Gainward GTX 1070 Phoenix GS Review

NVIDIA’s GTX 1070 equipped with Gainward’s Phoenix custom twin-fan cooler and a factory overclock which gives the GPU clock a 9% increase.

Product on Review: GTX 1070 Phoenix GS
Manufacturer & Sponsor: Gainward
Street Price: UK: £430 GBP / US: $470

This summer has been packed with numerous graphics card releases as AMD and NVIDIA unveil their next-gen GPUs and today we turn to Gainward, who have, over the years presented enthusiasts with some rather impressive custom cooled and factory overclocked solutions – stepping outside of the norm and engineering a variety of noteworthy products.

So, in spotlight today is the GTX 1070 by way of the Phoenix Golden Sample. This new graphics card utilises a distinct livery which should set it apart from other offerings out there on the market. The red and gold theme allows this card to stand out from the crowd while the twin-cooler promises to deliver low-noise and low-temperatures. Gainward has also applied a 9% factory overclock to the GPU in the bid to nudge the performance up, above the competition.

Gainward on their GTX 1070 Phoenix GS

The Gainward 1070 Phoenix GS edition is factory overclocked, giving superrior 1070 performance straight out of the box. The improved cooler and fan design also brings the core temps down much further than the Founders Edition under full operational load, meaning longer lifespan, no bottlenecking, and a quieter PC gaming system.

Technical Specifications

Below are the technical specifications surrounding the GTX 1070 Phoenix GS:

Chipset
GeForce GTX 1070
Digital max resolution
7680×4320
Core Clock
Base: 1632MHz
Boost: 1835MHz
Memory Clock
8.0 Gbps
Process Technology
16 nm
CUDA Cores
1920
Memory Size
8GB GDDR5
Memory Bus
256-bit
Card Bus
PCI-E 3.0
Memory Type
GDDR5
DirectX
12
[n]OpenGL
4.5
PCB Form
ATX
Multi-view
4
I/O
1x Dual-link DVI-I
1x HDMI 2.0
3x Display Port 1.4
Suggested Power requirement
500W (8-pin external power connector)
Card Size
285mm x 133mm

Packaging & Bundle

GS arrives in a highly decorated box which clearly indicates we’re dealing with a graphics card from their Phoenix product line. The packaging is large for our graphics card – perhaps a hint that the actual product is quite substantial in size.

Inside the box we have the graphics card which is concealed within an anti-static bag and we have just three items included within the accessories bundle:

• Driver/Software CD
• 1x Power Cables – Y-cable (8-pin to dual Molex)
• Installation Guide

Closer Look (With Cooler)

Fundamental to the Phoenix design is Gainward’s dual-fan cooling solution. This cooler surrounds the PCB and internal components and is the first thing which takes the attention.

We’ve seen that most graphics card brands will opt for a neutral asthetic – choosing black or grey but Gainward has made a bold move by choosing red/orange and gold for their scheme. While this may not pair up with a wide range of other components it’s nice to see something distinct.

The actual size of this graphics card is: 285mm x 133mm.

Over on the reverse of the graphics card we have a rather large steel backplate which protects the components and prevents the PCB from flexing or bending. The serial code is on this backplate – in case you need to contact Gainward regarding any technical assistance.

Gainward also provide a cut-out towards the top of this backplate where they have placed a dual-BIOS switch. This switch allows the user to choose between two different BIOS – so if a manual overclock goes pear shaped there is still an option to recover.

Note: removing the cooler will void the warranty – stickers cover the screws.

Phoenix GS arrives with a large LED strip which provides lighting to add some ambience to your system. This strip (which features the Gainward logo) have its colour modified via the ExperTool app. Different effects can be applied and if desired the LED can be disabled.

Along this edge we also have SLI slots for pairing this card up with another GTX 1070.

Taking a look at the rear IO section of our graphics card, there are a nice selection of ports to choose from. They are as follows:

• 1x DVI-I port (Up to 2K)
• 3x DisplayPort 1.4 (8K @ 60Hz)
• 1x HDMI 2.0 port (4K @ 60 Hz)

NVIDIA’s 10-series graphics cards operate much more efficiently compared to the previous generation and our GTX 1070 therefore only requires a single 8-pin connection from the power supply and that power supply needs to be 500W.

Over the page we’ll take a closer look at the cooling solution and PCB.

Closer Look (Without Cooler)

Removing the cooler from our Phoenix GS reveals a large heatsink which splits into two separate parts. This heatsink makes use of four copper heatpipes and also uses a copper baseplate for heat transfer.

Thermal pads are placed over the VRMS and memory chips.

Having detached the cooler we can also now clearly see the inner workings of the Phoenix GS. This PCB is uses a custom design – taking a different size, using a specific layout and custom component selection.

At the centre of GTX 1070 is of course the GP104 GPU which uses Pascal architecture and is 22nm. Gainward has applied a 9% applied to this GPU compared to the NVIDIA reference design and over the page we’ll be testing this graphics card out to see how significant this modification makes.

Test Setup & Methodology

How we test graphics cards

Testing a graphics card is an extremely lengthy process. We sometimes see reviews where a graphics card has been tested using out of date equipment, out of date games and even out of date drivers. While the latter can be excused due to the sheer amount of driver updates making a thorough review impossible we will however notify the reader when we have used a different driver to the normal for example a pre-release driver. For the most part however we will always use the same hardware and latest drivers so this does certainly need to be taken into consideration when viewing our testing results. Each game and benchmark is tested times with the lowest and highest scores omitted out of the 5 results and the average then taken from the three remaining to give us our final result for each resolution and setting used.

Hardware

Taking Intel’s High-End Desktop platform, our hardware utilises the Intel X99 chipset. Combined with this we use the Intel Core i7-5960X Extreme Edition processor clocked to a realistic and achievable 4GHz to ensure we have no CPU bottlenecks. With 16GB (4x4GB) of DDR4 at 2666MHz and a 750GB SSD there should be minimal paging so the benchmarks we run today will hopefully give a true reflection of the graphics card’s performance.

High End Graphics Cards on test:
PowerColor RED DEVIL RX 470(Crimson 16.8.1)
PowerColor RED DEVIL RX 480 (Crimson 16.7.2)
ZOTAC GTX 1080 AMP! Extreme (NVIDIA 368.81)
ASUS STRIX GTX 1080 (NVIDIA 368.81)
Gainward GTX 1070 Phoenix Golden Sample (NVIDIA 368.81)
MSI GTX 1060 Gaming X (NVIDIA 368.64)
Gainward GTX 1060 Phoenix Golden Sample (NVIDIA 368.64)
NVIDIA GTX 1060 (NVIDIA 368.64)
NVIDIA GTX 980Ti OC (NVIDIA 368.81)
NVIDIA GTX 980 (NVIDIA 368.81)
NVIDIA GTX 970 (NVIDIA 368.81)
AMD Radeon RX 480 CrossFire (Crimson 16.7.2)
AMD Radeon RX 480 (Crimson 16.7.2)
XFX R9 FURY (Crimson 16.7.2)
AMD Radeon R9 390X (Crimson 16.7.2)

Special thanks go to Intel, Corsair, MSI and AOC for providing the extreme spec components used for our test bench:

Motherboard: MSI X99S GAMING 9 AC
CPU: Intel Core i7-5960X Extreme Edition @ 4GHz
RAM – 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair LPX Vengeance (Red) DDR3 @ 2666MHz 16-17-17-35 C1
Power Supply – CORSAIR HX1050
Hard Drive – Samsung 840 EVO 750GB
Cooler – CORSAIR Hydro Series™ H105 240mm Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
Monitor – AOC 28″ 4K U2879VF
Capture Card – Razer Ripjaw

Benchmarks
If you are a regular reader of our reviews you will know we like to test the latest hardware with the latest games and benchmarks on the market. Here are the games we’ve chosen:

DOOM (OpenGL 4.5 & Vulkan)
Total War: Warhammer
Rise of the Tomb Raider
HITMAN
DiRT Rally

To capture framerates we use a combination of in-game benchmark tools, FRAPS and PresentMon.

We also take into consideration the benchmarkers out there so have included three of the more popular synthetic benchmarks available:

Unigine: Valley
Unigine: Heaven 4
Futuremark 3DMark Firestrike
Futuremark 3DMark Time Spy

Let’s see how today’s graphics card performed…

Power, Temperatures, Acoustics

To test for power consumption, we take a measurement from the plug socket. It is important to note that the figures below represent total system power use and not just the GPU. The CPU was always in a fixed state (4GHz overclock) so did not affect the additional power load when the GPU was placed under 100% load using Heaven 4.0 which was ran for 20 minutes at which point a load reading was taken. Idle readings were taken 5 minutes after system boot to ensure any background services and applications had loaded.

Temperature

To test temperatures we measured idle temperatures after booting windows, letting all applications finish loading and ran a few benchmarks. Once the benchmarks were complete we left the card to reach a cooling plateau where we then took the idle temperatures. For the load tests we set Heaven 4.0 running continuously for ~30 minutes recorded the peak/maximum GPU temperature.

Acoustics

In a similar manner to the GTX 1060 version of Phoenix GS we’ve already reviewed, this card also performs quietly under load and is not disruptive at all.

DX12: 3DMark Time Spy

With its pure DirectX 12 engine, which supports new API features like asynchronous compute, explicit multi-adapter, and multi-threading, 3DMark Time Spy is the ideal benchmark for testing the DirectX 12 performance of the latest graphics cards.

DX11: 3DMark FireStrike

Fire Strike is the new showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for high-performance gaming PCs. It is Futuremark’s most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today.

DX11: Unigine Heaven 4.0

Heaven Benchmark with its current version 4.0 is a GPU-intensive benchmark that hammers graphics cards to the limits. This powerful tool can be effectively used to determine the stability of a GPU under extremely stressful conditions, as well as check the cooling system’s potential under maximum heat output. It provides completely unbiased results and generates true in-game rendering workloads across all platforms.

DX11: Unigine Valley

Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.

DX12: DOOM OpenGL 4.5

By default DOOM utilises an OpenGL 4.5 renderer, and is one of relatively few Windows PC titles to not use DirectX 12. It tests how well NVIDIA and AMD’s GPUs deal with a less mainstream approach, especially in regards to driver optimisations, and like all of id titles stretches graphics quality to the limit.

DX12: DOOM Vulkan

id have also released an optional Vulkan rendering path for DOOM. This API is a development of AMD’s Mantle low level which has been taken on board by the Kronos Group for implementation as the next generation of Open graphics APIs. Like DirectX 12 Vulkan is capable of Asynchronous Compute in specific configurations.

DX12: Total War: WARHAMMER

Total War: WARHAMMER is a pseudo Real-Time Strategy title which leverages DirectX 12 to render huge numbers of complex units on screen at any one time.

DX12: Rise of the Tomb Raider

Square Enix’s Rise of the Tomb Raider is the sequel to 2013’s Tomb Raider reboot. An enormously challenging title graphically, the developers also released an optional DirectX 12 render path for Windows 10 users. Although it has undergone a number of iterations this rendering pathway notably doesn’t currently utilise the full capabilities of DirectX 12.

DX12: HITMAN

Yet another DirectX 12 title, 2016’s Hitman from Square Enix and developer IO Interactive has a more robust DirectX 12 implementation than Rise of the Tomb Raider. We’ve tested at a full range of resultions, from 1080p through to 4K, which provides a look at the impact of GPU speed and memory utilisation.

DX11: DiRT Rally

Overall Performance

Here we take a look at the overall performance of the graphics card. This figure is determined by finding the average FPS across all of the settings used in a particular benchmark(game) to give us an overall value.

Value For Money

We make a simple calculation for this set of results. For each game we add all of the resulting FPS totals together and then divide by the four sets to give us an overall performance figure. While the figures alone do not give you an accurate picture of how the card will perform in any given scenario, they do tell you, when averaged, which GPU is the more capable across all of the benchmarks and settings tested.

Conclusion

The focus in the graphics card arena has been firmly fixed on the mid-range for the last few months while the high end by way of the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 has stepped out of the spotlight somewhat but with today’s review we can certainly see how relevant and how impressive the GTX 1070 really is.

The vast majority of custom designs right across the NVIDIA 10 series tends to opt for the neutral colours – using black and grey but Gainward are quite obviously wanting to stand out from the crowd with their unique and distinct styling. While this might not coordinate as well with other components it certainly adds personality and we quite like how bold and confident this comes across.

For any custom cooler the key ingredients for success are low-temperatures and low-noise; Gainward’s twin-fan solution demonstrates that it’s up to the job in both areas. We’re presented with very little noise emission under full load and the GPU temperature peaked out at just 65C – significantly low compared to other cards.

Putting the Phoenix GS through DX11 and DX12 titles highlights a very capable card. 1440p is probably the sweet spot for this graphics card but pushing things to 4K yields good results too. Having a 9% factory overclock applied to the GPU clearly helps – it’s just a shame that Gainward didn’t nudge the memory clock speeds up too. However, users will be happy to hear the GPU and memory clock speeds can be tweaked above the settings which arrive out of the box.

In terms of the pricing, against other GTX 1070s the Phoenix GS right in the middle – it is neither the cheapest or most expensive GTX 1070 that money can buy. Our graphics card is priced at £430 GBP / $470 and is backed by a 2-year warranty.

The GTX 1070 Phoenix GS sets out to deliver on low-noise, low-temperatures and great performance and it achieves just that. Gainward are to be congratulated for producing a superb graphics card which also offers a distinguishing physical appearance.

Pros
+ Unique styling/design
+ LED lighting can be modified
+ Comes with factory overclock
+ Low-noise
+ Effective cooling
+ Overclocks even further
+ Great performance
+ DirectX 12 ready
+ 2-year warranty

Cons
– No memory overclock

Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.