NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1070 Ti vs. Radeon RX Vega 56 & GTX 1070, 1080

Since I wasn’t able to include the full round of tests for the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti launch article a couple of weeks ago, this one acts as a follow-up to add important information: how the card performs in real games.

I’m in the process of retesting all of the current-gen GPUs we have on-hand, and so far, I’ve been able to tear through four – all of which are included in this article. Four resolutions are also featured, which is a bit of a rarity since a card has to fall into a specific sweet spot to be relevant for all of them.

That said, while the GTX 1080 is being tested across all four resolutions for this article, it wouldn’t normally be used for 1080p testing (the same applies to Vega 64). I broke that self-inflicted rule to help make this article feel more complete, since a 1080p battle between cards $50 apart could be interesting.

On tap: GTX 1070 Ti, GTX 1070, GTX 1080, and for good (and sane) measure, AMD’s Radeon RX Vega 56. These four GPUs cover the entire $400-$500 gamut (SRP), so it’s a good start to my retesting.

Time for more omissions! This article was supposed to include test results for Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, since it should become the best Vulkan test to date. However, the game was buggy on NVIDIA hardware when testing commenced, but since then, a patch was pushed out that included a fix – or at least what feels like a fix after quick testing. A follow-up GPU performance look will include that game, as well as the rest of the GPU lineup.

At this point, nothing is secret any longer about the 1070 Ti, so there won’t be much preamble here. If you’re interested in synthetic results, I’d encourage you to check out the previous article.

As a bit of a recap in case you haven’t checked out the previous look:

The GTX 1070 Ti is ridiculously close to the GTX 1080, so it makes you wonder which of the two GPUs will eat into the sales of the opposite one more. Not that it matters – NVIDIA’s selling cards.

For a second recap, here’s where I put the GTX 1070 Ti in the grand scheme of gaming capabilities:

The 1070 Ti and Vega 56 perform extremely similarly, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that these ratings are likewise equaled between them. The 1070 Ti is close to being overkill for 1080p, but that conversely means that it will last a while if that is going to remain your target resolution. The card is also great for 1440p, and decent for ultrawide (higher FPS can be had if you don’t mind dropping detail settings).

I am sure there are many who’d disagree with me, but I can’t personally recommend anything but a GTX 1080 Ti or higher for true 4K gaming. Sony and Microsoft might be fine with 30 FPS at 4K, but I think it’s an asinine choice over 1080p/60. If you don’t mind dropping details a lot, 4K will be feasible, but really, the 1070 Ti is not built for 4K.

Our GPU Test PC

Exceptions: All NVIDIA GPUs other than 1070 Ti used the GeForce 388.00 driver for Destiny 2. The RX Vega 56 used 17.10.3 for synthetic benchmarks, but 17.11.1 for the game tests. Since NVIDIA brought dramatic improvements to Destiny 2 with its 388.31 driver, I’ll be retesting that game in full in time for the next GPU performance article.

Framerate capturing varies by game title. If a timedemo is used, and it supplies sufficient enough data, we stick with that. If it’s a manual runthrough of a DirectX 11 game, we use Fraps. An exception there is with Destiny 2, which requires us to test with PresentMon. That tool is also used to test Wolfenstein II, but as mentioned before, the game proved too unstable out-of-the-gate on NVIDIA, so it will be added later.

A total of 9 games is what we aim for, but due to the dropped titles, 7 make an appearance here.

(AMD) – Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (DirectX 12)
(AMD) – Sniper Elite 4 (DirectX 12)
(NVIDIA) – Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands (DirectX 11)
(NVIDIA) – Watch_Dogs 2 (DirectX 11)
(Neutral) – Battlefield 1 (DirectX 11)
(Neutral) – Destiny 2 (DirectX 11)
(Neutral) – Total War: WARHAMMER II (DirectX 12)

Calling Destiny 2 “neutral” given NVIDIA’s huge pushing of it might seem a bit odd, but the metric here is whether or not a game has official sponsorship built-in, such as with NVIDIA’s “The Way It’s Meant To Be Played” program. From what I’ve been able to gather, I don’t believe the game has been built with NVIDIA in mind (there are no GameWorks features, and no GeForce Experience tie-in). If someone out there has countering information, please hit us with it.

If you’re interested in benchmarking your own configuration to compare to our results, you can download this file (15MB) and make sure you’re using the exact same graphics settings we do.