The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out When Nvidia announced its all-new GPUs based on its Pascal architecture, the GTX 1080 stole all the headlines with its flagship specs, but its less-expensive baby brother–the GTX 1070–stole everyone’s hearts. That’s because the golden rule in the GPU world is that the top card always comes with an exorbitant “fastest card” tax, while the model right below it is usually only a bit slower but much less expensive (this same rule also applies in the CPU world too). Such is the case for the GTX 1070, which seems to offer about 20 percent less performance than the GTX 1080 based on its specs, but is 45 percent less expensive. Even though a $400 GPU is still expensive by any measure, that’s a smokin’ bargain in comparison, making the GTX 1070 the top contender for “most bang for the buck GPU available.” Like the GTX 1080 Nvidia is offering the GTX 1070 in both a Founder’s Edition for $449 and versions designed by its partners for $379 and up.
The Specs Spec chart Though the GPU inside the GTX 1070’s is a cut-down version of the chip used in the GTX 1080, named GP104, it received a relatively conservative neutering to keep it within striking distance of its big brother. As the chart shows, the trimming of the GTX 1080’s silicon occurred in a few distinct spots: it has 33 percent less CUDA cores, a 50MHz slower Boost Clock, and slower memory (10Gb/s vs. 8Gb/s) that overall grants the GTX 1070 25 percent less memory bandwidth, though both cards use the same 256-bit wide path. These reductions in overall power allow the GTX 1070 to have a 30w lower TDP than the 1080 at 150w, though the cards are physically the same size and both use a single eight-pin PCIe connector. Since the GTX 1070 uses the exact same GPU as the 1080 all the same features are baked into it, including Nvidia’s Ansel screenshot technology, Simultaneous Multi-Projection for VR and multiple displays, and Fast Sync for e-sports gamers. It also does not allow for more than two-card configurations, like the GTX 1080, as the card’s fingers for expansion are both occupied by Nvidia’s new dual-channel SLI connector. The Benchmarks To test the GTX 1070 we pulled some data from our sister site Computer Shopper, which tested it on a system featuring the following specs:
- Intel Core i7-4770K CPU
- 16GB DDR3 memory
- Gigabyte Z87X-UDH5 Socket 1150 mobo
- OCZ Vector 180 SSD
- 850-watt Thermaltake Toughpower PSU
The card was tested at 3840x2160, 2560x1440, and 1920x1080 resolution, and we’ve compiled the results into the following charts. 4k chart 2560 chart 1080 chart Analyzing the results at 4k resolution we see the GTX 1070 is neck-and-neck with the GTX 980 Ti, despite requiring 100w less power. At high resolution the two cards essentially trade blows throughout testing, making it a tie for the most part, and the same goes for the Fury X as well. It’s extremely close to the GTX 1070 at high resolution, with a few notable exceptions including Hitman and Sleeping Dogs. The GTX 1070 is also about 15 to 20 percent faster than the Radeon R9 Fury, and about 50 percent faster than the GTX 970. It’s also interesting that the GTX 1070 wasn’t able to hit 60fps in a single title at 4K resolution, and also the GTX 1080 was 20 to 30 percent faster across the board. When the resolution is lowered a bit to the GTX 1070’s native habitat of 2560x1440, the card was able to exceed 60fps in every test we ran except Hitman: Absolution, where it came so close at 54.4fps (that test was also run at 8x MSAA). It also opened up a bit of a gap between it and the GTX 980 Ti too, running about five to fifteen percent faster overall, and about 30 percent faster than the GTX 980. It spanked the Fury X and vanilla Fury as well by huge margins, so that isn’t even close. Compared to the GTX 1080 though, the 1070 was only 15 to 25 percent slower, as expected. Finally at 1080p resolution the delta to the 980 Ti hovered from non-existent to around 15 percent depending on the title, similar to the experience we had at higher resolutions. In fact, all of our results are basically the same as they were at 2560x1440, with the GTX 970 running about 30 to 40 percent slower overall then GTX 1070. Overclocking The golden rule for the high-end Pascal cards seem to be that they can all run somewhere around 2GHz or so, which is quite a boost from the company’s Maxwell cards as they topped out at around 1.4GHz typically. Despite the GTX 1070 having a Boost Clock that is estimated by Nvidia to be around 1,683Mhz most people should be able to go a bit beyond that just by letting the card boost all on its own. Nvidia has upgraded the “self overclocking” ability of Pascal GPUs with the third version of its GPU Boost technology, which allows the card to overclock on its own according to power consumption and temperature headroom. The card we were sent for testing wasn’t too cooperative, and ended up running at 196MHz over its Base Clock, finishing its run at 1,702MHz, which is low for these cards. We anticipate most cards would be able to run somewhere around 1,900MHz at least, and if you have a good card and adequate cooling you might be able to nudge up against 2GHz based on what we’ve seen online. Partner cards are also a better deal for overclocking it seems, compared to the Founder’s Edition, as they have beefier coolers, and some also you to increase the card’s voltage too.
Final Thoughts Since we tested the GTX 1080 before the GTX 1070, we had a good idea of what it would be capable of, which is basically about 20 percent less performance. That’s exactly what we got, and the fact that it sells of about half of what the GTX 1080 is going for makes it an incredible value. It’s also about 75 percent faster than the GTX 970 it replaces, making it a hell of an upgrade considering it’s just one generation older. Though performance is quite close to the GTX 980 Ti, it is still overall a bit faster, and 980 Ti cards are also still priced way too high in most cases (around $650 still, for some reason) to even be taken seriously. If you can get one for $300 or so it would be a better deal than the GTX 1070, though you would miss out on its VR capabilities, Ansel technology, and the cool factor of having a newer GPU. In the end the GTX 1070 is the clear winner at $400 or so, and its biggest contribution to the GPU world is serious VR horsepower and the ability to run games at 2560x1440 without taking out a second mortgage. If you’ve been considering upgrading both your GPU and monitor, one of these bad boys along with a new high-res panel would make for a delightful holiday indeed.
from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/2H2yodc
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