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Review: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition (16nm Pascal)

by Tarinder Sandhu on 29 May 2016, 23:01

Tags: NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qac232

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Conclusion

This iteration of Pascal shows its performance chops by being 50-75 per cent faster than the ever-popular GeForce GTX 970...

The GeForce GTX 1070 is the Pascal-based graphics card that will appeal to most enthusiast gamers. The second-rung card, described in a non-pejorative sense, almost always provides more bang for your buck than the lead silicon of a particular architecture.

Our benchmarks show the GTX 1070 to produce around 80 per cent of the performance of the champion GPU, or expressed a different way, the same sort of speed associated with a bone-stock GeForce GTX 980 Ti - all wrapped up in a package with a mainstream 150W TDP that's rife for presentation in a smaller form factor.

This iteration of Pascal shows its performance chops by being 50-75 per cent faster than the ever-popular GeForce GTX 970. In real-world terms this means superlative performance at 2,560x1,440 and passable frame rates at 4K... with the image-quality dial turned up to 11.

The Founders Edition card, based on the same reference PCB and cooler as the GTX 1080, will be available to purchase from June 10 at $449 (£399), thereby undercutting a slew of GTX 980 Ti cards still in the channel. Of more interest is what Nvidia's AICs do with it, especially at the keener $379 (£320) price point.

You're effectively getting the graphics performance akin to the best of the last generation in a new GPU that sips on considerably less power and arrives at retail armed with more competitive pricing. Nvidia's Pascal salvo has sewn-up the premium end of the market for the time being.

Right now, the sensible purchaser looking for a quality gaming system should opt for the GeForce GTX 1070 over the GTX 1080, due to its better bang for your buck, though a clearer picture of exactly where this new card sits in the premium graphics arena will only emerge once AMD has had its say with upcoming Polaris. Interesting times.

The Good
The Bad
Very solid performance
Excellent design
Keener price
Balanced architecture
Energy efficient
Fan doesn't turn off



Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition

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The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition will be available to purchase from Scan Computers.

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At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.



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Posted by jag272 - Sun 29 May 2016 23:28
Hmmm so its basically punching on par with the 980ti and Titan X. Thats pretty nice for a significantly cheaper price. Most likely this will be the card I go for then, upgrading from a 760 as while this may be a half baked release without HBM2, I only just bought myself 1080p monitors, so I'm unlikely to need a card from next gen where the main leap will be in HBM2 and some refinement of the architecture I imagine.
Posted by Gerrard - Sun 29 May 2016 23:29
Whilst I don't know if I can justify spending quite so much on a card, it does throw the cat amongst the pigeons and it will be interesting see what happens to the prices of the current gen cards now.
Posted by kalniel - Sun 29 May 2016 23:48
Hexus, you're normally a bit more objective! The game choices are very odd, and the concluding statement of “The sensible purchaser looking for a quality gaming system this summer should opt for the GeForce GTX 1070” before we've even seen anything from AMD is really weird. Nearly £400 is a LOT of money on a GPU that will last only a year or so before being outdated by the next gen - a CPU costs considerably less and lasts longer.
Posted by Ulti - Mon 30 May 2016 00:11
Looks like this will be my next GPU if I can get it for under £300. I think even at the asking price of £320 I'll probably end up going for it. Looks to be 50-60% better than my GTX970 and around 80% of the performance of a GTX1080 which puts it at pretty good value for money in relative terms.

In absolute terms it's still rather expensive but if I've spent roughly £1000 on the whole PC and I can't up all the settings to max on 2560*1440 resolution and this upgrade would allow me to then I think it's worth it.
Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH - Mon 30 May 2016 00:31
Ulti
Looks like this will be my next GPU if I can get it for under £300. I think even at the asking price of £320 I'll probably end up going for it. Looks to be 50-60% better than my GTX970 and around 80% of the performance of a GTX1080 which puts it at pretty good value for money in relative terms.

In absolute terms it's still rather expensive but if I've spent roughly £1000 on the whole PC and I can't up all the settings to max on 2560*1440 resolution and this upgrade would allow me to then I think it's worth it.

The problem is at £400 this is 60% more expensive than the GTX970 which was £250 and even at £320 it is 30% more for the improvement.

Edit!!

This is the other problem too.

Look at when the GTX670 was launched:

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/39153-nvidia-geforce-gtx-670/?page=13

It destroyed the GTX580 in the same price range.

The GTX1070 can barely match a GTX980TI.

I am starting to think the current 14NM and 16NM based cards from AMD and Nvidia are some of the worst improvements we have seen for a while for the price,and are just using overinflated pricing to look reasonable value.

Edit!!



See,the GTX670 cost just over £320 and was 20% faster than a GTX580.

The USD RRP for the cheapest versions of both cards was around the same.

I fear Polaris is not going to be any different now in terms of value for money.

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