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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jrs77 - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
God those GPU-prices are extreme. All across the board they're some 30% too high imho.The last GPU I bought was a GTX660, which cost just a tad under $200. Now the 1060 costs $100 more than that.
The GTX1070 should cost $350 and the GTX1080 $500. These are the price-brackets that existet just a couple years ago.
Yojimbo - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
You're exaggerating the price differences a little. You can get a 1060 6 GB for $260, and the 1080 does start at $500. And if you had a 2 GB 660 that's a bit like the 3 GB 1060, which can be had for $205.DDR3 prices per bit are close to where they were 3 years ago, and significantly higher than 5 years ago. I'm not sure how GDDR5 prices compare for then and now, but it's a safe bet that demand outstripping supply in the memory market has affected GDDR5 as well. Then consider that the GTX 1070 has twice the VRAM as the GTX 970.
I think cryptocurrency was responsible for the high prices of graphics cards earlier this year, but as of now perhaps it's memory prices that are keeping them high. The closeness in price of the 1080 and 1070 and the big difference in price of the 1060 3 GB and 1060 6 GB probably still have to do with cryptocurrency. The 1080 and 1070 are based on the same GPU, and the pricing is affected by the yield and the demand for each card.Cryptominers demand the 1070,but not the 1080. If the 1070 is in demand relative to the the 1080 at a high ratio than the yield ratio of the GPU, it makes economic sense for the price of the 1070 to move upwards. Perhaps this situation is one reason the 1070 Ti only has one SM disabled. A similar situation exists for the 1060 3 GB/6 GB pair, pushing the 6 GB version up in relation to the 3 GB (cryptominers demand the 6 GB, I believe)
damianrobertjones - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
I NEED to see the minimum frame rate on each of the games. It's pretty much silly to show me 565+ fps when it dips to 42fps.CiccioB - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
Tons of graphs are presented for each game and they all measure the timings on average and minimum. Have a look at the small pics below the big graphs.letmepicyou - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
Not a big fan of how nVidia is creating facial recognition technology to help usher in the police state...Yojimbo - Saturday, November 4, 2017 - link
Which world is freer, one where we spend our time thinking of which technologies to ban and how to ban them, then implementing bans and spending our efforts enforcing the ban? Or one where we let technology progress and then work to integrate the technology in a beneficial way (which may require changes in laws after a period of disruption)? I'd argue that the second way is freer. How we use the technology is up to us. One could argue, I guess, that the Amish face no dangers regarding facial recognition policing (although maybe that's one technology they would like, because I think the reason they reject technologies is because they don't want individuals to have the power to be free from the Amish group structure).r13j13r13 - Tuesday, November 7, 2017 - link
5 fpsGastec - Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - link
The link for EVGA GTX 1070 Ti FTW2 opens up an Amazon page that in turn leads to the Buying Option FULLFILLED BY AMAZON of only $1,099.99. That way we get to save 0.01 cents. Isn't it Amaz ing?