NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Review: RX Vega 56 Killer Is Here

TweakTown's Rating: 93%

The Bottom Line

NVIDIA does it again, dazzling with price/performance/power with its new GeForce GTX 1070 Ti. AMD simply can't react to this, short of dropping the price on a card that's hotter, and slower. 1080p/1440p/3440x1440 display owners, this is your new card.

Introduction

It hasn't been a secret that NVIDIA has been working on the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti, with rumors beginning in the first half of September, making it a direct reaction to the increased - but still wimpy threat from AMD in the form of Radeon RX Vega 56. RX Vega 56 was the stand out crowd from a release of three different Vega cards that were all mediocre.

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NVIDIA doesn't want to feel threatened at any price point, so it decided to make something faster than the GTX 1070, but slower than the GTX 1080 - in order to totally crush any chance of RX Vega 56 living. AMD's Radeon RX Vega 56 is a great card, but it requires 2 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors as well as runs incredibly hot and loud in reference form.

NVIDIA has built the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti for gamers that are running 3440x1440 UltraWide gaming displays, or want to game at maximum graphics settings at 2560x1440 with AA enabled. This is where most of the higher-end market sits, while everything else wanting something faster would now skip the GTX 1080 and head straight into the muscular arms of the beefy GTX 1080 Ti. GTX 1070 Ti is that good, and NVIDIA has really molded it perfectly.

Pricing & Availability

NVIDIA's own GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition will cost $449.99 and is available today, November 2, on NVIDIA's own website. All of the custom cards are available now, with certain brands like MSI, ZOTAC and ASUS having custom GeForce GTX 1070 Ti cards available immediately. I have in hand:

• MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Gaming
• MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Titanium
• ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1070 Ti AMP! Extreme Edition

Reviews on these custom GTX 1070 Ti cards will be released over the next week or so, and I'm going to be testing Battlegrounds, Destiny 2, Project CARS 2, and Wolfenstein II on them all.

Detailed Specs

The GeForce GTX 1070 is powered by the same GP104 GPU that was used in the GTX 1080, with 7.2 billion transistors. The GTX 1070 Ti has 2432 CUDA cores, 152 TMUs, and 19 SMs, while there's 8GB of GDDR5 clocked at 8Gbps on a 256-bit memory bus.

This is compared to the 1920 CUDA cores on the GTX 1070, and its 120 TMUs, and 15 SMs. It has the same 8GB of GDDR5 @ 8Gbps, though. The use of 8GB of GDDR5 @ 8Gbps on the GTX 1070 Ti keeps the reigns on its performance, as it would beat out the GTX 1080 if it were using GDDR5X @ 10Gbps.

NVIDIA has set the GPU clocks at 1607MHz for base, and 1683MHz boost on the GTX 1070 Ti. This is faster than the GTX 1070 and its 1506/1683MHz, but only with its higher base GPU clocks.

With a beefed up GPU over the GTX 1070, but the same VRAM, the GTX 1070 Ti has much more compute performance with 7.8 TFLOPs against the 5.8 TFLOPs on the GTX 1070. A considerable improvement in GPU grunt, while the 8GB of GDDR5 @ 8Gbps keeps it from being a cheaper monster than the GTX 1080.

The single 8-pin PCIe power connectors means we have a 180W TDP, with NVIDIA using the same vapor chamber cooling technology that was used on the 250W GPUs. This means the Founders Edition still has great cooling capacity, yet we're still seeing 84C temperatures under load and power consumption of around 270W total.

Cooling Tech: Old Faithful

Cooling Tech

When NVIDIA launched their GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 at an event in Austin, Texas in May 2016 with the unveiling of the new reference card known as Founders Edition. NVIDIA said that their new Founders Edition cards were much better than the minimum quality required for GTX 10 series graphics cards.

NVIDIA's mechanical design is continued through with the GTX 1070 Ti, something NVIDIA needed to do with what is hopefully the last card in the GTX 10 series. It's not worth changing the physical appearance now when the GTX 11 (or GTX 20 series) is around the corner.

This means we have the same Founders Edition cooler, with the black and silver design and a shroud made of injection molded aluminum. On the back, we have the same backplate that takes some of the heat off of the card. Custom GTX 1070 Ti cards run much cooler, something we'll get into in subsequent reviews.

Detailed Look

Founders Edition Style

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NVIDIA hasn't changed the look of the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti over its previous GTX 10 series styling, and I like that. The GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition still rocks the silver/black style with a blower fan that keeps the card at under 84C. Custom cards should be much cooler, with follow up reviews on those coming real soon.

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From the front, the GTX 1070 Ti FE looks identical to other GTX 10 series cards.

The same goes for the back, with a backplate that keeps the back of the card a little cooler.

We have a single 8-pin PCIe power connector required for the GTX 1070 Ti FE, while custom cards (so far at least) use 8+6-pin connectors.

Display connectivity wise we have the usual 3 x DP1.4, 1 x HDMI 2.0, and 1 x DVI.

Test System

I've recently edited my GPU test bed, which was powered by the Intel Core i7-5960X processor, and shifted into the arms of Kaby Lake and Intel's new Core i7-7700K. GIGABYTE hooked us up with their awesome new AORUS Z270X-Gaming 9 motherboard, which is the heart and soul of my new GPU test platform.

Detailed Tech Specs

• CPU: Intel Core i7-7700K
• Cooler: Nocua U12S
• MB: AORUS Z270X-Gaming 9
• RAM: 16GB (2x8GB) G.SKILL Trident Z 4000MHz DDR4
• SSD: 1TB OCZ RD400 NVMe M.2
• PSU: Corsair AX1500i
• Chassis: In Win X-Frame

Detailed Look

A larger article on our 7700K system is available right here.

Here are some shots I've taken of the new system in action:

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 - 1440p

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 - 4K

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.

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

Heaven - 3440x1440

Benchmarks - 1080p

1080p Benchmarks

Rise of the Tomb Raider is one of the best looking games on the market, a truly gorgeous game - and a wonder to benchmark. The team at Crystal Dynamics made a very scalable PC game that plays really well testing graphics cards. We've got DX11 and DX12 results in one here, showing the slight strengths of running DX12 mode.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. 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 War at Amazon.

Metro: Last Light Redux comes from 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.

Benchmarks - 1440p

1440p Benchmarks

Rise of the Tomb Raider is one of the best looking games on the market, a truly gorgeous game - and a wonder to benchmark. The team at Crystal Dynamics made a very scalable PC game that plays really well testing graphics cards. We've got DX11 and DX12 results in one here, showing the slight strengths of running DX12 mode.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. 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 War at Amazon.

Metro: Last Light Redux comes from 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.

Benchmarks - 4K

4K Benchmarks

Rise of the Tomb Raider is one of the best looking games on the market, a truly gorgeous game - and a wonder to benchmark. The team at Crystal Dynamics made a very scalable PC game that plays really well testing graphics cards. We've got DX11 and DX12 results in one here, showing the slight strengths of running DX12 mode.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. 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 War at Amazon.

Metro: Last Light Redux comes from 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.

Benchmarks - 3440x1440

3440x1440 Benchmarks

Rise of the Tomb Raider is one of the best looking games on the market, a truly gorgeous game - and a wonder to benchmark. The team at Crystal Dynamics made a very scalable PC game that plays really well testing graphics cards. We've got DX11 and DX12 results in one here, showing the slight strengths of running DX12 mode.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. 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 War at Amazon.

Metro: Last Light Redux comes from 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 & Temps

Power Consumption

With the GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition overclocked, and its power limit increased by 20% resulting in power consumption of 290W for the entire system. This is just 20W more, from the 270W total system power draw at stock clocks.

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This isn't too bad considering the Radeon RX Vega 56 in reference form (no custom RX Vega 56 exist right now) uses 210W total, the RX Vega 64 with 295-300W and the RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled using 350W or more. When overclocked and the power limits are unleashed on Vega, the power consumption can easily rise to 450W on the RX Vega LCE. GTX 1070 Ti is much tamer on the power consumption.

Temps

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition has a good cooler and all, but it doesn't begin to compare with the likes of MSI and ZOTAC's custom beasts. Still, the GTX 1070 Ti FE was staying somewhere around the 72-73C mark under load, and up to 75C when overclocked.

This is with the fans on auto, which span up to 75% (3000RPM) when overclocked. It wasn't too loud, but you'll want to avoid getting the GTX 1070 Ti FE if you want a quiet system. If you love the look, you'll have no problems at all getting some great performance out of the GTX 1070 Ti FE.

Overclocking = GTX 1080 Performance, Or MORE

Overclocking

NVIDIA was aiming square between the eyes of its own GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 with the new GTX 1070 Ti, which was created to combat the area where NVIDIA had a little wiggle room to be attacked by AMD with the Radeon RX Vega 56.

Even in its Founders Edition form, the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti has some overclocking wiggle room. I was able to increase the GPU boost clock up to 2000MHz or so, above the 1865MHz GPU boost clocks without overclocking. The 8GB of GDDR5 could be overclocked to 9Gbps, up from the stock 8Gbps speeds which delivers some big performance improvements.

Given that the GTX 1080 has its 8GB of GDDR5X at 10Gbps, we're halfway to the GTX 1080s higher memory bandwidth. This actually helped in performance, with the overclocked GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition either bringing it much closer to matching or in some cases beating the GTX 1080.

Our synthetic benchmarks in 3DMark and Heaven saw the overclocked GeForce GTX 1070 Ti FE beating the GTX 1080 FE and even closing the lead on the much faster GTX 1080 Ti. The overclock to the GPU is not too bad, with another 100MHz or so easily achievable on the Founders Edition card, but the additional 1Gbps added to the GDDR5 overclock (8Gbps to 9Gbps) is much closer to the 10Gbps available on the GDDR5X on GTX 1080.

Overclocking Performance

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 - 1440p

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.

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

Metro Last Light- 1080p

Metro: Last Light Redux comes from 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.

Metro Last Light- 1440p

Performance Analysis

Performance at 1080p on the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti FE falls exactly where it should: beating the G TX 1070, but losing just slightly to the GTX 1080 FE while beating the RX Vega 56 in most tests.

Rise of the Tomb Raider at 1080p runs at 112FPS average on the GTX 1070 Ti FE, compared to the 108FPS on the GTX 1070 FE, and just 98FPS on the RX Vega 56. Even in an AMD friendly game like ROTTR, the new GeForce GTX 1070 Ti dominates.

The latest Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a similar story, with 88FPS average at 1080p compared to the 80FPS from the GTX 1070, and 86FPS from the RX Vega 56. The GTX 1080 FE beats the GTX 1070 Ti, just, with 95FPS average at 1080p.

Metro: Last Light runs beautifully on the GTX 1070 Ti FE with 127FPS average, compared to the 120FPS on the GTX 1070 and 122FPS on the RX Vega 56.

Final Thoughts

NVIDIA has struck yet another chord with the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti offering better-than GTX 1070 performance at stock clocks, and when overclocked, it cannot just keep up with the more expensive GTX 1080, but beat it.

With this level of performance, you probably wouldn't buy the normal GTX 1070 or the GTX 1080 now. NVIDIA's own GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition provides enough performance, but it runs a little on the hot side. This is where the custom GTX 1070 Ti cards come into play, with my review on the MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Ti GAMING coming in the next few hours.

The rumors of NVIDIA locking the overclocking side of the GTX 1070 Ti were false, and it's a great surprise. We have a GPU that is hitting 2GHz without any additional cooling, and the 8GB of GDDR5 can easily be overclocked to 9Gbps. Buying the GTX 1070 Ti and overclocking it, or buying one of the custom GTX 1070 Ti cards and OC it, you'll have a card faster than the GTX 1080 and RX Vega 56/64 cards.

NVIDIA didn't need to release the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti, but man oh man am I glad they did. It shows the technological prowess the company has, in order to get a card built, marketed, and customized by AIB partners within two months - a direct reply to the threat of Radeon RX Vega 56.

All the while, AMD can't get enough Radeon RX Vega graphics cards onto the market... there are major shortages and a serious lack of custom RX Vega graphics cards on the market. Even with our testing on ASUS' custom RX Vega 64 graphics card, I noticed that the temperatures weren't much better... but it was a hell of a lot quieter than the reference RX Vega 64.

In one fell swoop, NVIDIA has stomped on its own GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 and removed any reason for buying the RX Vega 56... and even the RX Vega 64. You're either going to buy the new GTX 1070 Ti or skip right up to the GTX 1080 Ti.

NVIDIA, you win a freakin' gold star. Improving on an already superb stack of GeForce GTX 10 series cards with the new GTX 1070 Ti. Any gamer with a 1080p, 1440p, or 21:9 UltraWide gaming panel will want to dive into the arms of the GTX 1070 Ti. I would suggest getting one of the custom cards from the likes of MSI, ZOTAC or ASUS over the GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition.

All-in-all, NVIDIA impresses yet again with the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti. AMD... I have no idea what you're going to do. GG.