Dies the Gtx 1070 Ti Black Edition Review

At a Glance

Good'southward Rating

Pros

Superb 1440p performance
Much quieter than Radeon Vega cards
Nigh as powerful every bit GTX 1080

Cons

Nvidia restricts out-of-box clock speeds on custom cards
Curious value vs. GTX 1070 and GTX 1080

Our Verdict

Nvidia'south GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition is a adept bill of fare turned dandy in a graphics bill of fare market place upset past cryptocurrency miners and wild prices.

Best Prices Today

This GeForce GTX 1070 Ti review probably exists but because AMD'southward Radeon Vega 56 exists.

Nvidia's GTX-10 serial debuted nearly a year and a half ago with the launch of the GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 in May, 2016. The more than powerful card received price cuts since and so—to $500, theoretically—but nosotros never heard a whisper well-nigh a GeForce GTX 1070 Ti designed to slot betwixt the two. Until AMD's Radeon RX Vega graphics cards launched.

The disappointing Vega 64 ran hot and loud while declining to best the GTX 1080. But the (theoretically) $400 Radeon Vega 56 proved much more appealing—and its performance outpunches the GTX 1070 in many games. Surprise! Ii months after the $450 GeForce GTX 1070 Ti appears, at a price just below what the $470 Vega 56 is actually selling for on the street.

But the quest to beat AMD puts the new hardware uncomfortably close to the GTX 1080—and Nvidia surprisingly restricted the card's clock speeds to keep the GTX 1070 Ti from cannibalizing its bigger sibling. Well, kind of. Find out all in our Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition ($450 on Nvidia) and EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition ($470 on Amazon) review.

geforce gtx 1070 ti 8 — The EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition.

GeForce GTX 1070 Ti specs and features

The only truly surprising technical feature of the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti is how lilliputian Nvidia pared down its yr-and-a-half-old "GP104" GPU compared to the GTX 1080. The full version of GP104 inside the GTX 1080 consists of twenty streaming multiprocessors (SMs) with two,560 CUDA cores, while the GTX 1070 Ti'due south chip has 19 SMs and a whopping 2,432 CUDA cores active. Past comparison, the base GTX 1070 packs 15 SMs and just 1,920 CUDA cores.

The GTX 1070 Ti's clock speeds swipe aspects from both sides. Nvidia's new graphics carte ships with a 1,607MHz base clock and one,683MHz boost clock. Past comparison, the GTX 1070 clocks at 1,506/1,683MHz, and the GTX 1080 hums along at 1,607/1,733MHz—at least on newspaper. In reality, Nvidia's GPU Boost 3 technology runs these cards as fast equally they'll go while staying within optimal rut and ability limits, especially in custom cards with powerful cooling solutions. Only in that location's an interesting twist to custom GTX 1070 Ti cards, which nosotros'll get into when nosotros look at EVGA's GTX 1070 Ti Blackness Edition in just a scrap.

gtx 1070 ti specs — The GeForce GTX 1070 Ti's tech specs.

Nvidia built the GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition to overclock well, despite some (slightly) misguided early on rumors that suggested clock speeds would be locked downward. It's equipped with the same vapor chamber cooler and v-stage dual-FET power blueprint as the GTX 1080 has, both of which aren't found in the GTX 1070 vanilla.

But the GTX 1070 Ti's memory subsystem mirrors the baseline GTX 1070's, ditching the GTX 1080's speedy GDDR5X retentiveness for standard GDDR5 VRAM over a 256-bit bus. Like the vanilla version, the GTX 1070 Ti offers 256GBps of overall memory bandwidth, versus the GTX 1080'south 320GBps.

The Founders Edition card draws its 180W TDP through a unmarried 8-pin power connector, and sports three DisplayPorts, an HDMI two.0b port, and a dual-link DVI connexion. The GTX 1070 Ti besides supports Nvidia's GeForce Feel software, including GFE'south stellar Ansel and ShadowPlay Highlights tools—features that actively makes your gaming experience more than fun.

Next page: EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Blackness Edition and Precision XOC auto-overclocking

EVGA GTX 1070 Ti Black Edition specs and features

geforce gtx 1070 ti 1 — The EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Blackness Edition.

Nvidia'southward aiming to eradicate the Radeon Vega 56's lead in yet another mode. While customized RX Vega graphics cards have yet to announced, months subsequently AMD'due south GPU released, a full range of custom GTX 1070 Ti cards volition be available at launch.

Nosotros're also reviewing the EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition, which costs $20 more than Nvidia'due south Founders Edition. The GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition carries over the design from EVGA's other Black Edition cards. In addition to a fancy LED logo and a 5+i ability phase configuration that noses out the Founders Edition's setup, it sports the same ACX 3.0 cooler that impressed us so much on the EVGA GTX 1080 FTW.

Here's how nosotros described ACX 3.0 in that review:

"The new generation of EVGA'south vaunted custom-cooling solution features a pair of massive 100mm fans that shut off in low power scenarios and contain double brawl-bearings that help them last upwards to four times longer than competing cards, EVGA claims. Those sit over a full-sized set of heat sink fans, with the GPU itself covered past a large copper plate with six estrus pipes of various sizes snaking out of it."

evga acx 3.0 — EVGA's custom ACX iii.0 cooling solution.

You'll see how effective ACX three.0 performs later in our review. But perhaps the near interesting part of the EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition's spec sheet is its clock speed rating: 1,607MHz base/1,683MHz boost "plus." In fact, every card in EVGA'south GTX 1070 Ti lineup—including the beefy, high-end $500 FTW2 model—lists the exact aforementioned clock speeds. And if you look at the clock speeds on custom GTX 1070 Ti graphics cards from other manufacturers, they all do too. What gives?

Uncomplicated: Nvidia isn't allowing customized GTX 1070 Ti cards to be overclocked out of the box—presumably to go on overclocked versions of this step-down card from challenging the top-end GTX 1080. Here's what Nvidia's Bryan Del Rizzo said when I asked nigh it.

"GeForce GTX 1070 Ti lives in the small price band between the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080. Given the number of products in this category nosotros are aiming to simplify the stack-upwards, and let gamers get the actress operation through manual overclocking."

Massive, massive bummer. Merely as he says, manual overclocking is still allowed, and because of that the restriction isn't stopping Nvidia'due south hardware partners from developing workarounds to drive their graphics cards to faster speeds.

EVGA's Precision XOC software is typically used by enthusiasts to overclock their GeForce graphics cards manually. But EVGA adult a new version of its Precision XOC overclocking and monitoring software with "an exclusive feature for the GTX 1070 Ti": an auto-overclocking tool that scans your carte du jour and automatically applies an "optimal overclock" with no technical know-how needed on your end.

evga precision xoc gtx 1070 ti — The Precision XOC tool lets EVGA work effectually the GTX 1070 Ti'south clock speed lockdown, and the packaging materials make sure you know it.

The packaging for the EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Blackness Edition (and its other GTX 1070 Ti models) includes a slip of paper with a QR code emblazoned on information technology, directing you to the visitor's Precision XOC software. You'll accept to annals with your name and email address to apply the software, and the auto-overclocking process requires you to input your card's serial number, in case Q.A. help winds up being required. You can notice the series number on a sticker on the back of the EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition as well as on the card's box.

Precision XOC volition automatically detect your GTX 1070 Ti the beginning time information technology launches and offering to "Run EVGA Precision XOC scanner" on it—that's the car-overclocking tool. Agree and yous'll be presented with three options. The quick browse cycles through preset overclocking ranges advisable to your card, and takes 15 to 20 minutes. A full browse thoroughly tests your hardware to create a custom overclock more precisely tuned to your particular graphics card, but information technology tin can accept up to an hr. Finally, as always, you can manually overclock the EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition.

I ran the quick browse on my model, as I'm guessing that's what almost people will do—and it was dead simple. The EVGA Precision XOC Scanner ran for 17 minutes, and then applied a solid +101MHz overclock to the carte du jour. In exercise, that resulted in clock speeds of 1,924MHz to i,949MHz running The Division at 4K resolution, and up to 1,974MHz at 1440p.

Yous could no doubt button performance college past manually tinkering with the card's power target, overclock, and retention speeds, merely a 101MHz boost is respectable indeed, and we used EVGA's configured overclock to exam the GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition in our performance benchmarks. A card like the EVGA GTX 1070 Ti FTW2 ($500 on Amazon) could presumably hit even college marks, every bit it includes EVGA's revolutionary iCX cooling engineering and a 235-watt maximum power describe, compared to the SC Black Edition's 217W. Cooling and available power can play a major divergence in overclocking.

If you lot accidentally close the Precision XOC Scanner or desire to run the auto-overclocking tool over again, you can do so by clicking the yellow arrow icons in the software'southward interface until you lot're on the Basic OC Scanner page, then clicking Run. It'll restart the process.

Whew, that was a long diversion—but a necessary one if yous purchase a custom GTX 1070 Ti. Let's dig into how this hardware handles!

Next page: Our test organisation, functioning benchmarks begin!

Our test system

We tested the GTX 1070 Ti and EVGA's GTX 1070 Ti Black Edition on PCWorld's defended graphics carte criterion system. Our testbed's loaded with high-terminate components to avert bottlenecks in other parts of the system and show unfettered graphics performance.

Intel'due south Core i7-5960X with a Corsair Hydro Series H100i closed-loop water cooler ($110 on Amazon).
An Asus X99 Deluxe motherboard.
16GB Corsair's Vengeance LPX DDR4 retention ($195 on Amazon).
EVGA Supernova 1000 G3 power supply ($190 on Amazon).
A 500GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, PCWorld'south pick for the best SSD ($150 on Amazon).
Corsair Crystal Series 570X case, deemed Full Nerd's favorite case of 2016 ($180 on Amazon).
Windows 10 Pro ($190 on Amazon).

We're comparing the GTX 1070 cards confronting AMD'south Vega duo, the $399 Radeon RX Vega 56 and $499 air-cooled RX Vega 64. Both were benchmarked using the Counterbalanced power profile on the stock BIOS. Of course, because the GTX 1070 Ti was designed to slot between the (theoretically) $350 Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 and $500 GTX 1080, nosotros're testing those as well. All of the cards are reference models except the EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Blackness Edition (apparently), which we tested in both its out-of-the-box configuration as well as with Precision XOC'due south new one-button overclock feature. We discussed the details of our overclock in the previous section.

Each game is tested using its in-game benchmark at the mentioned graphics presets, with VSync, frame rate caps, and all GPU vendor-specific technologies—like AMD TressFX, Nvidia GameWorks options, and FreeSync/K-Sync—disabled. Given the capabilities of these particular cards, we're testing at 1440p and 4K resolutions lone. They'd all scream at 1080p. Every bill of fare was tested using the most current drivers available from AMD and Nvidia.

GeForce GTX 1070 Ti benchmarks

The Division

The Division ($50 on Amazon), a gorgeous third-person shooter/RPG that mixes elements ofDestinyandGears of War, kicks things off with Ubisoft'due south Snowdrop engine. Nosotros exam the game in DirectX 11 mode.

The GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition essentially draws fifty-fifty with the Radeon Vega 56 here, and splits the performance departure between the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080. Out of the box, the EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition does the aforementioned, but with Precision XOC's auto-overclock practical, information technology squeezes out a 4.5-pct frame rate increase at 1440p resolution.

Next page: Ghost Recon: Wildlands

Ghost Recon: Wildlands

Next upward: Ghost Recon: Wildlands ($lx on Amazon), a stunningly beautiful and notoriously punishing game based on Ubisoft's Anvil engine. Not even the GTX 1080 Ti can put in a decent showing at Ultra graphics settings at 4K, then nosotros test at Very High, which "is targeted to high-terminate hardware." It's a game that includes some Nvidia GameWorks features, merely again, we examination with those disabled.

This strenuous game challenges all of these cards at 4K resolution. While the Radeon Vega 56 barely surpassed the original GTX 1070 in functioning, the GTX 1070 Ti pushes straight past information technology, though in one case once again the difference is less noticeable at 4K resolution. Once again, Nvidia's GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition falls squarely in between its cousins. EVGA'south custom card doesn't provide much uplift in this game fifty-fifty with the auto-applied overclock, but this game's a beast.

Adjacent page: Deus Ex: Flesh Divided

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Now it'due south time for another graphically punishing game, only this i favors AMD hardware. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided ($15 on Amazon) replaces Hitman in our test suite because its Dawn engine is based upon the Glacier Engine at Hitman's eye. We dropped all the way down to the Loftier graphics preset for this one and withal struggled at 4K. We tested in DirectX 12 as that manner lifts all functioning boats regardless of which brand's GPU sits at the centre of your graphics card.

Like I said: Deus Ex heavily favors AMD hardware, to the extent that the GTX 1080 barely stays ahead of even the Radeon Vega 56 at 1440p. That said, the GTX 1070 Ti puts upward admirable numbers versus its AMD rival, which flat-out pummels the vanilla GTX 1070.

Next folio: Rise of the Tomb Raider

Rising of the Tomb Raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider($threescore on Amazon) tends to perform better on GeForce cards, on the other hand. It's utterly gorgeous and 1 of the first games to receive specific optimizations for AMD's new Ryzen processors (not that it matters in this comparing, as we're using an Intel processor).

Like I said: Rise of the Tomb Raider heavily favors Nvidia hardware. While the Radeon Vega 56 managed to beat the baseline GTX 1070 past the barest of margins, the GTX 1070 Ti comes close to Vega 64 levels of functioning at 4K—specially EVGA'due south overclocked-additional Black Edition. And it outright bests the flagship Vega 64 at 1440p.

Side by side page: Far Cry Cardinal

Far Cry Primal

Far Cry Primal($55 on Amazon) is nonetheless another Ubisoft game, just it's powered by the latest version of the long-running and well-respected Dunia engine. We benchmark the game with the optional Ultra HD texture pack enabled for loftier-stop cards similar these.

The GTX 1070 Ti manages to lucifer or slightly beat the Radeon Vega 56 depending on the resolution and settings you're using, and the OC'd EVGA GTX 1070 Ti Black Edition manages to nudge that. We're talking imperceptible zero to 4-fps differences from worst to best, though.

Next page: Ashes of the Singularity

Ashes of the Singularity

Ashes of the Singularity ($40 on Steam), running on Oxide's custom Nitrous engine, was an early on standard-bearer for DirectX 12. Many months later information technology'showever the premier game for seeing what adjacent-gen graphics technologies have to offer. Nvidia drivers accept profoundly improved GeForce functioning in Ashes over the past several months. We test the game using the High graphics setting, as the wildly strenuous Crazy and Extreme presets aren't reflective of real-globe usage scenarios.

This game traditionally favored Radeon hardware, but later on a slew of DirectX 12 driver improvements by Nvidia, the GTX 1070 Ti trounces the Vega 56 and matches Vega 64 in performance. The departure is even more than pronounced if you don't take Windows 10 and thus can't utilize DX12. In DirectX 11, the GTX 1070 Ti beats Vega 56 past almost xx fps. Hot damn.

Side by side folio: Synthetic benchmarks

Power, heat, dissonance, clock speeds

Power

We test power under load by plugging the entire system into a Watts Up meter, running the intensiveDivision benchmark at 4K resolution, and noting the peak power describe. Idle power is measured after sitting on the Windows desktop for 3 minutes with no extra programs or processes running.

The Vega 64 still stands out equally a ridiculous power sus scrofa hither, but the differences—or lack thereof—betwixt the GTX 1070 Ti and Radeon Vega 56 are much more interesting. Because the GTX 1070 Ti largely matches the GTX 1080's GPU layout and uses GDDR5 retentivity instead of power-efficient GDDR5X, information technology draws a lot more power than the vanilla GTX 1070 does. In fact, it essentially ties the Vega 56 on that front.

Rut and noise

We test heat during the same intensiveSectionalisation benchmark at a strenuous 4K resolution, by running SpeedFan in the background and noting the maximum GPU temperature once the run is over.

Again, the GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition and Vega 56 are in a dead heat. (Get it?) Both cards use blower-manner coolers, merely despite the equality in temperature, Nvidia's implementation is vastly superior to AMD's. The ghastly Vega coolers are the loudest I've heard since the old Radeon 290X days. Seriously, it's loud plenty to distract y'all unless yous're wearing noise-proof headphones, and that's a rare notice in modern GPUs.

Just the EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition'due south superb ACX 3.0 cooling solution stands heads-and-shoulders above the reference cards. It not only runs far, far chillier, information technology manages to run much quieter than the others while doing so. 2 fans are improve than i, it seems.

Next folio: Lesser line and buying communication

GeForce GTX 1070 Ti vs Radeon Vega 56

How does the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti compare to the Radeon Vega 56? The answer's complicated, and made more so by cryptocurrency miners driving up prices in this market segment.

Nvidia met its goal. The GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition ($450 on Nvidia) matches or beats the Radeon Vega 56 in every game we tested except Deus Ex: Flesh Divided, which skews heavily towards AMD hardware. And it bests the AMD card heavily in Rise of the Tomb Raider and Ashes of the Singularity. Only power and heat are a wash and the performance victories are minimal in well-nigh situations we've tested. Given that AMD's glorious, tear- and stutter-killing FreeSync variable refresh rate monitors are much more than affordable than Nvidia's comparable Yard-Sync displays, and the GTX 1070 Ti starts at $50 more than than the Radeon RX Vega 56's $400 suggested pricing, you can brand an argument for these cards being of roughly equal value.

At least in theory.

In reality, the Radeon Vega 56 has barely come up close to approaching its suggested pricing since five minutes after the card launched in August. Sure, at that place's a Sapphire Vega 56 for $400 at Microcenter right now, but that's in-shop pickup only and on "sale" from $530. As I'1000 writing this on November 1, at that place'due south a single XFX Vega 56 bachelor for $400 on Amazon and $420 on Newegg, simply all others cost more than $500… and it simply turned up at those prices today. I've been tracking Vega 56 prices on Newegg since the GTX 1070 Ti'due south announcement last calendar week, and most sold for $470—$20 more than Nvidia's Founders Edition card, and the same price as the superior EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition.

The GTX 1070 Ti probably wouldn't exist if Vega 56 didn't exist, but information technology's cards like the EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black Edition that make Vega 56 moot in today'southward bizarre market place. The world is still waiting for custom cards month after Vega'due south launch. In the meantime, the Radeon Vega reference libation sounds like a damned hurricane. That lonely makes information technology impossible to recommend over EVGA'south (in reality) identically priced GTX 1070 Ti, which delivers more operation while staying absurd and running clumsily tranquillity.

If Radeon Vega 56 ever hits its suggested price and custom Vega cards go available for $450 or less, the FreeSync variable may tip the scales back in AMD'southward favor. But that's non the manner of the world today.

Should I buy the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti?

Then should y'all buy the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti? Even though nosotros recommend it over the Radeon RX Vega 56, it'due south still a complicated question influenced past the cryptocurrency problem, equally miners drive up prices. Why practise men decide?

If you wait at PCWorld's guide to the best graphics cards—or the benchmarks in this very article—you'll see that the vanilla $380 GTX 1070 already excels for sixty-fps gaming at 2560×1440 resolution. The GTX 1080, on the other hand, is all-time for high refresh-rate 1440p gaming. It tin handle entry-level 4K gaming if you lot refuse some graphics settings, just true single-card 4K/60 gaming requires the beastly $700 GTX 1080 Ti.

geforce gtx 1070 ti 6 — The EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Blackness Edition uses a custom ACX 3.0 cooler.

But virtually total-sized versions of the GTX 1070 are selling for $430 or more than on Newegg right now. (Damned miners!) The significant operation increase offered by the GTX 1070 Ti is well worth the $20 to $30 extra. But saving upwardly fifty-fifty more than pennies for the $500-plus GTX 1080 makes less sense. The GTX 1070 Ti is plenty fast for 1440p gaming, and the biggest performance differences betwixt the GTX 1070 Ti and GTX 1080 in our 4K tests are merely about 5 fps. If you're already turning downwards graphics settings to play games at 4K with the GTX 1080, yous could salve $fifty and just plough anti-aliasing options downward another notch on the GTX 1070 Ti instead.

In an ideal world—where the GTX 1070, GTX 1080, and Radeon RX Vega 56 all sold for suggested pricing, and custom Vega cards were on store shelves—the GTX 1070 Ti would be a weird and largely irrelevant release, hampered past the crap Nvidia'south pulling with the clock speeds of custom cards. Simply here in the existent world of today'due south graphics card market, it's the best 1440p graphics carte option effectually. Unless cryptocurrency miners drive up its prices too, of form.

The slick-looking EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Blackness Edition ($470 on Amazon) hands justifies its pocket-sized $20 upcharge thanks to its excellent ACX 3.0 cooler and the i-bear on ease with which Precision XOC negates Nvidia's ugly, artificial clock speed lockdown in customized graphics cards. But be certain to download that overclocking software to get the well-nigh out of your hardware.

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Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/407568/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1070-ti-review.html

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