The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition Review: GP104 Comes in Threes
by Nate Oh on November 2, 2017 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- GeForce
- NVIDIA
- Pascal
- GTX 1070 Ti
Meet the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition
For the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition, pinned at the official MSRP of $449, NVIDIA has essentially plopped the GTX 1070 Ti GPU into a GTX 1080 board. This makes a lot of sense considering that this late-cycle card has the same GPU and 180W TDP requirements of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1080. Doing so allows NVIDIA to drop in the new specification and go with minimal changes, and similarly, their partners can take their own GTX 1080 designs and quickly reconfigure them for the GTX 1070 Ti.
The end result of this decision is that the GTX 1070 Founders Edition has the same power delivery and cooling specificaitons as the GTX 1080. Which is to say that it retains the same vapor chamber + blower cooling design, and the same 5+1 dual-FET power design. Similarly, that means the GTX 1070 Ti also has the same 120% power limit, and so extending the TDP to 216W. Otherwise, the PCB is exactly the same as the GTX 1080.
It is notable that the GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition gets the vapor chamber cooler, as the card does not carry a price premium like the other Founders Edition cards do; NVIDIA is not charging more than their partners here. As a high efficiency cooling solution, the vapor chamber works well with the GTX 1070 Ti's increased (relative to the GTX 1070's) 180W TDP and 120% power limit. And while the blower fan is not the quietest, the Founders Edition is able to boost well past its paper-specified clockspeeds.
As we weren't provided with the GTX 1070 Ti PCB photos, we are using the GTX 1080 PCB with GDDR5X modules as an example. As with previous NVIDIA reference PCBs, the 5 GPU power phase and 1 GDDR5 phase is fine for stock operation and mild overclocking, rather than catering to the needs of hardcore overclockers. While not a major point, the Founders Edition isn't really apt to be pushed as a real "overclocking" card; it will boost a little higher but the user experience won't be significantly affected.
Finally, given the identical-to-1080 board design, the rest of the specifications should not come as a surprise. The 10.5" card requires a single PCIe 8-pin power connector for additional power, which combined with the 75W of the PCIe slot, gives the complete card more than enough power for its 180W TDP. Meanwhile on the display side of matters, the GTX 1070 Ti has 3x DisplayPort 1.4, an HDMI 2.0b port, and 1 DL-DVI-D port. The GTX 1070 Ti does support SLI, like all Pascal cards from the GTX 1070 and up.
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Nfarce - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
"Vega 56 beats 1070 in almost all games."It beats the reference GTX 1070, but a factory overclocked 1070 pulls ahead again, especially overclocked on top of the factory overclock. Vega 56 (or 64 for that matter) does not have that type of overclocking headroom. This has long been an advantage for Nvidia. AMD GPUs have a history of being terrible overclockers. My old EVGA GTX 970 SSC ACX 2.0+ could be overclocked to 980 performance without even touching the voltage for example.
LastQuark - Saturday, November 4, 2017 - link
Vega 56 BIOS can be upgraded to the Vega 64 BIOS for another 20% speed boost. Vega can only do 5% max. With Vega 56 lower price point by over $50, cheaper Freesync monitor options, and 2x the availability of GSync, Vega 56 is still making a lot of sense for new buyers.B-Real - Thursday, November 2, 2017 - link
According to this theory, you can't compare the 1070 to the Vega56, as the 1070 is 5 degrees Celsius hotter...damonlynch - Thursday, November 2, 2017 - link
It should be "nonetheless", not "none the less", in the introduction to the Final Words ;-)jardows2 - Thursday, November 2, 2017 - link
Good showing. At MSRP, a good argument (from these tests at least) can still be made for Vega 56. Not sure if 1070ti is worth $50.00 more, but you do get a little bit better performance, and most important to me, a lower noise profile at load. Keeping it interesting for sure!CaedenV - Thursday, November 2, 2017 - link
So.... it is essentially a direct Vega 56 competitor except that it will be available on store shelves for purchase?Really hoping that this will cause the normal 1070 prices to drop a bit *fingers crossed*. I picked up a 4k monitor last year and my gaming has been quite limited on it with my GTX 960. A 1070 will fill in quite nicely for now, and next year when the new cards come out I'll pick up a 2nd 1070 for SLi to really make 4K gaming smooth.
BrokenCrayons - Thursday, November 2, 2017 - link
SLI doesn't seem like a good solution these days given tepid support from the GPU manufacturers and very few modern titles that are optimized to take advantage of a 2nd graphics card. You might have a better experience if you set aside the first 1070's cost until next year and then use the funding from both to purchase a 1080 or just hang on to see what happens with Volta since there'll likely be consumer GPUs available sometime in 2018.vladx - Thursday, November 2, 2017 - link
AMD has no chance at all, a RX Vega 56 in my country is $150 more expensive than the newly released GTX 1070 Ti.Sorjal - Thursday, November 2, 2017 - link
Easiest check to see potential mining impact is toss a ti and non in a pc and test with some miner program. Nicehash legacy is probably the best for comparative stats. Run their benchmark on both cards on precise and compare the results. There will be some variance, but it should provide a decent reference. Nvidias are typically used on ones that are more gpu intensive, with Zcash probably the largest. AMD works off their bandwidth and are favored for corresponding currencies like Etherium and Monero. The nice hash legacy will test against most of the major ones including Ethereum, Monero, and ZCash.Given the increased CPU performance, it is probably being tested mining wise as we speak
Sorjal - Thursday, November 2, 2017 - link
Remember to overclock and undervolt. Energy effeciency is a large factor. 1070's seem to be run between 65-70% power limit. A voltage meter on the outlet may be useful in this case as you can look at the voltage change for each test for each card