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PNY GTX 1070 XLR8 OC 8GB Review

Rating: 7.5.

Nvidia’s GTX 1070 graphics card remains the go-to option for 1440p gaming enthusiast due to a (current) lack of modern competition from AMD and the sheer expense of the GTX 1080 and Titan X Pascal chips. More than half-a-year after its launch and the GTX 1070 is still managing to hold its price in the UK, aided by the political events of 2016. We examine PNY’s ~£450 GTX 1070 XLR8 OC to see how the company’s triple-fan cooler and aggressive core overclock tackle modern games.

 

Going with a gamer-orientated style from yesteryear, PNY colours the GTX 1070 XLR8 OC’s triple fan cooler in a red and black style. Red LEDs are also fitted to the board and activate continuously when one’s system is powered on. If you like red in your system, PNY has made a good start on this card.

Good news for tinkerers who may be toying with the prospect of watercooling in the future, PNY uses the same reference GTX 1070 PCB for its XLR8 OC card. You get the same 4+1 phase power delivery system and single 8-pin PCIe power connector feeding the GP104 GPU and 8GB of GDDR5 memory.

Despite the included backplate, there are no flashy RGBs or 0dB fan operating modes for the GTX 1070 XLR8 OC so PNY is clearly relying upon build quality and straight-up performance to win over buyers.

PNY overclocks the core to 1607MHz (1797MHz Boost) which is an aggressive increase from the 1506MHz/1683MHz reference GTX 1070 FE frequencies. Memory is left unchanged at 8Gbps effective.

As shown in the MSI Afterburner screenshot above, PNY’s GTX 1070 XLR8 OC will happily hover around and just above the 1900MHz GPU Core clock mark under gaming conditions. The higher the resolution, the lower the boost speed, but even at 4K the card would sit around 1911MHz.

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6 comments

  1. That is one very unattractive card. One might even say “Fugly.”

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  3. Nice card in a sea of cards of this type but at least it handles the temps very well like you said never going above 60c is very nice. If I was in a market for a 1070 those temps would be very compelling for sure. Sure it don’t have all the whistles and bells of the RGB lighting and if that makes it fugly to some then so be it I guess & yes the lack of LED lighting does appeal to more than a few people out there in a market where everything is RGB LED lit it is nice to see a product that just does what it says & in this case lets you play your games without worrying about anything else.

  4. Dumb question – you’re using MSI Afterburner, so is it possible to alter the fan curve of this card such that it’s at 0% speed at a certain range? Or do the fans actually just refuse to drop to 0 RPM?

  5. GTX 980 Ti AIB cards are still A HELL OF A STRONG GPU! If you use MSI Afterburner – and know how to tweak enough to get your GTX 980 Ti to 1400+ MHZ core at all times when under any load, you are WELL AHEAD of anything a GTX 1070 can accomplish!

    If, like me, you are a hardcore tweaker, and have a TOP TIER GTX 980 Ti, such as my Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 980 Ti – and you manage 1503 Core, with 8 GHZ Effective VRAM as I have, you are ABOVE Stock FE 1080s! Seriously, in every benchmark I have done comparisons with (ESPECIALLY VR) My G1 980 Ti is TIED OR AHEAD of SOME GTX 1080 results! In the Steam VR Benchmark, I was actually ahead of over HALF of the submitted GTX 1080 results!

    In VR – it seems that for all intents and purposes, the GTX 980 Ti when OCed like I have done, is TIED with or AHEAD of most GTX 1080s!
    And that REALLY matters to me, as I own the AMAZING HTC Vive!

    Also: God I remember how GIGABYTE USED to be the BEST OF THE BEST when it came to the GTX 900/Maxwell series GPUs! The G1 Gaming was STILL TOP TIER- and Gigabyte only built the Gaming Xtreme to blow the Zotac AMP! Extreme out of the water, which it did. But as for build quality and function, for Maxwell ALL Gigabyte G1 Gaming GPUs were THE BEST! My G1 980 Ti is as solid as a Brick front and back, and I feel like I could use the thing to bash a hole in my wall without causing ANY damage to the card!

    Move up the the Pascal and Polaris days: G1 Gaming has become mid tier, plasticy and built with mid level components. Gigabyte introduced the new “Aorus” as the top tier, and IT is CHINSY! The Shroud is made of SUCH THIN METAL that in shipping, for Jayz2cents the FIRST one he got was bent so badly that the middle fan could not even spin! Just a few days ago he got another one from Gigabyte, and showed that you can LITERALLY snap pieces off of the shroud without using ANY force! The whole damned card is FLOPPY!

    Also everyone who OWN the GTX 1080/1080 Ti Aorus says it has TERRIBLE sag, and again is chinsy as hell!

    To me that is SAD! Gigabyte REALLY went ALL OUT on the G1 Gaming Series – and FFS they built a 2 slot cooler that dissipates 600 watts of heat! A cooler that has 5x 8mm and 1x 6mm heatpipes all of which go DIRECTLY over the GPU and the majority of the VRAM chips – and not only is it GORGEOUS – but it is DEADLY EFFECTIVE! Even with my 1503 Core and 8 GHZ VRAM – my card NEVER gets hotter than 67 C in gaming – at which point the fans are at 90% and are just BARELY audible when my AC or room fan is not running!

    I actually bought my G1 Gaming GTX 980 Ti early August, 2016 AFTER all the benchmarks had been done! I KNEW people would be dumping their 980 Ti’s (and Fury./Fury X so I thought… But they still sold for $400+ at the time) – so I went onto eBay, and found them selling between $320 and $400 at MOST! For a GPU that I KNEW was more potent than a GTX 1070 – and with proper OCing could reach near GTX 1080 performance – back when an FE 1070 WOULD have cost me $470! And I bid on the AiB models that I knew could OC well, eventually I won my G1 GTX 980 Ti for $355 shipped to my door in BRAND NEW condition! The guy even cleaned it and applied IC diamond which he told me after I won – and I checked to see if it was true. And I was THRILLED when I found I could hit 1500+ Stable after some tweaking to voltage, frequency, fan curves – etc!

    Whereas my reference GTX 770 before it – at about 65% my 770 was as loud as my 980 Ti is at 100%

  6. From what I understand, theoretically it SHOULD be possible to drop fans to 0% – unless there is firmware that prevents it in the case of Reference or “Founders Edition” blower style cards. But I would NOT think PNY has the same firmware as a stock FE 1070, besides the overclock, the fans never ramp above 50% or so, whereas an FE card would got up to 65%.

    So while I cannot guarantee that it would work, it SHOULD work, though even if it does not work, as long as the firmware allows for 30% fans speed or below, you really are not in danger of wearing the fans out, and at such a speed, you should not be able to hear them at all.