The Bottom Line
Introduction
This is it. This is the video card that will be sold in huge quantities, for gamers of all shapes and sizes. It's a big opening line, but holy hell is the GeForce GTX 1070 one of the best video cards ever released. We reviewed the GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition variant, which is a little better than the stock $379 cards, with it being priced at $449. While the higher-end GTX 1080 wins out with brute specs including GDDR5X memory that's clocked at 10GHz, and while the GTX 1070 isn't as beefy as its big brother, it can swing at the same weight and size, beating nearly everything else we tested in most games, except for the GTX 1080.
All of this arrives in a card priced at a pretty unbelievable $449. I put a full stop there because it deserves us to take a break and just really let that $449 price soak in. The GeForce GTX 1070 is offering Titan X performance at $449, with the Titan X still priced at $999. That's beyond impressive. Consider that the GTX 970 is still $295-$320 on Amazon right now, and that's a card with only 4GB of RAM, while the new GTX 1080 rolls with 8GB of RAM, a much better framebuffer for 4K and beyond gaming, as well as VR.
NVIDIA can offer the GeForce GTX 1070 at only $449 for some freakish reason, kind of shooting themselves in the foot because it's so cheap; I'm going to really have a hard time recommending people buy the GTX 1080. By the time you get to this point of the introduction, you've most likely already clicked through to the benchmarks, and that's fine. The GeForce GTX 1070 is worthy of this praise, as it's now one of the hardest video cards I've ever reviewed.
The GeForce GTX 1070 essentially makes the GTX 970, GTX 980, GTX 980 Ti, and even the Titan X all irrelevant. You're not going to go out and buy any of those cards with the GTX 1070 on the market, not at this price. It also makes most of AMD's mid-range and enthusiast cards even more irrelevant, with the R9 390, R9 390X, R9 Nano, R9 Fury, and R9 Fury X all not worth your money because the GTX 1070 is just so freakin' impressive.
Irrelevant Is A Strong Word Though, Anthony...
Yes, I'm aware of that. But I'm also not like other reviewers. I'm going to throw it in your face: NVIDIA has just thrown out one of its WMDs at AMD in the form of the GeForce GTX 1070. As we get deeper into the review, you'll find that the GTX 1070 is a much more exciting card than the GTX 1080 for more than one reason.
NVIDIA is selling the GTX 1080 Founders Edition for $699, while the GTX 1070 Founders Edition is $449. This is a 35.7% price difference, but the performance isn't 35.7% less... it's actually very close, so it makes me ask: why would you buy the GTX 1080 over the GTX 1070 if the GTX 1070 offers bonkers price/performance? This is a question I can't answer, so if anyone asks me from here on out 'which video card should I buy, Anthony?' I'm going to answer: 'the GTX 1070, without a doubt.'
16nm FinFET, But No GDDR5X - And That's Fine
16nm FinFET... It's Time To Shine
We all knew the 16nm FinFET process was going to deliver the goods, and with the second card in NVIDIA's arsenal of Pascal video cards, the GeForce GTX 1070 shines. We have a 150W TDP powered by a single 8-pin PCIe power connector, which is a huge achievement considering the GTX 1080 was already a power efficient card with its 180W TDP.
The GeForce GTX 1070 is capable of everything the GTX 1080 can do, but it uses 30W less power and doesn't have GDDR5X memory at 10GHz. Instead, NVIDIA used GDDR5 and clocked it to the dizzying heights of 8GHz, which is plenty fast enough - something you'll see in our benchmarks shortly.
No X, But That's Fine
I really thought that the GDDR5X on the GeForce GTX 1080 was going to be the standout reason to buy the higher-end card, but it seems like that's not the case. NVIDIA opted for GDDR5 on the GTX 1070, but clocked it up to 8GHz, up from 7GHz on their previous cards. This is quite a large jump, as it's the fastest GDDR5 memory on a card ever.
As you'll see later on in the review, the 8GB of GDDR5 on the GTX 1070 is ample enough when it comes to bandwidth - as it stays toe and toe with its bigger brother.
DisplayPort 1.4 & HDMI 2.0b Allow for 8K 60Hz, and 4K 120Hz
DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.0b are super exciting, as they'll allow for higher resolution displays, as well as even higher refresh rates. DP1.3/1.4 is capable of powering 4K 120Hz, up from the 4K 60Hz standard right now. Even more so, DP1.3/1.4 will enable 5K @ 60Hz (which right now requires two DP cables), and 8K 60Hz (with two cables).
The GeForce GTX 1070 has 3 x DP connectors, 1 x HDMI 2.0b and a dual-link DVI connector, with it capable of running four displays simultaneously. Not only that, but we have HDR support, as well as video encoding and decoding. Pascal supports HDR video (4K@60 10/12b HECV Decode), HDR record/stream (4K@60 10b HECV Encode), and HDR Interface Support (DP1.4).
Detailed Look & Specifications
Detailed Look
The look and style of the GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition is identical to that of the GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition, with its redesigned vapor chamber cooler and a polygonal shroud which looks awesome in person. There's a backplate on the GTX 1070, just like the GTX 1080, which keeps the rear of the card cooler, and acts as a premium touch to the rear of the card - making it look even better than it already does.
Now, let's take a look at, and around the GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition video card.
The front of the GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition is identical to that GTX 1080, with its polygonal shroud and blower-style cooler. The card just looks great.
The back of the GTX 1070 FE is identical to the GTX 1080 FE, with the sleek backplate that keeps the rear of the card cool.
The same display connectivity from the GTX 900 series continues with the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080, with 3 x DP 1.4 (capable of 4K 120Hz and 8K 60Hz), 1 x HDMI 2.0 and 1 x DVI.
NVIDIA only requires 1 x 8-pin PCIe power connector for the GTX 1070, with its super-low TDP of 150W.
Specifications
The new GeForce GTX 1070 has the same GP104 GPU that was used in the GTX 1080, but with cut down specifications. We have 1920 CUDA cores (down from 2560), 120 TMUs that provide around 202 Gigatexels/sec performance, and the GPU is clocked at 1500MHz with a Boost clock of 1683MHz.
The bigger kick down in specs is that NVIDIA opted for 8GB of GDDR5, versus the GDDR5X used on the GTX 1080. NVIDIA has clocked the 8GB of GDDR5 on the GTX 1070 to 8GHz, which makes it the fastest GDDR5 memory on a video card yet, with 256GB/sec of memory bandwidth. While it may look like a low memory bandwidth number in the world of 4096-bit memory buses on the HBM1-powered Radeon Fury products from AMD, the GTX 1070 has some tricks up its sleeve.
These tricks come from the Pascal architecture, which has a new memory compression engine that "offers new modes for color compression. This allows the GPU to more efficiently use its available memory bandwidth. Ultimately, this reduction in bytes fetched translates to roughly 20% additional effective bandwidth".
Testing Methodology & Test Setup Configuration
Testing Method
For the purposes of testing the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070, and for all future GPU reviews and articles, we've changed up our benchmark suite. I've removed Battlefield 4, GRID: Autosport, BioShock: Infinite, and Grand Theft Auto V. In their place, I've got Far Cry Primal and The Division.
I've also added in some DX12 testing, with Hitman and Ashes of the Singularity. This will provide us with enough variety, but I'm on the hunt for new benchmarks all the time. The second that Battlefield 1 drops, we'll be including that in our GPU reviews, while I'll also be keeping an eye out on the release of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.
Test System Configuration
Corsair sent us over their kick-ass AX1500i PSU, which provides 1500W of power for our 3 and 4-way GPU testing that we have coming very soon.
Anthony's Video Card Test System Specifications
- Motherboard: ASUS Rampage V Extreme - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
- CPU: Intel Core i7 5960X - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
- Cooler: Corsair H110 - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
- Memory: Kingston 16GB (4x4GB) HyperX Predator DDR4 3000MHz - Buy from Amazon
- Storage #1: SanDisk Extreme II 240GB - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
- Storage #2: Intel 730 Series 480GB - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
- Case: Lian Li PC-T80 Open-Air - Buy from Amazon
- Power Supply: Corsair AX1500i - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
- OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64-bit - Buy from Amazon
- Drivers: NVIDIA GeForce 368.14 and AMD Catalyst 16.5.2.1 hotfix
Benchmarks - Synthetic
3DMark Fire Strike - 1080p
3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.
3DMark Fire Strike Extreme - 1440p
3DMark Fire Strike Ultra - 4K (3840x2160)
Heaven - 1080p
Heaven is an intensive GPU benchmark that really pushes your silicon to its limits. It's another favorite of ours as it has some great scaling for multi-GPU testing, and it's great for getting your GPU to 100% for power and noise testing.
Heaven - 1440p
Heaven - 4K (3840x2160)
Benchmarks @ 1080p
1080p Benchmarks
Far Cry Primal is a game built on the impressive Dunia Engine 2 with wide open, beautiful environments. It might look stunning, but the performance is actually quite good - but most cards will be stressed at 1440p, and especially so at 4K and beyond.
You can buy Far Cry Primal at Amazon.
Tom Clancy's The Division is one of the best looking games on the market, build with the beautiful Snowdrop engine. It's an RPG, including some awesome PvP multiplayer, and some of the best graphics on the market. It really stresses systems out, especially at 4K, making it perfect to test with our various video cards.
You can buy The Division at Amazon, and you can read our full review here.
We recently changed over to Metro: Last Light Redux, with developer 4A Games making the Redux version of Metro: Last Light the 'definitive' version of the game. Redux had a fresh coat of paint on the already impressive 4A Engine, and it really pushes our GPUs to their limits.
You can buy Metro: Last Light Redux at Amazon.
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is one of the most graphically intensive games we test, with Monolith using their own Lithtech engine to power the game. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.
You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor at Amazon.
Thief has been around for quite a while now, with the latest version of the first-person stealth game powered by Epic Games' older Unreal Engine 3. While it's old, it has some great multi-GPU scaling that we use to test out our various GPU setups.
You can buy Thief at Amazon.
Tomb Raider is still such a gorgeous game, with developer Crystal Dynamics using their own 'Foundation' engine to build Lara Croft into the new world. One of the best parts about Tomb Raider is the absolutely stellar multi-GPU scaling, so this is an important test to see how well our NVIDIA GeForce SLI and AMD Radeon Crossfire setups scale.
You can buy Tomb Raider at Amazon.
Benchmarks @ 1440p
1440p Benchmarks
Far Cry Primal is a game built on the impressive Dunia Engine 2 with wide open, beautiful environments. It might look stunning, but the performance is actually quite good - but most cards will be stressed at 1440p, and especially so at 4K and beyond.
You can buy Far Cry Primal at Amazon.
Tom Clancy's The Division is one of the best looking games on the market, build with the beautiful Snowdrop engine. It's an RPG, including some awesome PvP multiplayer, and some of the best graphics on the market. It really stresses systems out, especially at 4K, making it perfect to test with our various video cards.
You can buy The Division at Amazon, and you can read our full review here.
We recently changed over to Metro: Last Light Redux, with developer 4A Games making the Redux version of Metro: Last Light the 'definitive' version of the game. Redux had a fresh coat of paint on the already impressive 4A Engine, and it really pushes our GPUs to their limits.
You can buy Metro: Last Light Redux at Amazon.
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is one of the most graphically intensive games we test, with Monolith using their own Lithtech engine to power the game. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.
You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor at Amazon.
Thief has been around for quite a while now, with the latest version of the first-person stealth game powered by Epic Games' older Unreal Engine 3. While it's old, it has some great multi-GPU scaling that we use to test out our various GPU setups.
You can buy Thief at Amazon.
Tomb Raider is still such a gorgeous game, with developer Crystal Dynamics using their own 'Foundation' engine to build Lara Croft into the new world. One of the best parts about Tomb Raider is the absolutely stellar multi-GPU scaling, so this is an important test to see how well our NVIDIA GeForce SLI and AMD Radeon Crossfire setups scale.
You can buy Tomb Raider at Amazon.
Benchmarks @ 4K
4K Benchmarks
Far Cry Primal is a game built on the impressive Dunia Engine 2 with wide open, beautiful environments. It might look stunning, but the performance is actually quite good - but most cards will be stressed at 1440p, and especially so at 4K and beyond.
You can buy Far Cry Primal at Amazon.
Tom Clancy's The Division is one of the best looking games on the market, build with the beautiful Snowdrop engine. It's an RPG, including some awesome PvP multiplayer, and some of the best graphics on the market. It really stresses systems out, especially at 4K, making it perfect to test with our various video cards.
You can buy The Division at Amazon, and you can read our full review here.
We recently changed over to Metro: Last Light Redux, with developer 4A Games making the Redux version of Metro: Last Light the 'definitive' version of the game. Redux had a fresh coat of paint on the already impressive 4A Engine, and it really pushes our GPUs to their limits.
You can buy Metro: Last Light Redux at Amazon.
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is one of the most graphically intensive games we test, with Monolith using their own Lithtech engine to power the game. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.
You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor at Amazon.
Thief has been around for quite a while now, with the latest version of the first-person stealth game powered by Epic Games' older Unreal Engine 3. While it's old, it has some great multi-GPU scaling that we use to test out our various GPU setups.
You can buy Thief at Amazon.
Tomb Raider is still such a gorgeous game, with developer Crystal Dynamics using their own 'Foundation' engine to build Lara Croft into the new world. One of the best parts about Tomb Raider is the absolutely stellar multi-GPU scaling, so this is an important test to see how well our NVIDIA GeForce SLI and AMD Radeon Crossfire setups scale.
You can buy Tomb Raider at Amazon.
Benchmarks - DX12, VR & OC Adventures
This is our new section for video card reviews, with DX12 and VR becoming a huge deal over the course of the last 12 months. We have just a handful of DX12 tests right now, so expect this section of the site and our reviews to grow considerably over the coming months.
The same goes for VR, where we have both the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive in house now. We will be testing VRMark for now, which is in Preview form, as well as our thoughts on VR gaming on the HTC Vive with the new GeForce GTX 1080 video card.
DirectX 12 Performance
We have now tested Hitman and Ashes of the Singularity with DirectX 12, with some impressive results from NVIDIA's latest video card.
Overclocking the GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition
We had more time with our GeForce GTX 1070 FE, so some overclocking adventures were had. The default 1500MHz GPU clock was pushed by 200MHz, resulting in a new Boost clock of 1883MHz, up from 1683MHz. This provided a nice bump in performance, pushing it closer than ever to the GTX 1080. We've got a few runs with the overclocked GTX 1070, which you can see below.
3DMark Fire Strike - 1080p
3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.
We recently changed over to Metro: Last Light Redux, with developer 4A Games making the Redux version of Metro: Last Light the 'definitive' version of the game. Redux had a fresh coat of paint on the already impressive 4A Engine, and it really pushes our GPUs to their limits.
You can buy Metro: Last Light Redux at Amazon.
Power, Temperature & Noise
The GeForce GTX 1070 Breaks New Ice
The GeForce GTX 1080 only uses 230W of power, so I expected slightly less with the GTX 1070 - which hit 215W. The card pushes much more when overclocked however, with around 275W of power consumption across our entire Core i7-5960X system. On its own, the GTX 1070 FE has a TDP of 150W.
We've included our overclocked numbers on the GTX 1070 FE in the chart, too.
Temperature & Noise
After running all of our benchmarks with our overclocked GTX 1070 at +200MHz and +100MHz on the VRAM, we finished with Heaven so that the card was truly beaten down. After a few runs of Heaven, the GTX 1070 stabilized at 82C, which is not too bad at all considering the overclock on the GPU, which was clocked to 2GHz at this point (from 1768MHz Boost).
As for the noise, I let the GTX 1070 decide its own fate when it comes to fan speed, and never noticed the card ramping up to annoying levels. The fan would spin up during load, but it was never enough that I paid attention to it, or made a note of it. This applies to both the stock testing when we were benchmarking, and our overclocked testing - the GTX 1070 really is a quiet card.
Final Thoughts
What a time to be alive, eh?
Here I am again, writing my final thoughts at midnight on the day I fly from Australia to Taiwan for Computex 2016. Another year has flown past, and just last week we had the utter pleasure of reviewing the GeForce GTX 1080 - and now, the GTX 1070 which in my opinion, is a far better card.
It's a hard sell, and people are going to question it all the time, but I did ten years of IT retail sales before I started the gig here at TweakTown. I sold custom gaming PCs and hardware, and would always recommend the card that had far better price/performance than the top of the line, enthusiast card. Sure, the GTX 1080 is a monster, but the GTX 1070 is $220 cheaper and does not trail that far behind in terms of performance.
If you want to spend the full $699 for the GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition (and probably more like $749-$799 for the partner cards) - I won't stop you. But what I will do, is usher you in the direction of the GTX 1070. This is something I did in my day job all those years ago. The way I'd sell it is I'd make the customer think in the way of 'if I spend X percentage more money, will I receive Y percentage more performance' and most of the time the answer was no.
The GTX 1080 FE is $220 more than the GTX 1070, which equates to 31%. Now, if we look at the benchmarks, the GTX 1080 isn't 31% faster... and then you can take into consideration the overclocking abilities of the GTX 1070, which make that gap even larger. The GeForce GTX 1070 really is a force to be reckoned with, and it begins chewing into the GTX 1080 in a big way when you look at the slight step down in performance, but huge savings on your wallet.
If we look at the GTX 1070 versus the best that AMD has to offer in the Radeon R9 Fury X, which costs $599 by the way, the GTX 1070 is the better buy by far. The Fury X has HBM1 but offers no performance benefits, even with the huge 512GB/sec bandwidth (versus the 256GB/sec on offer with the GDDR5-powered GTX 1070). It beats the Fury X in virtually all of our tests, so we're going to have to wait until AMD unveils its new Polaris cards to see if they can topple the GTX 1070.
To wrap things up: if you're in the market for a new video card, and you were able to hold off on pulling the trigger on the GeForce GTX 980 Ti, as well as the Fury range from AMD, then your time has come. The GeForce GTX 1070 represents a massive jump in performance over the GTX 970, with double the framebuffer, and double the performance. There's nothing that doesn't impress with the GeForce GTX 1070.
Performance (overclocking, power) | 100% |
Quality (build, design, cooling) | 95% |
General Features (display outputs, etc) | 95% |
Bundle, Packaging & Software | 95% |
Value for Money | 100% |
Overall | 97% |
The Bottom Line: NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1070 makes me wish we had an award that just said "OMFG BUY NOW". NVIDIA has completely changed the game with the GTX 1070, this is the new champion of price/performance.
PRICING: You can find products similar to this one for sale below.
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Deutschland: Finde andere Technik- und Computerprodukte wie dieses auf Amazon.de
What's in Anthony's PC?
- CPU: Intel Core i5-12600K
- MOTHERBOARD: GIGABYTE Z690 AERO-G
- RAM: Corsair 32GB DDR4-3200
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 24GB
- SSD: Sabrent 4TB Rocket 4 Plus
- OS: Windows 11 Pro
- CASE: Lian Li O11 Dynamic XL
- PSU: ASUS ROG Strix 850W
- KEYBOARD: Logitech G915 Wireless
- MOUSE: Logitech G502X Wireless
- MONITOR: LG C3 48-inch OLED TV 4K 120Hz
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