GEFORCE GTX 1070 Ti
Nvidia leaves no room for AMD’s Vega 56
WHY DOES THIS CARD even exist? Let’s get one thing straight: Unless you’re deep into cryptocurrency mining, this generation’s GPU war is over. Nvidia has won. Vega, although powerful, can’t compete from a price perspective, and thanks to its horrendous power draw and delayed launch, it’s not an attractive proposition for gamers. Vega 56 was the most intriguing offering, slotting between the GTX 1070 and the GTX 1080. And that, presumably, is why Nvidia has brought this card to market. The problem, however, is that in its eagerness to secure every corner of the GPU market, Nvidia has cut off its nose to spite its face. What do we mean? Allow us to explain….
The best way to understand why this card is such a confusing proposition from Team Green is to take a look at the basic specs of the models either side of it. The GTX 1070 touts 1,920 CUDA cores, 120 texture units, and 8GB of GDDR5; the GTX 1080, on the other hand, features 2,560 CUDA cores, 160 texture units, and 8GB of GDDR5X. That’s a pretty wide gap, especially with the memory configuration. But when you consider that the 1070 essentially equates to a Titan X of Maxwell’s generation, it’s fair to say that both cards are attractive offerings for anyone looking to game at 1440p or higher.
The GTX 1070 Ti, then, features 2,432 CUDA cores, 152 texture units, and 8GB of GDDR5. That’s a difference of 128 CUDA cores between it and the GTX 1080. To put that into perspective, the difference between the GTX 1060 3GB and 6GB variants is—you guessed it—128 CUDA cores. If you’ve followed us for a while, you’ll know we stand by the GTX 1060 3GB as being the better value card, purely because, in our tests at least, the difference between it and its 6GB brother is just 1–2fps, and that’s with half the memory capacity.
INSANE IN THE GAME It should come as no surprise, then, that in our tests the GTX 1070 Ti and the GTX 1080 perform almost identically, even when compared against some of our more overclock-heavy aftermarket models. The maximum disparity between the two at 1080p was 3fps; 5fps at 1440p; and 4fps at 4K. That’s insane when there’s about $90 difference in price between the two.
The lines become even more blurred when you enter the realms of overclocking. There were plenty of rumors concerning Nvidia requesting that AIB manufacturers not produce “overclocked” variants of its GTX 1070 Ti. And when you combine that knowledge with the fact that there’s an “advanced” sticker covering the word “overclocked” on our Asus GTX 1070 Ti box (no, seriously), well, we’ll leave you to be the judge of what’s really going on. But the fact is, you can easily add 220MHz on to the core clock, and 350MHz on to the memory, without temperature issues, and end up with scores and performance that actually surpass a stock GTX 1080.
So, is this just a really dumb overreaction to Vega 56? Well, yes and no. We can sort of see the logic behind the design of the card. Firstly, GDDR5X is expensive to produce and in short supply. Secondly, the GTX 1080 has been out for near enough 18 months now—if you were going to buy one, you would have done so already. What you’re getting with this is a GTX 1080 at a discounted price, which kind of makes sense. Nvidia gets to keep the prestigious nature of its product line, without calling it a cut-down or discounted GTX 1080, and at the same time, it shores up that extra acreage of market share. It’s a smart move, but if you recently bought a GTX 1080, it’s a bit of a slap in the face.