Although we pretty much all thought that Nvidia was done with their Pascal generation of graphics cards in terms of new models, a wild rumor suddenly appeared out of nowhere and it indicated that we still might get one more. A few weeks later that same rumor turned out to be correct which is why today I have MSI GTX 1070 Ti Gaming in front of me.
Yes, that’s another Ti offering from Nvidia which is here to fill the gap between the two first comers for this generation, the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070, and which before all come in as nVidia’s’ response to AMD’s new Vega GPU’s, where they aim to fight with Vega 56 model as it proved to be a pretty feisty competitor for its price point and others surrounding it. Compared to its similarly named brother, it carries 512 CUDA cores more, so that’s 2432 in total, and that’s a pretty decent bump. We still have 8 GB of GDDR5 video memory, while the reference base GPU core clock is slightly higher, 1607 MHz, but they kept the same Boost Clock of 1683 MHz. Of course putting in some more CUDA cores resulted in a higher TDP, which is now 180W. Enough about that, let’s check out the card.
GTX 1070 Ti Gaming fills the gap
Although nVidia showed off their reference version of the GTX 1070 Ti, aftermarket solutions from the board partners are already available right from the start, which made this launch a bit easier for everybody. As I said and as you can see in my the video below, I’ve got MSI’s immediately recognizable Gaming series – the GTX 1070 Ti Gaming. It comes carrying their famous Twin Frozr cooler design, which is now in its 6th generation, and which I, and probably you too, already came across within a bunch of my previous reviews of the ongoing series, be it AMD or Nvidia graphics cards. It carries four nickel-plated copper heat-pipes and the contact plate, paired with big aluminum heat-sink and two 100 mm Torx 2.0 fans, while for the aesthetics part we have this black and red outer shroud.
We also have for this series your standard metal back-plate, with the dragon drawing and some others details in a form of small cutouts like so. Speaking of the details, RGB LED’s are all set on your usual spots for a Gaming card, on the back top portion we have these red inserts, while on the side MSI dragon logo, all of which is controlled via MSI’s new Mystic Light software utility. Bottom line, it’s hard to go wrong with this model in terms of the build quality and looks.
Finally, when it comes to ports and other inputs/output points, on the front we have a common set of video output, three DisplayPort, one HDMI, and one DVI-D, while on the back there’s one 8-pin and 6-pin PCI-express power connector for delivering that needed additional power to the graphics card.
The MSI GTX 1070 Ti Gaming is not locked down for overclocking
As I already mentioned, the MSI GTX 1070 Ti Gaming has basically the same reference clock speeds compared to its brother and this MSI’s model to my surprise actually comes like that out of the box, which is unusual as we’re used to seeing it being factory overclocked right out of the box when it comes to MSI’s models from Gaming series and basically any other aftermarket graphics card model. As for now, with the current version of MSI Gaming app and the cards’ BIOS, we don’t have any pre-loaded OC mode profile to choose, as you usually do, so I had to stick with the default one for my testing. In the end, that really doesn’t matter as the final frequency is dictated by the nVidia GPU Boost 3.0 technology, power delivery, and thermals, and on the count of it, I was seeing GPU reaching just a bit above 1800 MHz at load.
Although we had some rumors about GTX 1070 Ti being “locked down” for overclocking, that turns out to be false, and it better be since the cards price tag is in the upper tier. Maybe that locked part was just for the manufacturers, as in they are not allowed to factory overclocked them as per usual, which would explain this weird clocks situation which I talked about a few sentences ago. Nevertheless, you can see here I managed to increase the GPU and memory clock speeds using everyone’s trusty tool, MSI’s afterburner, with which I managed to get around 500 MHz on the memory and on average set the GPU speed at around 1950 MHz. It’s not a big bump on the GPU department, but hey, who can say no to some free extra frames, I’m always up to that.
Checking out the performance of the card, as expected, the GTX 1070 Ti easily falls into “play any game you want with it” category, bottom line your true example of a gaming graphics card. It pulls away from the regular GTX 1070 by a nice margin and actually closes in on GTX 1080 from not that far of a distance. High-frame-rate 1080p gaming doesn’t represent a problem at all, while it can also handle anything above that with ease. Like this, it’s a fierce competitor to its red counterpart, the Vega 56, which is probably why Nvidia decided to introduce this new series in the first place. All in all, it’s a really capable card which will ensure you play games without the need of upgrading in the near future.
MSI GTX 1070 Ti keeps cool as per usual
Taking a look at the performance of the MSI GTX 1070 Ti Gaming cooler and temperatures, I was again greeted by the well-known stamina of MSI’s Gaming and Twin Frozr cooler design. Under idle I was seeing temperatures of around 40-45°C on an open testbed, which is OK since the card is in so to speak passive mode as the fans are off thanks to the Zero Frozr feature which kicks and cuts them off when the GPU temperature is under 60°C. When it comes to loading temperatures, during gaming that was mostly around 65°C with fan speed being at around 1000 RPM, while under Furmark stress test it was just under 70°C with a bit higher fan speed of 1200. As for the noise, under idle, obviously, you won’t hear a thing coming out of it, again thanks to the Zero Frozr feature, while during load it’s still really whispering quiet, making below 40 dB of noise.
MSI again did their part in terms of properly covering the launch of yet another card, as they always do when it comes to their Gaming series, so I don’t actually have anything new to point out, everything was already established well before this particular model. On the other hand, when we talk about this new GPU series, the GTX 1070 Ti, Nvidia filled a pretty big gap between its weaker brother and the stronger GTX 1080, positioning it actually more toward it as it only falls behind by 128 CUDA cores, plus the GDDR5X memory. The MSRP price is set at 450$ for the Founders edition card, while I think you can expect around 500$ when it comes to the aftermarket models.
That’s actually not that bad since you can as of now, for example, buy the GTX 1070 Gaming X for around 450$, so that’s a price difference of around 50$ or even less with reference card, while there’s a possibility that Nvidia will slightly correct the pricing of the GTX 1070 after this launch. It’s hard to make a definitive conclusion as the GPU market is all over the place in terms of pricing and availability, but if the difference between it and the GTX 1070 stays below 50$, it’s going to be a pretty decent deal and a quality opponent across all fields to AMD’s Vega 56 model which has similar pricing, especially since that one only comes in reference cooler design. Hope this MSI GTX 1070 Ti Gaming review helped you up a bit in you decision making process, if you have any question feel free to hit me up in the YouTube comments in the video above or contact me via social media!
