One quarter fewer CUDA cores than the GTX 1080, as well as lower clocks, still probably add up to a performance heavy-weight compared to the previous generation.
One quarter fewer CUDA cores than the GTX 1080, as well as lower clocks, still probably add up to a performance heavy-weight compared to the previous generation.
Reviews for NVIDIA flagship Pascal GPU, the GeForce GTX 1080, are in and pre-orders for the £620 card are set to begin this weekend. Now it’s time to turn our attention to the GTX 1070, the ‘bang for your buck’ entrant in the first range of Pascal cards. Facilitating that are the card’s specifications, revealed earlier this week.
The GTX 1070 will be launching in the form of a Founder’s Edition on June 10th with an MSRP of $449, whilst AIB/AIC designs with 3rd party cooling will follow at around $379. By all outward appearances the card will feature the same angular reference cooler as the GTX 1080 Founder’s Edition, which includes blower fan, vapour chamber heatsink and metal backplate. It effectively replaces the GTX 970 as the bastion of performance that’s priced aggressively, but it remains to be seen if the card will prove to be as popular as its antecedent.
These specifications are a little more illuminating when viewed alongside the GP104’s block diagram:
In the case of the GTX 1070 NVIDIA have fused off the equivalent of one GPC cluster from the GPU die, reducing the number of Shader Modules (SM’s) from 20 to 15. This means that the card has roughly 1/4 fewer CUDA cores and Texture Units, although the number of ROPs is likely to remain the same at 64 (NVIDIA haven’t revealed the final specs as yet). Coupled with GPU Base clocks roughly 100MHz lower (although with a comparatively aggressive Boost clock) and you’re probably looking at a card that won’t have near the performance chops as its bigger brother.
A major differentiating aspect of the GTX 1070 is the continued use of GDDR5 VRAM, as opposed to the GDDR5X on the GTX 1080. The lower memory bandwidth will impact high-resoluition gaming and VR, but this card isn’t quite so aggressively marketed towards that use case. For 1080p and even 1440p the GTX 1070 should however be the card to choose from NVIDIA’s 10-series, and eschewing GDDR5X does see a considerable drop in cost. Hopefully there will also not be a return of the embarrassing memory mismatch issue seen on the GTX 970, where only 3.5GB of the card’s 4GB VRAM was addressable at full speed.
Direct comparisons with the Maxwell-base 900-series cards is difficult due to the differences in underlying architecture and new features baked into Pascal. For example whilst Maxwell utilised 3rd generation colour compression Pascal makes use of the 4th generation of this technology, improving memory bandwidth utilisation to an even greater degree. A reference GTX 1070 may well go toe-to-toe with the 980Ti at reference specs (although we would expect the 980Ti to pull ahead after it’s been overclocked), but only through in-depth testing will be known with certainty.
The GTX 1070 also supports the new technologies NVIDIA announced at the GTX 1080 reveal, including the Multi-Projection and Ansel. Ansel in particular looks like a fun sideline so-called ‘in-game photography’, and extracting views as Stereoscopic 360-degree images for desktop and smartphone VR could be a killer app for Pascal. Furthermore, by supporting simultaneous multi-projection the GTX 1070 should be a significant step up from the GTX 970 in VR performance for experiences which support it.
GTX 1070 Features
Technology Support:
Multi-Projection:- Yes
VR Ready:- Yes
NVIDIA Ansel:- Yes
NVIDIA SLI® Ready:- SLI HB Bridge Supported
NVIDIA G-SYNC™-Ready:- Yes
NVIDIA GameStream™-Ready:- Yes
NVIDIA GPU Boost™:- 3.0
Microsoft DirectX:- 12 with feature level 12_1
Vulkan API:- Yes
OpenGL :- 4.5
OS Certification:- Windows 7-10, Linux, FreeBSDx86
Maximum Digital Resolution:- 7680×4320@60Hz
Standard Display Connectors:- DP 1.42, HDMI 2.0b, Dual Link-DVI
Multi Monitor:- Yes
Multi-Projection:- Yes
VR Ready:- Yes
NVIDIA Ansel:- Yes
NVIDIA SLI® Ready:- SLI HB Bridge Supported
NVIDIA G-SYNC™-Ready:- Yes
NVIDIA GameStream™-Ready:- Yes
NVIDIA GPU Boost™:- 3.0
Microsoft DirectX:- 12 with feature level 12_1
Vulkan API:- Yes
OpenGL :- 4.5
OS Certification:- Windows 7-10, Linux, FreeBSDx86
Maximum Digital Resolution:- 7680×4320@60Hz
Standard Display Connectors:- DP 1.42, HDMI 2.0b, Dual Link-DVI
Multi Monitor:- Yes
UK pricing for the GTX 1080 Founder’s Edition already stirred controversy after it was revealed that its MSRP is to be £619 inc. V.A.T., a full £40 higher than a direct conversion from US pricing and £70 more expensive than last year’s GTX 980 Ti. At $449 the GTX 1070 Founder’s Edition could hit UK stores for around £370, but a similar premium on this SKU would peg it closer to £400.
