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Nvidia GTX 1070 Founders Edition Graphics Card Review

Rating: 9.0.

Back on May 17th Nvidia released their flagship, cutting edge GTX 1080, and today we look at the second card based on their Pascal architecture. The GTX 1070 Founders Edition is built on the 16nm FinFET manufacturing process and is priced to target a wider audience. That said, at around the £400 mark gamers will still demand high levels of performance, particularly as the adoption of 1440p gaming panels continues to increase.

As with the GTX1080 launch, Nvidia have released their GTX 1070 ‘Founders Edition' card first with pricing set at $449 and third party partner cards said to enter the market at $379. We expect UK stock to hit soon with prices starting close to £350 with higher grade, more expensive, modded cards from the likes of ASUS likely to hit around the £400 mark.

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The power delivery of the GTX 1070 Founders Edition is designed with a low impedance power delivery network, custom voltage regulators and a 4 phase dual FET power supply, optimised for clean power delivery. Nvidia claim the power system of the GTX 1070 is more efficient than the GTX 970. Nvidia also optimised the power delivery network on the PCB for low impedance.

The GTX 1070 Founders Edition also incorporates a new low profile backplate with a removable section to help airflow when using multiple cards in SLi configurations. It is set for release on June 10.

GPU Geforce GTX970 GeForce GTX980
Geforce GTX 980 Ti Geforce GTX Titan X Geforce GTX 1080 Geforce GTX 1070
Streaming Multiprocessors 13 16 22 24 20 15
CUDA Cores 1664 2048 2816 3072 2560 1920
Base Clock 1050 mhz 1126 mhz 1000 mhz 1000 mhz 1607 mhz 1506 mhz
GPU Boost Clock 1178 mhz 1216 mhz 1075 mhz 1076 mhz 1733 mhz 1683 mhz
Total Video memory 4GB 4GB 6GB 12GB 8GB 8GB
Texture Units 104 128 176 192 160 120
Texture fill-rate 109.2 Gigatexels/Sec 144.1 Gigatexels/Sec 176 Gigatexels/Sec 192 Gigatexels/Sec 257.1 Gigatexels/Sec 180.7 GigaTexels/sec
Memory Clock 7000 mhz 7000 mhz 7000 mhz 7000 mhz 5005mhz 4006mhz
Memory Bandwidth 224 GB/s 224 GB/sec 336.5 GB/sec 336.5 GB/sec 320GB/s 256GB/s
Bus Width 256bit 256bit 384bit 384bit 256bit 256 bit
ROPs 56 64 96 96 64 64
Manufacturing Process 28nm 28nm 28nm 28nm 16nm 16nm
TDP 145 watts 165 watts 250 watts 250 watts 180 watts 150 watts

The Nvidia GTX 1070 ships with 1920 CUDA cores and 15 Streaming Multiprocessors  – reduced from 2560 and 20 on the GTX 1080 respectively.  While the GTX 1080 is equipped with 160 Texture Units, the GTX 1070 has to make do with 120. The 8GB of GDDR5 memory runs at a data rate of 8Gbps.

Based on the same GP104 GPU used in the GTX 1080, the GTX 1070 has all of the key features that NVIDIA's Pascal architecture enables, including Simultaneous Multi-Projection. Nvidia claim the GTX 1070 has a 70% performance lead over the last generation GTX 970. While the GTX 1080 used GDDR5x memory, the GTX 1070 is shipped with fast GDDR5.

If you want to read more on the Pascal architecture, head to our page, over HERE.

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Our Nvidia GTX 1070 sample arrived direct from Nvidia. I haven't been feeling too well lately so our review has been delayed a little.

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As this is a reference sample direct from the company, no accessories are bundled with the card itself.

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We have been reading mixed opinions on the new angular style reference cooler and while many people prefer the older design, we like it. The low profile backplate fitted to the card itself is also a welcome addition. The GTX 1070 is built on the new 16nm FinFET manufacturing process and contains 7.2 billion transistors.

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The Geforce GTX 1070 is DisplayPort 1.2 certified, DisplayPort 1.3 and 1.4 ready enabling support for 4K display at 120hz, 5K displays at 60hz and 8k Displays at 60hz (with two cables). The GTX 1070 Founders Edition includes three DisplayPort Connectors, one HDMI 2.0b connector and one dual link DVI connector. Up to four displayheads can be driven simultaneously from a single card.

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The SLI connectors are shown in the image above. To read more on the SLi update – head to this page.

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Like the GTX 1080, the GTX 1070 gets all the power it needs from the slot, and a single 8 Pin PCIe connector.

pcbGeForce_GTX_1080_Front_Thermal_1463236673

A radial fan design is adopted, forcing hot air outside the rear of the main chassis. Under the GTX 1070 shroud is an aluminum heatsink. In the base of the heatsink are three copper heatpipes which take heat away from the GPU. Heat from the heatpipes is then dissipated by the aluminum heatsink. A metal baseplate is placed on top of low profile components which provides clean air channels for the best thermal performance.

screenshot545

A new feature in GPU Boost 3.0 is the ability to set frequency offsets for individual voltage points. The previous version of GPU Boost 2.0 could only apply a fixed frequency offset, shifting the existing V/F curve upward by the defined offset amount. More on this later.

I have spent the last week benchmarking a selection of AMD and NVIDIA cards with the latest drivers on one of our new 6700k test beds. We are using the AMD Crimson Edition Display Driver, Version 16.15.2211 and Nvidia ForceWare 368.19 driver to test the GTX 1070 (other Nvidia cards are tested with the 368.13 driver). Due to public demand we also add in a range of tests at 1080p to supplement the results at 1440p and Ultra HD 4K resolutions.

We list each resolution test for every game on its own page – meaning if you are just interested in 4K resolutions for instance, you can skip the other resolutions without effort. If you want to read the whole review and find all the page changes annoying – click on our menu system top right of these pages, and head to ’34. view all pages’.

insystem

We are using a custom Titan Bayonet system supplied by Overclockers UK as the basis of our test system today. Read more on this system over HERE.

Case: Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ATX Mid Tower
Processor: Intel 6700K @ 4.4ghz
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) @ 3000mhz
Motherboard: ASUS Z170-E DDR4 ATX Motherboard
Power Supply: Super Flower Leadex 850W Gold Certified
Software: Microsoft Windows 10 64 Bit
SSD: Samsung 250GB 850 EVO
HDD: Seagate 1TB 7,200 rpm 64MB Cache.

overclockers logo 250px

If you want to purchase this system yourself head to THIS page on OCUK.

Graphics cards:

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Nvidia GTX 1070 (1506mhz core/ 1683mhz boost / 4006 mhz memory)

Comparison Cards on test:

Nvidia GTX 1080 (1607mhz core/ 1733mhz boost / 5005 mhz memory)
Sapphire R9 390 Nitro 8GB (Rev 2 w/ backplate). (1040mhz core / 1500 mhz memory)
Sapphire R9 295X2 (1,018 mhz core / 1,250mhz memory)
AMD R9 Fury X
(1,050 mhz core / 500 mhz memory)
AMD R9 Nano (1000mhz core / 500 mhz memory)
Gigabyte GTX980 Ti XTREME Gaming (1216 mhz core / 1800mhz memory)
Nvidia GTX Titan Z
(706 mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)
Nvidia GTX Titan X (1,000 mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)
Asus GTX980 Strix (1,178 mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)
Nvidia GTX980 Ti (1000 mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)
Sapphire R9 390X Tri-X 8GB (1,055 mhz core / 1,500 mhz memory)
Sapphire R9 390 Nitro 8GB (1,010 mhz core / 1,500 mhz memory)

Software:
Windows 10 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
3DMark 11
3DMark
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark

Games:
Ashes Of the Singularity
Dirt Rally
Hitman 2016
Middle Earth: Shadow Of Mordor
Rise Of the Tomb Raider
Grand Theft Auto 5
Metro Last Light Redux

We perform under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.

Game descriptions edited with courtesy from Wikipedia.
3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista. The benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

3dmark 11

3dmark11

3dmark 11 extreme

3dmark11-x

In this slightly older Direct X 11 benchmark, the GTX 1070 scores extremely well, slightly outperforming a reference clocked Titan X.

3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance.

Futuremark say “Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system. Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good.

To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC.”

3dmark

3dmark

3dmark ultra

3dmark ultra

At both resolutions the GTX 1070 manages to slightly outperform the Titan X which is certainly impressive considering the price of the Titan X.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk. Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

  • Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
  • Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
  • Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
  • Multicore CPU support
  • Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
  • Powerful C++ API
  • Comprehensive performance profiling system
  • Flexible XML-based data structures

unigine heaven setts
We test at 2560×1440 with quality setting at ULTRA, Tessellation at NORMAL, and Anti-Aliasing at x2.

unigine heaven

heaven 2016-06-02 16-38-54-95

This tessellation heavy benchmark verifies the early synthetic benchmark findings, that the GTX 1070 is able to outperform the Titan X, averaging 83.8 frames per second against 80.5.

Ashes of the Singularity is a real-time strategy game set in the future where descendants of humans (called Post- Humans) and a powerful artificial intelligence (called the Substrate) fight a war for control of a resource known as Turinium.

Players will engage in massive-scale land/air battles by commanding entire armies of their own design. Each game takes place on one area of a planet, with each player starting with a home base (known as a Nexus) and a single construction unit.

ashes extreme

We test the final retail game at 1080p resolution and with EXTREME image quality settings, shown above.

ashes 1080p

ashes 1080

At 1080p, the new architecture of the GTX1070 helps drive a healthy average frame rate of 61.7. This falls around 3-4 frames per second behind the AMD Fury X and around 13 behind the GTX 1080.

Ashes of the Singularity is a real-time strategy game set in the future where descendants of humans (called Post- Humans) and a powerful artificial intelligence (called the Substrate) fight a war for control of a resource known as Turinium.

Players will engage in massive-scale land/air battles by commanding entire armies of their own design. Each game takes place on one area of a planet, with each player starting with a home base (known as a Nexus) and a single construction unit.

ashes extreme

We test the final retail game at 1440p resolution and with EXTREME image quality settings, shown above.

ashes 1440p

ashes 1440

At 1440p the GTX1070 manages to run around 1 frame per second faster than the overclocked Gigabyte GTX980 Ti XTREME Gaming. The gap between the AMD Fury X however stays around the same at 5 fps.

Ashes of the Singularity is a real-time strategy game set in the future where descendants of humans (called Post- Humans) and a powerful artificial intelligence (called the Substrate) fight a war for control of a resource known as Turinium.

Players will engage in massive-scale land/air battles by commanding entire armies of their own design. Each game takes place on one area of a planet, with each player starting with a home base (known as a Nexus) and a single construction unit.

ashes extreme

We test the final retail game at 4k resolution and with EXTREME image quality settings, shown above.

ashes 4k

ashes 4k

AMD's Fury X scores particularly well at Ultra HD 4k, holding a 6 frames per second differential over the Gigabyte GTX980 ti XTREME Gaming. The Nvidia GTX 1080 is the star of the show however as it closes the gap between the R9 295X2, to only 1.5 frames per second. The GTX 1070 manages to just slightly outperform the Gigabyte GTX980Ti XTREME, averaging close to 42 frames per second.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is a third-person open world video game, where the player controls a ranger by the name of Talion who seeks revenge on the forces of Sauron after his family, including his wife, are killed. Players can travel across locations in the game through parkour, riding monsters, or accessing Forge Towers, which serve as fast travel points.

mordor 1440pmordor ultra

We test at 1440p with the image quality settings at Ultra.

shadow 1440p

The Nvidia GTX1080 takes top position in our performance graph, averaging 114 frames per second. While this is the same as the R9 295X2 – the AMD hardware suffers from lower minimum frame rates throughout the test. The GTX 1070 averages 92 frames per second, which is around 6 frames per second behind the overclocked Gigabyte GTX980Ti Xtreme Gaming card but 5 frames faster than the Titan X.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is a third-person open world video game, where the player controls a ranger by the name of Talion who seeks revenge on the forces of Sauron after his family, including his wife, are killed. Players can travel across locations in the game through parkour, riding monsters, or accessing Forge Towers, which serve as fast travel points.

mordor 4kmordor ultra

With test at Ultra HD 4k resolution with Ultra image settings enabled.

shadow of mordor 4k

At Ultra HD 4k resolution, the GTX 1070 is very closely matched against the GTX980 Ti and Titan X, averaging 50 frames per second.

Dirt Rally is developed by British video game developer Codemasters using the in house Ego engine. Development began with a small team of individuals following the release of their 2012 video game Dirt: Showdown. Codemasters have emphasised a desire to create a simulation with Dirt Rally. They started by prototyping a handling model and creating tracks based on map data. The game employs a different physics model from previous titles, rebuilt from the ground up.

dirt 1080pdirt ultra setts

We test at 1080p with 8x MSAA and the ultra image quality setting enabled.

dirt rally 1080p

No problems powering this game at 1080p. The Nvidia GTX 1070 averages 112 frames per second, almost on a level footing with the GTX 980 Ti.

Dirt Rally is developed by British video game developer Codemasters using the in house Ego engine. Development began with a small team of individuals following the release of their 2012 video game Dirt: Showdown. Codemasters have emphasised a desire to create a simulation with Dirt Rally. They started by prototyping a handling model and creating tracks based on map data. The game employs a different physics model from previous titles, rebuilt from the ground up.

dirt 1440pdirt ultra setts

We test at 1440 with 8x MSAA and the ultra image quality setting enabled.

dirt rally 1440p

The performance at 1440p scales closely from 1080p with the GTX 1070 holding its own against the Titan X and GTX980 ti.

Dirt Rally is developed by British video game developer Codemasters using the in house Ego engine. Development began with a small team of individuals following the release of their 2012 video game Dirt: Showdown. Codemasters have emphasised a desire to create a simulation with Dirt Rally. They started by prototyping a handling model and creating tracks based on map data. The game employs a different physics model from previous titles, rebuilt from the ground up.

dirt 4kdirt ultra setts

We test at Ultra HD 4k with 8x MSAA and the ultra image quality setting enabled.

dirt 4k

At Ultra HD 4k, the GTX1070 drops behind the Titan X, averaging 42 frames per second. AMD Fury hardware scores well with this engine at 4k resolutions.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is a third-person action-adventure game that features similar gameplay found in 2013's Tomb Raider. Players control Lara Croft through various environments, battling enemies, and completing puzzle platforming sections, while using improvised weapons and gadgets in order to progress through the story. It uses a Direct X 12 capable engine.

rotr1080ptr2

We enable Direct X 12, Vsync is off and graphics are set to the ‘very high' profile, shown above. We test the Nvidia Titan Z with the SLi optimisation both disabled, then enabled. This is clearly marked in the graph. See more HERE.

rise of the tomb raider 1080p

The GTX 1070 drives this engine hard at 1080p, slightly outperforming the reference clocked Titan X.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is a third-person action-adventure game that features similar gameplay found in 2013's Tomb Raider. Players control Lara Croft through various environments, battling enemies, and completing puzzle platforming sections, while using improvised weapons and gadgets in order to progress through the story. It uses a Direct X 12 capable engine.

rotr2tr2

We enable Direct X 12, Vsync is off and graphics are set to the ‘very high' profile, shown above. We test the Nvidia Titan Z with the SLi optimisation both disabled, then enabled. This is clearly marked in the graph. See more HERE.

rise tomb raider 1440p

At 1440p the GTX 1070 averages 74 frames per second, which is around 2 frames per second faster than the Titan X, but 10 frames per second behind the overclocked Gigabyte GTX980 XTREME Gaming card. The Nvidia GTX1080 dominates this particular test.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is a third-person action-adventure game that features similar gameplay found in 2013's Tomb Raider. Players control Lara Croft through various environments, battling enemies, and completing puzzle platforming sections, while using improvised weapons and gadgets in order to progress through the story. It uses a Direct X 12 capable engine.

trtr2

We enable Direct X 12, Vsync is off and graphics are set to the ‘very high' profile, shown above. We test the Nvidia Titan Z with the SLi optimisation both disabled, then enabled. This is clearly marked in the graph. See more HERE.

rise tomb raider 4k

At demanding Ultra HD 4k resolutions, the GTX 1070 averages 38 frames per second, and holds a constant frame rate well above 30 at all times. It matches the reference GTX980ti exactly at 4k. The Titan X on the other hand shifts positions to move above the GTX 1070, averaging 1 frame per second more.

Grand Theft Auto V is an action-adventure game played from either a first-person or third-person view. Players complete missions—linear scenarios with set objectives—to progress through the story. Outside of missions, players may freely roam the open world. Composed of the San Andreas open countryside area and the fictional city of Los Santos, the world is much larger in area than earlier entries in the series. It may be fully explored after the game's beginning without restriction, although story progress unlocks more gameplay content.

GTAV-1080p

GTA5-2GTAv-3GTZ5-4

We maximise all the image quality settings, but leave anti aliasing turned off, as it dramatically impacts performance.

GTA5 1080p

At 1080p the GTX 1070 averages close to 100 frames per second – powering this engine with all the eye candy maxed out without a hitch.

Grand Theft Auto V is an action-adventure game played from either a first-person or third-person view. Players complete missions—linear scenarios with set objectives—to progress through the story. Outside of missions, players may freely roam the open world. Composed of the San Andreas open countryside area and the fictional city of Los Santos, the world is much larger in area than earlier entries in the series. It may be fully explored after the game's beginning without restriction, although story progress unlocks more gameplay content.

GTA5-1440p

GTA5-2GTAv-3GTZ5-4

We maximise all the image quality settings, but leave anti aliasing turned off, as it dramatically impacts performance.

GTA5 1440p

Even with all the eye candy at the limit at 1440p the GTX 1070 averages 83 frames per second, only a couple of frames per second behind the Gigabyte GTX980ti EXTREME Gaming solution.

Grand Theft Auto V is an action-adventure game played from either a first-person or third-person view. Players complete missions—linear scenarios with set objectives—to progress through the story. Outside of missions, players may freely roam the open world. Composed of the San Andreas open countryside area and the fictional city of Los Santos, the world is much larger in area than earlier entries in the series. It may be fully explored after the game's beginning without restriction, although story progress unlocks more gameplay content.

GTA5-4k

GTA5-2GTAv-3GTZ5-4

We maximise all the image quality settings, but leave anti aliasing turned off, as it dramatically impacts performance.

GTA5 4k

At Ultra HD 4k, the AMD R9 295X2 comes screaming from below to claim second performance position, behind Nvidia's GTX Titan Z. The Nvidia GTX 1080 holds the highest performance slot for single GPU cards and the GTX 1070 almost manages to match the Titan X.

Just like the original game Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light is played from the perspective of Artyom, the player-character. The story takes place in post-apocalyptic Moscow, mostly inside the metro system, but occasionally missions bring the player above ground. Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, following the canonical ending in which Artyom chose to proceed with the missile strike against the Dark Ones (this happens regardless of your actions in the first game). Redux adds all the DLC and graphical improvements.

Quality-Very High, SSAA-on, Texture Filtering-16x, Motion Blur-Normal, Tessellation-Normal, Advanced Physx-off.

metro 1080p

The GTX 1070 holds an average frame rate of 77, putting it slightly ahead of the reference clocked GTX980 Ti and around 9 frames per second behind the Gigabyte GTX980ti XTREME Gaming.Just like the original game Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light is played from the perspective of Artyom, the player-character. The story takes place in post-apocalyptic Moscow, mostly inside the metro system, but occasionally missions bring the player above ground. Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, following the canonical ending in which Artyom chose to proceed with the missile strike against the Dark Ones (this happens regardless of your actions in the first game). Redux adds all the DLC and graphical improvements.

Quality-Very High, SSAA-on, Texture Filtering-16x, Motion Blur-Normal, Tessellation-Normal, Advanced Physx-off.

metro 1440p

At these very high image quality settings, this engine is a challenge, even for the flagship cards on test. The GTX980 ti has the slight edge over the GTX 1070 at 1440p, although its marginal. The Titan X is slightly ahead of both at this resolution.

Just like the original game Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light is played from the perspective of Artyom, the player-character. The story takes place in post-apocalyptic Moscow, mostly inside the metro system, but occasionally missions bring the player above ground. Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, following the canonical ending in which Artyom chose to proceed with the missile strike against the Dark Ones (this happens regardless of your actions in the first game). Redux adds all the DLC and graphical improvements.

Quality-High, SSAA-off, Texture Filtering-16x, Motion Blur-Normal, Tessellation-Normal, Advanced Physx-off.

metro 4k

We drop image quality settings a little at 4K, otherwise the engine would be unplayable in a single card configuration. At these settings, the GTX 1070 almost manages to match the reference clocked GTX980ti, dropping only 1 frame behind.

Hitman (2016) is a third-person stealth video game in which players take control of Agent 47, a genetically enhanced, superhuman assassin, travelling to international locations and eliminating contracted targets. As in other games in the Hitman series, players are given a large amount of room for creativity in approaching their assassinations. The game is being released in stages, which hasn't proved too popular with a large audience.

hitman settings

We test with many of the settings maximised, SSAO is disabled however as I found it causes some crashing. I have to say that Hitman is a little unstable at times under the best of situations, but we managed to get it running well enough to benchmark. The built in benchmark is very flaky indeed however, so real world runs had to be used.

hitman 1080p

This engine runs particularly well on the high end Nvidia hardware as shown in our graph above. The GTX 1070 manages to sneak ahead of the Fury X at 1080p.

Hitman (2016) is a third-person stealth video game in which players take control of Agent 47, a genetically enhanced, superhuman assassin, travelling to international locations and eliminating contracted targets. As in other games in the Hitman series, players are given a large amount of room for creativity in approaching their assassinations. The game is being released in stages, which hasn't proved too popular with a large audience.

hitman settings

We test with many of the settings maximised, SSAO is disabled however as I found it causes some crashing. I have to say that Hitman is a little unstable at times under the best of situations, but we managed to get it running well enough to benchmark. The built in benchmark is very flaky indeed however, so real world runs had to be used.

hitman 1440p

At 1440p, the GTX 1070 still holds a marginal lead over the Fury X, falling around 6 frames per second behind the Gigabyte GTX980ti XTREME Gaming.

Hitman (2016) is a third-person stealth video game in which players take control of Agent 47, a genetically enhanced, superhuman assassin, travelling to international locations and eliminating contracted targets. As in other games in the Hitman series, players are given a large amount of room for creativity in approaching their assassinations. The game is being released in stages, which hasn't proved too popular with a large audience.

hitman settings

We test with many of the settings maximised, SSAO is disabled however as I found it causes some crashing. I have to say that Hitman is a little unstable at times under the best of situations, but we managed to get it running well enough to benchmark. The built in benchmark is very flaky indeed however, so real world runs had to be used.

hitman 4k

At Ultra HD 4k, the GTX 1070 drops down the chart a little, falling in behind the Titan X again, and closely matching the GTX980Ti.

We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with almost completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests.

We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation. Ambient noise in the room measures close to the limits of our sound meter at 28dBa. Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

noise

The new Nvidia reference cards couldn't be considered as ‘loud' or intrusive, but you can certainly hear them in operation. The fan also spins all the time, even when idle. Noise levels from the GTX 1070 are very closely matched against the GTX 1080 Founders Edition, averaging around 34dBa when gaming.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 21c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this. Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Rise Of The Tomb Raider for 90 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 10 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.

temps

The single fan copes well, holding gaming temperatures around 75c under extended load.

We install the graphics card into the system and measure temperatures on the back of the PCB with our Fluke Visual IR Thermometer/Infrared Thermal Camera. This is a real world running environment playing Rise Of The Tomb Raider for extended periods of time.

thermals

The image above shows the Nvidia GTX 1070 remains relatively cool, thanks to the backplate. Load temperatures rise to give a reading of 62.1C under extended conditions. The backplate helps stop the build up of hot spots on the PCB which is exactly what we want to see.

We measure power consumption from the whole system when idle and when gaming, excluding the monitor.

power consumption

The Nvidia GTX 1070 is very efficient, and our system was only taking around 240 watts from the socket when we were playing the latest Tomb Raider game, which is around 30 less than the GTX 1080 under the same conditions. This ties in perfectly with the Nvidia claims.

Nvidia have enhanced their GPU Boost System with their latest iteration – V3.0. The new version features custom ‘per voltage' point frequency offsets.

GPU Boost 3.0 offers the ability to set frequency offsets for individual voltage points. Older versions could only hold a fixed frequency offset, essentially shifting the existing V/F curve upward by the defined offset amount.

screenshot548

Above, is a theoretical custom V/F curve set in GPU Boost 3.0. The offset is set just below the upper limits of the theoretical maximum clock making full use of all the available headroom – ensuring performance is fully utilised for the GPU in question.

We overclock the Nvidia GTX 1070 with the latest beta version of MSI Afterburner (V4.3.0 Beta 4).

msi oc

By increasing the power limit we were able to increase the core clock by +210. There was plenty of overclocking headroom via the memory too, hitting +600 before artifacting would occur. How did this affect some of the benchmarks?

3dmark oc

3dmarkoc

3dmark ultra oc

3dmark ultra oc

The substantial clock increases help drive the GTX 1070 performance into a whole new area. With the core at +210 and memory at +600 the GTX 1070 manages to outperform the Gigabyte GTX980ti XTREME Gaming at both resolutions. It really is worth spending a little time to overclock these cards, especially if you want to drive maximum rates with a new 1440p 120hz gaming screen.

The £620 Nvidia GTX1080 may have been stealing all the headlines in recent weeks, but there is no doubt that the GTX 1070 sets a new performance benchmark at the price point.

Before I delve any further into my closing thoughts, I do need to mention the pricing and this is more directed at the UK audience. Nvidia have said that the retail price of the GTX 1070 Founders Edition card is $449 and if we do a conversion today, this works out at £311. As UK enthusiast gamers know, its not that simple, so if we add on 20% vat then its £311 + £62, or £373.

Etailers are not allowed to list the GTX 1070 until June 10th at 2pm, so we can't confirm prices just yet, however we have been reliably informed that Founder Edition cards will be available around the £399.99 inc vat mark when they hit the stores.

Yes UK punters have to pay more than those in the US – its just the way it is, sadly.

Nvidia have announced that some partner cards will be available at $379, so we take our best educated guess that this will translate to £350 in the UK. Higher specified solutions from partners such as ASUS are likely to be priced at the same £400+ point as this Founders Edition card however. We will know for sure on June 10th at 2pm UK time.

The GTX 1080 might be the dream graphics card to own right now, but for most of us, the GTX 1070 makes a lot more sense. It is around £220 cheaper and will deliver a stellar high frame rate gaming experience at 1440p.

650px2

I know Nvidia are comparing the GTX 1070 to the GTX 970 in their literature and briefings, but I can't help but notice the GTX970 is quite often available at £250 – or £150 less. Thats a substantial chunk of change. As our review has highlighted however, the GTX 1070 blows the GTX 970 out of the water. The GTX 1070 is often in the same performance bracket as a reference clocked GTX980ti which are still selling for more than £500 today. If you factor in that you get similar performance to a GTX980 ti for £100-£180 less, the GTX 1070 is a tempting proposition.

Overclocking headroom is fantastic, we managed to overclock our review sample by +210 core and +600 memory. This enhanced performance levels of the graphics card further and while I don't always recommend that an enthusiast gamer spend time overclocking their new graphics card, the GTX 1070 is just screaming out for some clock boosts. In my own mind, this card is ideally suited for a gamer who wants to game at 1440p with a high refresh panel. Overclocking it to the limit will push those frame rates above 60fps and smooth out the overall experience.

For those of you adopting two GTX 1070 cards then the backplate design will be particularly appealing. A section can be removed to improve cooling efficiency when two (or more) are running together in close proximity.

Nvidia have also placed a focus on technologies to improve the VR experience. Simultaneous Multi-Projection provides performance for new display technologies. The GTX 1080 GPU can simultaneously render to unique viewports that are designed specifically for VR headsets and triple display users. Lens Matched Shading improves pixel shading performance by rendering up to 16 viewports that will better support the design of the latest VR headsets. This helps to avoid rendering pixels that would be trashed before the final imagery is sent to the VR headset.

Additionally, the new Single Pass Stereo feature uses Simultaneous Multi Projection to render the geometry required for both eyes in a VR headset – all in a single rendering pass rather than a pass for each eye. This obviously halves the geometry workload when directly compared to a more traditional VR rendering situation. This will also help support gamers with three screen configurations as Perspective Surround gets the GPU to simultaneously render projections for each of the three displays with proper perspective views. We haven’t been able to test this yet, but it seems like a good move for enthusiast users who enjoy multi screen systems for gaming.

If you are in the market for a new graphics card and have a budget of £400, then right now, the GTX 1070 is the card you need to shortlist.

Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE.

Pros:

  • New performance leader around £400.
  • power efficient.
  • massive overclocking headroom.
  • We like the new reference cooler, especially for SLI configurations.
  • adjustable backplate.

Cons:

  • fan always spins so it could be quieter at times.
  • Cheaper than a GTX 1080, but it is still a substantial investment.

Kitguru says: The GTX 1070 is the second Pascal card we have reviewed and considering the price point it is just as impressive as the GTX 1080. It sets a new performance standard around £400.

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38 comments

  1. “As our review has highlighted however, the GTX 1070 blows the GTX 970 out of the water” – we it would wouldn’t it, that’s given in technology, nobody releases slower tech these days. Nvidia basically increased the price of their mid-tier cards x70 and x80 by £150 and £200 respectively. That’s around 50% increase compared to 970 and 980!! Lack of competition shows big time.

  2. I wouldn’t call the 1070 mid tier; it is high end with the 1080 as a top end card. The 1060 will be the new mid tier. Considering the current market, the 1070 is not crazy expensive. Decent pound to performance ratio.

  3. Wait till the RX480 is released at the end of this month, then the competition starts.

  4. No Witcher 3 at 1440 and 4k with or without the blood and wine expansion!!!! That’s the only results I was waiting for. I’m currently on a vapor-x 290X and was relying on the Witcher results to decide whether I should trade up, I have just finished the hearts of stone expansion at 1440p with 140 hours played and everything on ultra except the hair works, it would be interesting to see if the GTX1070 allowed hair works at those settings.

  5. Did you not read the paragraph before that statement were the price was discussed ? ‘I know Nvidia are comparing the GTX 1070 to the GTX 970 in their literature and briefings, but I can’t help but notice the GTX970 is quite often available at £250 – or £150 less. Thats a substantial chunk of change.’

    Not much point commenting like that if you are blowing things out of context…

  6. Havent had time yet for that one, sorry 🙁

  7. Very good GPU for the money you pay out. It keeps to or slightly ahead of a 980ti for a lot less. The over clock was not to bad also. I would assume the 3rd party cards will be more overclock friendly because of custom cooling & hopefully extra power pins to get that little extra boost & better cooling. Now to decide whether to go for a GTX 1070 or 2 of them. I currently have 2 Sapphire Tri-X 390x cards oc’ed to 1235Mhz cores & 1752Mhz (7008Mhz) on the memory & use maxed VSR in most every game without problems with speed. These cards would allow me to max Nvidias DSR but also use a lot less energy to do it. Not sure what I should do sell these 390x cards & get the 1070’s or just be happy I got a system that can handle pretty much everything I throw at it now.

  8. Jeramie NCG (No Commentary Gam

    Sigh..I’ve waited so long for some review website to release 2x 970 vs 1070 just like everyone is doing 980 SLI compared to 1080, why hasn’t anyone done it yet..

  9. I buyed 3 1080Ti’s for xfire and it is almost as quick ad my 970 Sli

  10. Matt McAlinden

    No one cares about your bragging post disguised as a question.

  11. Its year old high end. Titan x performance for $600 was already attainable with 980 ti. While the 1070 brings the price of that performance down it should be considered as 980 ti performance for $449 until we can buy cheaper cards. I get sick of these review sites padding the 1070 performance per dollar like you had to pay $1000 to get this performance before.

  12. Wow that overclocked 980 ti is almost matching the 1080. Considering the 1080 doesn’t gain much from overclocking I’m really disappointed with the 1080.

  13. Not bad for 150 watt TDP. On par with Polaris, But the price tag is too high in comparison if considering performance per dollar to the RX480. We need benchmarks before making a final decision. Hurry up already!
    Will it be the dual card Polaris or a single 1070? There’s just not information for myself to lock in my decisions.

  14. Currently prices for a 980ti range from €600 to €700; most are around €650. The 1070 performs on par for a €499 recommended price, which means it’ll probably be a bit cheaper (and give you a slightly smaller electric bill). Call me nuts, but a 20-25% lower price tag for the same if not slightly better performance sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

  15. In my country italy a gtx 980 ti costs around 560 euro.

  16. Netherlands has higher taxes maybe?

  17. Sorry if it seemed like bragging. I was actually raising the question of should people that have sim hardware like I stated actually upgrade to a 1070 or 1080 or just wait for the bigger & better chips from either AMD or Nvidia. This going on the rule of thumb that a bigger faster card is always better than 2 slower cards because of the way SLi & Crossfire are starting to not work as good with some of the newer games or we have to wait for game profiles to get the most out of 2 cards now days. I’m sure 1 big pascal or big Vega will trump 2 OC’ed 390x’s and no worries about game profiles or 2 980’s for those Nvidia people out there. I expect big pascal & Vega to be about 55 to 65% faster than a 980 Ti. Which in turn a 980 Ti is about 35 to 40% faster than 1 of my 390x cards a bit less because of my OC but the 98- Ti will over clock to 1500Mhz most times also. Anyways sorry if it sounded like I was bragging I was just stating my cards & their specs OC’ed to give a better picture on how they perform & if any one with same type of hardware will be upgrading to a 1070 or 1080 or waiting for the better & stronger cards in 6 to 8 months down the road & just go single GPU this time around…thanks

  18. No i don’t think so,22% of taxiation on this type of goods.

  19. Matt McAlinden

    Well on that basis I would say the general rules are: top end card over two mid range cards, always. Some games scale really well on multi GPU but others scale badly or not at all, which means for the same price you’re left with a single mid range card and another one sitting idle. The second rule of gfx cards is generally skip a generation. I’m on a gtx 670, and as I am still on only 1080p it can still play most games at fairly high settings with 2x AA to just take the edge off the pixels, I skipped the 7xx series as they were the same family just with more vram, so they were the same generation and then I skipped the 900 series as that’s the next gen and wasn’t a huge step up. I’m now looking at a 1080 or 1070, I’m still on 1080p so a 1070 should suit me fine, but I don’t want it to be my limiting factor in a couple of years as games advance or if I get a 1440p monitor, then be forced to buy a second 1070 with the scalability issues I described earlier. Which brings me to the final rule of gfx cards, buy the best single card you can afford…. And if you can afford it, get with the winning team (green 😉 ). You can always say the 1080 ti will be out next year but then the 1180 will be out a year after that and beat it, just like the 1080 has with the 980 ti. So just buy in at the current gen if your current PC isn’t giving you what you want then upgrade ever other gen.

  20. It’s decent but nowhere near as good as the hype train being perpetuated by the mindless tech community. Some sites are still quoting 2x titan x performance and believe it’s actually 2x faster in the traditional sense.

  21. Then I don’t know why there is such a major price difference.

  22. I don’t know; I try to not board the hype train 🙂 guess you now know which sites not to take seriously

  23. Because tons of fools still buy GTX 980ti new today.

    Best perf/dollar today is to grab a nice cheap one off second hand market.

  24. AMD is trying really hard to hide the fact that you need to put 2 RX 480’s in Crossfire to even get close to 1070 performance, and that the resulting price tag will still be higher while your in-game performance will have less stability and worse frame times than the single card solution.

    Once again it’s one of the worst ways to launch a GPU. ‘Hey look guys, our GPU is actually too weak in the current marketplace, just buy two and all is fine’. We’ve heard this before too, with an FX processor that chained eight cores in four modules, and was one of the worst CPU releases in the past few decades besides Intel’s Netburst junk.

  25. 2x 970 is one of the worst setups you could make with that specific card, because of its gimped VRAM segment which will really show up when you double up. That is also how the initial Shadow of Mordor benches surfaced with that card and brought the issue to light. Bottom line, if you run 2x 970’s now, start selling them off fast.

  26. You answered it yourself and you know you did. Upgrading for you is pretty much worthless except perhaps for the heat in your case and a few quid off the electricity bill.

    You’re trying to find justification for an upgrade itch, I know the feeling – just wait for 1080ti and Vega, will be much more worthwhile ^^

  27. Unless you want to assume that the Dutch are a lot more stupid than Italians, this does not account for a 100 euro price difference between countries 😉

  28. I agree about the CPU. They messed up. To get the same perormance as the Intel counterpart you had to overclock it and run it up to 200watts vs Intel’s 95 Watt TDP.
    Having to do that over three years time it’s no longer the bargain paying higher electricity for the same performance. TDP has everything to do wtih a purchase or it should. At least for us adults who care about it.

    I don’t know if I’d go as far to say they are hiding anything just yet. But it is suspicious that the pricing rumor went from 300 to 200 dollars for the Polaris card. But if two Polaris cards in DX11 or lower (DX12 irrelevant in this topic) is the same as a 1070 it’s not a good purchase at all. The TDP would be higher and the performance the same for the same amount of money?
    I agree with you.

    However, hiding it? If it is revealed later the performance is that of a 1070 it will come out that AMD dodged it at Computex. But so far they are handling things pretty well. But it does make you wonder did they drop the price juist before computex because the 1070 came out with its numbers and it startled them? Those are things to sponder and specualte. But until those benchmarks roll we wont know. What is of even more serious concern is Nvidia’s lack of response on this rendering issue. The lack of response is very telling that maybe it’s not AMD hiding anything. So it’s unclear to me why you’d say AMD is hiding something at this point when NVidia hasn’t responded to the rendering problems. Which would impact performance.

    That’s the bigger question for today. As far as AMD hiding anythign we will find out when benchmarks come. Right now we have a benchmark with evidence that snow wasn’t rendered in AOTS and its either driver bug. In any case Nvidia needs to provide a driver fix and the benchmark run again. Either way in DX12 Polaris appears to be the proven leader. DX11 and below it could be a turd. I guess we will find out. It’s a bit exciting to speculate , but my decision while it teeter totters like a bipolar graphic driver on whether or not the Polaris or 1070 will be my purchase. There is not enough data. But so far it doesn’t bode well for Nvidia. Already showing driver issues and cheating with NO RESPONSE is very bad. And it looks bad on them.

    So we wait. Either way Nvdia best respond to it . WIth a driver release or explanation.
    That will impact the purchase. And they do say if one person speaks up usually there’s 10 more in that same position around the world somewhere. They could be hiding something. If it is a showing that it has 1070 performance in DX11 and lower it wont be the Polaris Im purchasing. I cant justify purchasing something that would end up with higher TDP, like performance. Saving that 180 bucks immediately wouldn’t make sense. IF you bought the 1070 the 180 dollar difference over 3 years with a 150 watt TDP vs 300 watt twin Polaris the energy savings over 3 years would just about be that 180. You’d end breaking it even with a single card solution. As you can see I factor in every detail on a companies product to see what makes the most sense.

    Stay tuned on my verdict. I should start a website with that other guy Mr Pompous I called him. But he has as much experience in the “gaming” world. Just not in the business world.
    IT’d be a great website and he’s great. Insulting at times but, I like him.

  29. You can’t say they increased the price of their mid-tier cards really, today’s pricing reflects the fact that newer tech is releasing very shortly.
    Sure, the Founder’s Edition costs like £620 for the 1080 and £399 for the 1070 (at least that’s what I’ve read somewhere), but the non-FE cards start at £529, and I’d imagine the 1070s will be £319-£369 depending on brand-specific price gouging (looking at you MSI, £650 for your 1080, really??).
    The 970 was regularly £299 for aftermarket cards on Overclockers for many months out of the past year, without including today only/this week only/Black Friday sales.
    They’re effectively re-releasing a 980ti with a big more power, one year later for roughly the original price of a 970, give or take a few pounds. Sounds like a great deal to me.

  30. the 480 will appeal to gamers at 1080p most likely, anything higher and unless you’re really adverse to team green, you’d be wanting a 1070.

  31. Without mentioning the fact that the £150 difference comes as the product is nearing EOL status, the 1070 is intended to be its direct replacement. I know what I’ve just said is obvious and I’m not intending to demean you by saying it, I’m just saying that they can’t really compare it with any other card, as the 980 is both More expensive than the 1070, and also doesn’t fit into the same ‘tier’ as the 1070 🙂

  32. The easiest way to look at it is to check 980ti vs 1070 benches/comparisons. Two 970s perform roughly on par (+/- 5% or so) with a 980ti, depending on the games SLI capabilities. Also take into account resolution and in-game settings, we all know that whilst two 970s was supposed to be the 1440p ideal solution, the whole memgate issue thing did produce shortcomings in certain games (although most were quite fine!).
    A single 1070 is 100% the way to go, if you can offload your two 970s you could probably get the money to pay for a 1070 non-FE card and maybe have change leftover, and you’ll never run into vram issues, have a lower power draw, and lower temperatures to deal with, not to mention no SLI worries! 🙂

  33. Without quoting where they’re from, I’ve seen 3 different places that have performed those tests. All tested at 1440p with maximum available settings aside from HW which varied.
    Two of them tested with hairworks off, and got 71.5 and 73 average FPS respectively.
    The one place that tested with hairworks on, had it set to “on all” with 4x hairworks AA, and got 45fps average with a 63fps max…sadly hairworks seems to be a killer even now 🙁

  34. Okay, wow. I know the performance for the card is amazing, but really? $399 MSRP for aftermarket cards…the CHEAPEST one is £379, and it goes as expensive as £479 for the Asus, or £550 for the MSI Seahawk? SCREW YOU EU PRICING 🙁

  35. Christopher Lennon

    why? from the multiple benchmarks I’ve seen, the RX480 should be just a hair slower than the 1070 while being $175 USD cheaper

  36. Christopher Lennon

    what? according to all the information, the 1070 is DEFINITELY NOT twice as fast as a 480…where did you even get that information? AMD has already sgown that two 480s are FASTER than a 1080

  37. What benches are You seeing? Every bench I’ve seen so far has put the card anywhere from 50-80% of the distance between a 970 and a 980, sometimes almost equalling the 980 depending on the case. Two of them look great together, synthetically speaking of course, but as a single card it’s not supposed to be competing with the 1070 or 1080 in performance

  38. Gosin Nilratana

    Bro, do you even Witcher 3?

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