Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070 G1 GAMING review

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Conclusion

Conclusion

The G1 GAMING graphics cards that Gigabyte outted in the past few week let's face look brilliant, and it's not just the looks. it really is the entire package including a GPU that runs fast and factory tweaked, the temperatures this card reaches are more than good and then the aesthetic touches you can reach with the RGB system really do make this card fairly special.

Though the GeForce GTX 1060 is a strong contender to keep you eyes on, these cards do have interesting perf/price ratios, we do admit that the price performance ratio of the GTX 1070 so much better then what the GTX 1080 offers at its sales price. At face value things seem right though the GPU might have been castrated a notch, the GeForce GTX 1070 overall offers simply really good performance. These cards (especially the factory tweaked ones) are battling (and winning from) the GTX 980 Ti and Titan X cards out there. The combo of the GPU with GDDR5 memory at 8 Gbps still offers plenty of horsepower. The Pascal GP104 architecture is interesting, as in aside from a few changes in the pipeline, it looks VERY similar to Maxwell. Make no mistake there have been changes, but it shares a very similar structure. So the biggest benefit for Nvidia was 16 nm, as it allows them to drive their products to incredible clock frequencies whilst they can use less voltage, and that results in power consumption way under the 200 Watt marker. Though not that exquisite GDDR5X memory, the 1070 uses GDDR5 graphics memory, still it's effectively running at a nice data-rate of 8 Gbps which brings in a very nice memory performance boost compared to the last gen products, in fact it tweaks rather easily over 9 Gbps as well. That fact armed with new color compression technologies effectively boosts the memory bandwidth a notch upwards compared to the GeForce GTX 970 and 980. These cards are faster compared to a GTX 980 and roughly as fast as a 980 Ti. Next to that I have got to say, 8 GB 256-bit GDDR5 graphics memory also feels like an excellent and well-balanced amount of graphics memory anno 2016. Would you ever use 8 GB of memory? Well, not anytime soon. The largest number we ever measured as like 5 or 6 GB. But hey, who knows with titles like The Division / GTA5 and technologies like Ultra HD and / or DSR versus performance and VRAM what you find valid, or not. High up there in the enthusiast space there certainly is a market for cards like these. That makes these 8 GB models relevant for gaming. 


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Aesthetics

Gigabyte tweaked the design and looks a bit for the new WindForce 3X model cooler, combined with its black design and orange striping it certainly looks totally bad-ass. As any manufacturer will do, the product also comes with RGB LED lighting control. Switch it on/off or to any color and animation you prefer, the choice is yours. Cool dibs is that backplate, however it lacks openings at the proper areas (GPU/VRM) for venting. As you can see, I remain skeptical about backplates, they potentially can trap heat and thus warm up the PCB. The WindForce 3X reached 73 Degrees C with three fans, we do wonder if that number could have been a notch lower if that backplate wasn't closed completely. Granted, 73 Degrees C is still lovely and below the reference / founders products. Backplates do look much better, make the PCB more sturdy (bends less or not at all) and can protect your PCB and components from damage. Consumer demand is always decisive, and you guys clearly like graphics cards with backplates. 

Cooling & Noise Levels

The reference design (founder editions) of all GTX 1070/1080 are set at an offset threshold of 80 degrees C. Once the GPU gets warmer the card will clock down / lower its voltage etc to try and keep the card cooler, that's throttling and it is part of the design. Gigabyte however throws in a cooler that manages strong cooling performance. It is a good one and actually so good that up-to a degree or 60 on the GPU, this card remains passive and thus inaudible. That however is similar to most of not all board partners. Once the fans kick in, you can expect to hover at the 65~70 Degrees C marker, with seriously demanding games you'll be just above that value. Please do note that you will need proper ventilation inside your chassis to achieve that number. So Gigabyte shaved off a roughly 10~15 Degrees C over reference. Noise wise, we can’t say that the card was silent as we could hear it. But it's a totally fine noise level at roughly 41 DBa. You can hear the fans a bit. This means you can hear the card while using it. Once overclocked with added voltage we always do recommend a little more fan RPM, this does increase noise a tiny bit, but it's nothing dramatic by any standard. Overall this is a very sound and solid cooling solution. We heared a minsicule tiny amount of coil whine with this SKU. It's so little that in a closed chassis you cannot hear it.

Power Consumption

Any GP104 Pascal GPU and thus GP104 based graphics card is rated as having a 160~180 Watt TDP under full stress, our measurements back that up albeit a notch higher due to the faster clocks and thus voltage usage. We noticed that the 1070 did consume a bit more power due to its tweaks and design, it was just over 180 Watts under full stress. That's still very OK though. Here again keep in mind we measure peak power consumption, the average power consumption is a good notch lower depending on GPU utilization. Also, if you plan to overclock the CPU/memory and/or GPU with added voltage, please do purchase a power supply with enough reserve. People often underestimate it, but if you tweak all three aforementioned variables, you can easily add 200 Watts to your peak power consumption budget as increasing voltages and clocks increases your power consumption.

Gaming performance

If you plan to upgrade my biggest advice to you is this, you'll need to look at your monitor first and foremost. A GeForce GTX 1070 would be perfect for Wide Quad HD Gaming at 2560x1440. It has plenty power and has the graphics memory to deal with games for years to come, even with the best quality settings and some niche AA levels. Price performance wise one should also take SLI into deliberation. We'll test it at one point but two GeForce GTX 1070 cards setup in SLI might be a true sweet-spot for Ultra HD gamers or the ones that like to go a little dirteeh with DSR and of course the latest gaming titles. Performance wise, really there's not one game that won't run seriously good at the very best image quality settings at 2560x1440. And sure, the cool factor remains you get the advantages of an 8 GB framebuffer. As such we feel the card is rather future proof. We mentioned SLI already, but starting with Pascal the primary focus for Nvidia in terms of multi-GPU setups is that they will support 2-way SLI, but really that's it and all. For those of you that want to run 3 and 4-way configuration, it's going to be difficult but remains possible as the game needs to support and you will need to obtain a driver key from the Nvidia website. Do not expect Nvidia to enhance drivers for it, they'll just open up the floodgate and have you deal with the rest. Some of you might be disappointed about this news. Me personally, I am fine with the choice to focus on proper 2-way SLI opposed to all the arbitrary configurations that less then 0.01% of the end-users uses.

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Concluding

Gigabyte offers a really nice product with the G1 GAMING editions. It's fast, is future proof with 8GB of GDDR5 memory and it just looks terrific (but taste is a subjective matter of course). All 1070 cards will be close to each other on performance aside from some anomalies here and there. Nvidia's limiters kick in harsh and hard, normalizing performance with a variance of a few frames per second here and there. That thesis remains more or less the same with tweaking. The 1070 remains to be a sweet product though, as the GeForce GTX 1080 is the card we all want but cannot afford. That makes the the GeForce GTX 1070 the next best thing, and it a terrific card really. In fact, it offers more than plenty for any PC gamer out there that plays his or her games up-to the WQHD domain and 2560x1440 ('ish). The 1070 is a nice upgrade if you come from the GeForce GTX 960/970 range. Seen from GTX 980 and higher, not so much of course. Added benefits over a founders edition card are the better looks, the better cooling, and a much more silent product. The G1 GAMING comes factory tweaked for you, roughly 88 MHz over reference, that remains a relatively mild tweak. But still you'll notice games boosting in the 1.9 GHz range. Tweaking (and I'll keep repeating this) wise I say that Nvidia overstepped their boundaries by implementing way too many limiters. The new offset overclocking/tweaking also creates more complexity opposed to simple and old-fashion overclocking. We're not a fan of that at all as it normalizes everything. Basically Nvidia is in control of what your maximum overclock is with a few exceptions here and there. So yes, all cards from any vendor are going to hover in the 2.0~2.1 GHz range max with an exception here and there. I'll state that again, ALL cards from any manufacturer. So really, you need to focus at the extras like design, cooling, price, LED system, warranties and after-sales. The few remarks really I can think of is that the G1 Gaming is not 100% silent, under full load you will hear the fans slightly. But let me emphasize, nothing dramatic .. slightly, it's just a bit of fan noise that in fact might even be tweaked out with a BIOS update as the cooler definitely has enough room for tweaking. Second remark, I simply am not a fan of closed rear side backplates. I like to see vents at the VRM and GPU areas. Everything else has been done right though, I meant he killer looks combined with some awesome game performance make this product something that should be on anyone's short-list if you are in the market for a GeForce GTX 1070. Highly recommended

 - H

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