070 Ti

Full name: ASUS Cerberus GeForce GTX 1070 Ti, manufacturer code: Cerberus-GTX1070TI-A8G. Description on the company’s website — link.

Behind the face of the ASUS Cerberus GeForce GTX 1070 Ti lies a real monster rushing to the surface. Compared to the top version of ASUS ROG Strix, the novelty is not equipped with a massive cooling system with three smaller diameter fans, but with Dual — a rethought radiator with a thicker design. And that’s all it is: productive, powerful, insatiable. With just a pair of 100 mm fans, the video card inspires respect in its owner.

Unfortunately, the presence of a warranty seal twists my arms, but I still manage to get closer.

The cooler is made in the form of a two-section radiator assembled with 54 and 68 nickel-plated aluminum fins. It is pierced by four heat pipes with a diameter of 6 mm each.

The elongated plates of the second section (through the pink thermal pad) are responsible for dissipating heat from the power section.

What can you learn about the technical component of the ASUS Cerberus GeForce GTX 1070 Ti by external signs? It is based on the GP104-300-A1 GPU. The element base corresponds to the Super Alloy Power II concept and includes high-quality components: solid capacitors, ferrite core chokes, and tantalum-polymer solid capacitors.

The power subsystem has eight phases: six are assigned to the graphics processor, one each to the PLL and video memory.

ASUS Cerberus GeForce GTX 1070 Ti review in our lab.

Inno3D GeForce GTX 1070 Ti iChill X3

Full name: Inno3D GeForce GTX 1070 Ti iChill X3 Manufacturer code: C107T3-1SDN-P5DN. Description on the company’s website — link.

In my opinion, you can only admire when you take the Inno3D GeForce GTX 1070 Ti iChill X3 in your hands, because the colossal size, futuristic design and metal workmanship cannot but impress.

The video card surprises with its cooling system with three 92 mm fans, dressed in metal casing linings. Multiple names are applied on top, and cuts are made along.

The heat spreader is a two-section heatsink made of aluminum nickel-plated plates that penetrate five heat pipes according to the formula «10 + 6 + 6 + 8 + 10» mm.

On the Inno3D GeForce GTX 1070 Ti iChill X3 model, the cooling of the power section is the soldered part in the second section. This approach is inferior in efficiency, but reduces the cost of the device.

The Inno3D GeForce GTX 1070 Ti iChill X3 video card is built on the original printed circuit board of the reference model GeForce GTX 1070, but the developers unsoldered an additional GPU power phase and tantalum capacitors in the power subsystem piping.

The general formula of the power subsystem has eight phases: six phases are assigned to the graphics processor, one — to the video memory, one — to the PLL.

Inno3D GeForce GTX 1070 Ti iChill X3 review in our lab.

Inno3D GeForce GTX 1070 Ti iChill X4

Full name: Inno3D GeForce GTX 1070 Ti iChill X4 Manufacturer code: C107T4-1SDN-P5DN. Description on the company’s website — link.

On the one hand, the Inno3D GeForce GTX 1070 Ti iChill X4 model is a copy of the Inno3D GeForce GTX 1070 Ti iChill X3 version reviewed earlier in the laboratory. On the other hand, the VRM cooling system is organized differently in it and the total number of fans has been increased to four.

The Inno3D model is equipped with a cooler with the unpronounceable name HerculeZ X4 Air Boss. Among competitors, it stands out with fifteen-blade fans with a diameter of 92mm, blue-tinted full metal shroud, hybrid backlighting to indicate GPU heat, and additional power subsystem fan.

A massive heat sink takes center stage to keep the GPU cool. The only weak point of the HerculeZ X4 Air Boss is the polishing quality of the nickel-plated copper base.

The main heat spreader is a two-section radiator, assembled with 74 and 66 nickel-plated aluminum plates. It is a cunning interweaving of various designs. The radiator is pierced by five heat pipes according to the formula 10 + 6 + 6 + 8 + 10 mm.

A thoughtful element on the model is the VRM zone heatsink. Note that the Inno3D version is one of the few equipped with heat pipes for the power subsystem, and the only one that uses a separate fan for it.

The diameter of the fan mounted on the VRM is small — only 47 mm. Despite personal experience, his work is surprising because it functions quietly. Apparently, the developers have limited its speed so that we do not hear the familiar mosquito squeak.

The Inno3D GeForce GTX 1070 Ti iChill X4 model is also built on the original printed circuit board of the reference GeForce GTX 1070 with additionally soldered elements.

The general formula of the power subsystem has eight phases: six phases are assigned to the graphics processor, one — to the video memory, one — to the PLL.

Inno3D GeForce GTX 1070 Ti iChill X4 review in our lab.

KFA2 GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Hall of Fame

Full name: KFA2 GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Hall of Fame, manufacturer code: 70ISH6DHL2SK. Description on the company’s website — link.

The KFA2 GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Hall of Fame is one of the most memorable models on the market and rightfully bears the unofficial title of «work of art». It can be freely compared with a three-deck Arctic-based ship.

What is most memorable about the HOF series? Design and detailing. KFA2 engineers manage to intrigue users with a snow-white design and workmanship.

A massive three-fan TriMax Cooler mounted on a white PCB. The symbolism of the manufacturer can be traced throughout.

Unusual is the button responsible for switching between game mode and overclocking on the rear panel. In the latter case, HyperBoost technology is activated, expanding the limits on consumption and temperature.

The heat spreader is made in the form of a two-section radiator with many nickel-plated aluminum plates. All connections are carefully soldered. The design of the TriMax cooler uses five heat pipes, four of which are 8 mm in diameter, one is 6 mm.

For efficiency, a copper plate is brazed into the base for even heat distribution. Factory thermal paste is applied evenly and without excess.

The memory chips and power subsystem are covered by a single aluminum plate.