A Quick Preview Of NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1070

Only a couple of weeks ago, NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1080 specifications and benchmark results were released by reviewers, and just a couple of days ago, the cards went on sale – kind of, since everyone sold out very quickly. Well, it’s time for the 1080’s younger sibling to get the spotlight as we can now release full results of the GeForce GTX 1070.

Well, we would, if the card was actually here, but unfortunately, due to postal delays and the fact that Computex has started, we won’t be getting the card until tomorrow before we can start testing. However, that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing to talk about! While the GTX 1080 secured the spotlight for simply being first and an introduction to all things Pascal, it’s our belief that the GTX 1070 will make for the much more interesting card – something we intend to confirm when we start benching it.

While the GTX 1080 is certainly the fastest single GPU card on the market – which we confirmed in our review which focused on Ultrawide and 4K testing, it’s the GTX 1070 that will likely have most people dropping their hard-earned cash on. The reason is simple; how would you feel about having the power of NVIDIA’s previous flagship graphics card, the TITAN X, for a third of the price? That pretty much sums up the GTX 1070, as previously covered – the power of a TITAN X at a fraction of the cost. Founders Edition will have the 1070 at $459, and the regular edition will start at $379.

Going by the chart above, you’d think it would be a pretty hard thing to accept. The GTX 1070 has a lot less cores than the TITAN X – but they are clocked faster. They both make use of GDDR5, rather than the newer G5X, and the TITAN X has a wider memory bus, too. According to NVIDIA’s notes though, while the TITAN X has a theoretical performance of 6.1 TFLOPS, the GTX 1070 has it beat at 6.5 TFLOPS. This is something that we will be confirming in our own testing soon enough.

Even if the TITAN X proves to be a fraction faster in some tests because of the wider memory bus, there is one thing the GTX 1070 will beat the TITAN X on; power. At 100 watts less, the GTX 1070 is in a whole other league when it comes to power efficiency with a total TDP of just 150 watts, all thanks to the 16nm FinFET manufacture process technology of the transistors.

When compared to its direct previous generation, the GTX 970, the GTX 1070 has it beat in nearly every regard (ironically, except power). NVIDIA’s base estimates puts the 1070 between 50-70% faster than the original 970. Under DX12 tests, we expect to see some massive improvements, as we saw with the 1080, thanks to Pascal’s greater focus on DX12 and Vulkan support.

Much like the GTX 1080, the 1070 has all of the same feature enhancements that come with Pascal. Simultaneous Multi-Projection for improving multi-monitor and Virtual Reality rendering through viewport management and selective rendering technologies. Ansel adds a whole new dimension to screenshots, including super-mega-ultra-high definition renders, spherical and VR screenshots, as well as free-movement camera. Updated PhysX handling with spatial audio and haptic feedback will increase engagement as well. You can read up on all of this in our initial coverage of Pascal at GTC, as well as product details in our review of the GTX 1080.

The GeForce GTX 1070 will be made available next week, on June 10th. However, like the initial launch of the GTX 1080, expect short supply, and mostly Founders Edition cards being available. We will be posting our review of the GTX 1070 soon. Pop on to Newegg to check for stock, or search Amazon for when it gets released.