Hardware & Technical GTX 1070 and Elite, first impressions...

My shiny new EVGA GTX 1070 Founders edition arrived yesterday so I thought id give a few thoughts here, for those who might be looking to upgrade :)

Well, first impressions, it blows my old GTX970 out of the water, so off to a good start. First thing I tested it with was trusty old Unigine Valley benchmark (extremeHD preset) for a direct comparison to my 970, scores below:
GTX 970: 2470 (fps avg. 59)
GTX 1070: 4003 (fps avg. 95.7)

Below are a couple of screen grabs from GPU-Z and Afterburner showing the core clock/memory clock and temps while playing Elite, core clock hovers around 2000MHz, temp never exceeds 61 degrees...
zB7qQdy.jpg

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Ive done a bunch of framerate comparisons, using the most graphics intensive areas in game (in stations, in large surface base) as well as a basic "in space" one. For the comparisons all settings were maxed out, SMAA antialiasing and 16x anisotropic filtering forced via control panel. Each test was done at two settings one at native 4k (3840x2160) and one at 4k with 0.75x supersampling (essentially rendering at 2880x1620 and upscaling to 4k). Quick spoiler, this is not a 4k card, while its pretty playable at 4k (native) you will often see dips to 45-50fps in stations etc, which for me is unplayable, id rather sacrifice resolution to get a locked 60.

Anyway screenies and results below...


Basic "in space" test:

4k native
2IhUWqh.jpg

4k at 0.75x
6YXJxVP.jpg


In dock:

4k native;
RtQC8eB.jpg

4k at 0.75x
CI7eufw.jpg


Docked at large surface port:
4k native:
bQlhzwE.jpg

4k at 0.75x
UI3jbUE.jpg


In conclusion, well its an awesome card, not quite a 4k card (I didn't expect it to be). But certainly a beast at 1440p for most games, and with Elite you can push it a bit higher, in my case 4k at 0.75x (2880x1620) results in locked 60 no matter what. I could probably push it up to 4k at 0.85x (3264x1836) but that may on very rare occasions drop below 60fps, so I'm sticking to max settings, 4k at 0.75 as the sweetspot settings for my rig.

On a sidenote, if you're wondering why I'm choosing to run at 4k and downsample, rather than run at lower resolutions and upsample/supersample. Its because I game on a 4k tv, which has some odd resolution support, for instance, it supports 1440p but only at 30Hz, while it supports 2160p (4k) at a full 60Hz. The odd resolutions like 2880x1620 aren't supported by the tv at all, so for me personally its better to run at full 4k and use supersampling to drop the internal rendering resolution to something that guarantees 60fps.

*Edit* For those interested in VR, the best I can do by way of a VR benchmark is the steamVR benchmarking tool, screenshot below:
2Yczxxr.jpg
 
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Thanks a lot for reviewing the 1070. :) This is a card I'm aiming for as well. Repped

Edit: edit: deleted.
 
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Deleted member 110222

D
If that's what it can do at 4K, then at 1440p it's going to be awesome.

If I wasn't already, I'm sold now. Cheers for this dude.
 

Sir.Tj

The Moderator who shall not be Blamed....
Volunteer Moderator
Excellent review and using ED as the reference really helps. :D
 
Excellent as far as I can tell, I do like the reference/founders cards, nice aluminium shroud and a backplate (although the backplate is plastic).

I hope to do some proper overclocking and see how far I can push it :)

The EVGA Precision X has a feature that lets you tweak the GPU boost 3.0 curve. But I'm unsure if that works on the FE cards from Nvidia.

Edit: see vid below what I mean. ;)

[video=youtube_share;E0Pn5_8xL5I]https://youtu.be/E0Pn5_8xL5I[/video]
 
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Just a quick update, finally settled on a stable OC for this card. I prefer to overclock without touching voltage, the highest stable clocks I could achieve were:

Core - 2075MHz (+250)
Memory - 2116MHz/8464MHz effective (+225)

Custom fan curve keeps temps below 70 degrees even after extended load tests (8hrs looping valley benchmark while I was at work). Temps while gaming stay between 54 and 69 degrees, fan never exceeds 65% speed.

At anything over 70-75% speed, blower fans are loud! Not so much the fan itself but the volume of air rushing out of the back of the card. Fortunately unless you mess with voltages the temps should never be an issue.

Tried some 3d mark: firestrike tests with the new clocks:
Standard - 19913
Extreme - 9078

The unigine valley benchmark went up from 4003 to 4021 although the 4003 score the original post already had a slight OC.

All in all very happy with my new card, I know I could push it further if I upped the core voltages but I think with a reference cooler the extra heat would mean unacceptable fan noise in order to keep the temps below the 92 degrees throttle point for pascal.

Just need to figure out what to do with my old 970 now!

A friend of mine has just told me (literally as I was typing this) that in about a weeks time AMD are releasing the RX480 which for £170 will be able to overclock to faster than a 1070/titanX/980ti. So I'd say 2016 is an awesome year to be upgrading your gpu and if he's right that AMDs £170 gpu will beat the £400 1070 then I smell a serious price war coming!!
 
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I too have heard that the RX480 could overclocking to 1500mhz but there seems to be a lot of rumours surrounding this new GPU.

Exiting times are ahead!
 
So I'd say 2016 is an awesome year to be upgrading your gpu and if he's right that AMDs £170 gpu will beat the £400 1070 then I smell a serious price war coming!![/I]

Excellent ! And for the voltage you have reason not to touch. It is better to give a long life to the card
 
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