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Galax reveals its single slot GeForce GTX 1070 Katana

by Mark Tyson on 13 April 2017, 12:31

Tags: NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA), GALAX

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Graphics cards, SSDs, and memory maker Galax has revealed an interesting new graphics card. The Galax GeForce GTX 1070 Katana is claimed to be the world's first single slot GTX 1070. It measures just 16mm thick. Nevertheless, Galax's svelte new card is clocked slightly faster than the far bulkier GTX 1070 Founders Edition.

Key to slimming any graphics card down is a compact and efficient cooling solution. Galax thinks it has circumvented this difficulty with its "legendary turbo radiator," plus RazorX copper cooling fins, and "advanced vapour chamber". Furthermore, Galax says its custom PCB design with high quality components uses an optimised electrical circuit.

Together, these technologies are leveraged in quite a long custom cooler which is said to be able to "maintain consistent performance even in a thermally challenging scenario." In other words Galax is hinting that this thickness constrained card isn't likely to suffer thermal throttling. However Galax does seem to admit its card will get hot, there's a 'hot surface' warning just below the single fan.

The Galax GeForce GTX 1070 Katana runs at (slightly) better than reference GPU clocks of 1518MHz base, and 1708MHz boost. Its hardware features include a single 8-pin power connector plus 1x DisplayPort 1.4, 1x HDMI 2.0b, and 1x DL-DVI-D connector. Full specifications are available at the bottom of the official product page.

Will it really avoid thermal throttling in real-world use? Chinese site EXPreview published a few benchmarks comparing the Galax GeForce GTX 1070 Katana against a Founders Edition card. Its scores show it performed a tiddly bit better for its tiddly GPU clock speeds increase over reference, no issues were apparent. Unfortunately no noise readings were taken by the source site when running the tests such as 3DMark Time Spy and so on.



HEXUS Forums :: 16 Comments

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Hmm… This single slot 1070 must be a beast to be slightly faster than the GTX 2017 Founders Edition.
Even on a single slot they find room to fit in a chunky (and in my mind outdated) DVI connector.
I'm also quite curious as to the noise/temperature readings.
DVI is FAR from outdated.
shaithis
DVI is FAR from outdated.
Sorry, but it is. Big and clunky, annoying screws, and low resolution support unless you go DL-DVI, which requires special (massive) cables. Not to mention that you can get it (easily) through a passive DP-DVI adapter (given that you don't need DL, that is). 2xDP + 2xHDMI would have been a better fit. Still, it looks like the port will survive a few more years, as Nvidia just started ditching the port on the 1080Ti and TXp.

As for the card: looks nifty, but the noise is probably awful. I don't doubt that the metal shroud gets hot given tight confines around a hot GPU, and it looks like it makes contact with the top of the copper fin stack. I wonder why they haven't covered the area in between there with thermal pads, though. They're cheap as anything, and in a form factor like this every little bit of heat dissipation counts.
While DVI isn't the top choice anymore, it's still a popular connector for those of us who don't upgrade monitors every few years.

At work I've got a Dell 2407 and at home a 2408, both connected with DVI (though the 2408 does have an HDMI port and is only a secondary screen). I'd rather not have to faff about with dodgy and easily broken adapters, so I welcome at least the odd card with DVI.

Waayyyy of topic, but it's shocking how little monitor technology has come along since about 2005. That 2407 is more than a decade old and yet gaming aside it's still a fantastic monitor. And with a far better resolution than the 1920x1080px that replaced them (those 120px make a big difference for productivity).