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Nvidia Geforce GTX 1070 Review Thread

Must...resist....til....Black........Friday..........

Why?

I'm a very frugal buyer(cheap ass), but when I bought my 1070 for $430 I justified it, because I spend alot of time playing on PC and the difference between MSRP of $380 and what I paid is the same as a decent restaurant bill.

Spending an extra $50 to get the increased performance months early was totally worth it.

Also without competition don't expect deep discounts on black Friday.
 
Why?

I'm a very frugal buyer(cheap ass), but when I bought my 1070 for $430 I justified it, because I spend alot of time playing on PC and the difference between MSRP of $380 and what I paid is the same as a decent restaurant bill.

Spending an extra $50 to get the increased performance months early was totally worth it.

Also without competition don't expect deep discounts on black Friday.

Well, unfortunately, my "leisure budget" won't be able to get the card this week.

Gives me hopes that the Seahawk version will go on sale soon though.
 
I just picked up a 1070, open box, from MicroCenter for $340 and I still qualified for free Gears 4. My old card was a 470 so it was quite an upgrade for me.

Definitely check MicroCenter for open-box items if you have any near you.
 
Update on the EVGA PWM/VRM overheating/cooling issue, now with a VBIOS update coming to change the default fan curve!

EVGA_JacobF said:
EVGA GeForce GTX 1080/1070 PWM Operating Temperature Update

11/1/2016 - Recently, it was reported from several sources, that the EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 FTW PWM and memory temperature is running warmer than expected during Furmark (an extreme stress utility).

EVGA has investigated these reports and after extensive testing, below are our findings:

On ACX 3.0, EVGA focused on GPU temperature and the lowest acoustic levels possible. Running Furmark, the GPU is around 70C +/- and the fan speed is running approximately 30% duty cycle or lower.
However, during recent testing, the thermal temperature of the PWM and memory, in extreme circumstances, was marginally within spec and needed to be addressed.

Conclusion: EVGA offers full warranty support on its products, with cross-ship RMA*, and stands behind its products and commitment to our customers.

To resolve this, EVGA will be offering a VBIOS update, which adjusts the fan-speed curve to ensure sufficient cooling of all components across all operating temperatures. This VBIOS will be released in the next few days and users can download it and update their cards directly. This update resolves the potential thermal issues that have been reported, and ensures the card maintains safe operating temperatures.


For those users who want additional cooling beyond the VBIOS update, EVGA has optional thermal pads available. This update is not required, however; EVGA will make it available free of charge to any customer who is interested. To request the thermal pad kit, please visit www.evga.com/thermalmod

Any customer who is not comfortable performing the recommended VBIOS update, may request a warranty cross-shipment* to exchange the product to EVGA for an updated replacement.

All graphics cards shipped from EVGA after 11/1/2016 will have the VBIOS update applied.

*The EVGA EAR(Advanced RMA Program) and Cross Shipping options are available in the Continental United States, Hawaii, Alaska, Canada, EU, UK, Norway, and Switzerland. EVGA offers Standard RMA replacement options in the Middle East, Africa, India or outside of the before mentioned supported areas.

FAQ

Q. Which cards are supported by these updates?

A. EVGA ACX 3.0 GeForce GTX 1080, 1070 or 1060 cards with the following part numbers:
z0AQuSF.jpg


*Founders Edition, Blower type, HYBRID, and HYDRO COPPER cards do not need these updates.


Q. If my Graphics Card is not an ACX 3.0 design is it affected?

A. No, all other GPUs sold by EVGA including Founders Edition, Blower type, HYBRID, and HYDRO COPPER editions are unaffected.

Q. Does the VBIOS fix the temperature issues?

A. Yes, the VBIOS update will fix the temperature issues.

Q. Is my card damaged from running at a higher temperature?

A. No, but should any future warranty service be needed, EVGA stands behind its products.

Q. What happens if my card is accidentally damaged during the optional thermal pad installation?

A. EVGA will stand behind its customers with full warranty and cross-shipment.*

Q. What if I am not comfortable updating my VBIOS?

A. While EVGA has very user friendly ways to update VBIOS’s, if you still do not feel comfortable, we will support you with and advanced RMA and ship you a replacement card with the latest VBIOS.
http://forums.evga.com/EVGA-GeForce-GTX-10801070-PWM-Operating-Temperature-Update-m2573491.aspx

Here's the guide for applying the pads.

http://www.evga.com/thermalmod/thermal_pad_mod_installation_guide.pdf
 
Super tempted to use the opportunity for a free advanced rma to try and swap my micron card for one with Samsung ram...
 
I have the EVGA GTX 1070 Superclocked I'm installing tonight. Should I be worried it will take off like a rocket?

Or am I just better off watching the temps for a bit and see how it does?
 
I have the EVGA GTX 1070 Superclocked I'm installing tonight. Should I be worried it will take off like a rocket?

Or am I just better off watching the temps for a bit and see how it does?

Your best bet is to play games and ignore the silliness.
 
I bought a MSI Aero and I'm about to install. Looking at all the comparisons, I'm starting to doubt the buy with the blower design.

Is a blower design really that inferior to the standard cooling?
 
I bought a MSI Aero and I'm about to install. Looking at all the comparisons, I'm starting to doubt the buy with the blower design.

Is a blower design really that inferior to the standard cooling?

Blowers are the "standard cooling", they're generally best if you have a cramped case or poor airflow in your case.
 
I don't think I'll be buying from EVGA since the 970 also had cooling issues but it was nowhere near severe as this. Sucks because that just leaves me with MSI and Asus both which have terrible customer support.
 
I'm super super in love with my MSI 1070 Gaming X.

It's very quiet, very fast, and overclocks nicely even with that Micron memory. That memory issue (which I haven't experienced when I overclocked the card just for the heck of it) will be patched out via BIOS update anyway.
 
I don't think I'll be buying from EVGA since the 970 also had cooling issues but it was nowhere near severe as this. Sucks because that just leaves me with MSI and Asus both which have terrible customer support.
I've had zero issues with my 980 ti. EVGA will clean up the current mess with their 10 series cards. I'd give them a chance to make things right first before swearing them off for another brand with poor customer support. Imagine if this was happening with another manufacturer. I doubt the process would go as smoothly.

As soon as I read about the overheating issue with evga cards I knew it would end up not being much of an issue because of how good evga is with their support.
 
Ugh. This is the first I've heard of the EVGA 1070 heating issue.

I do not want to take apart/clean/mode my card to install the thermal pads. I choose my cards so I don't have to mess with any modding, overclocking, etc.

Pretty bummed I went with EVGA this time. My past 3 cards have been Asus, and I was waiting for theirs, but it ended up being a hair too long for my case.

Supposedly the BIOS handles the issue, but it sounds like it's not a true solution. Does it just rev up the fans more and make it louder in general? I also went with EVGA because the cooler was supposed to be quiet.

If you cross-RMA does the new one have the physical thermal pad fix, or just the BIOS updated? Also, any chance they'll just send you a refurb?
 
Bios update are trickling in.

The wording on that page is vague as far as RMAing for a replacement card goes. Is EVGA only changes the bios for the cards going forward, or will they all come with the thermal pads?
 
thats what im asking for, which one is the best in those aspects?
Again, this depends on what you value more and even where you live.
Gigabyte's Xtreme, Palit Gamerock and Gainward Phoenix are the most quite and cool while maintaining the highest frequency. MSI's Gaming X and Z aren't bad either.
Zotac AMP Extreme is one of the fastest (if not the fastest) but it's not as quiet.
Gigabyte, MSI and Zotac are rather expensive.
Then you have WC cards like Gigabyte's Waterforce and MSI's Sea Hawk which are probably the best overclockers but they cost a lot and have WC systems with their own quirks.
Strix is a good card but it's not a quiet one and it's not very OC friendly as it tends to run on rather high temperatures by default.
 
Bios update are trickling in.

The wording on that page is vague as far as RMAing for a replacement card goes. Is EVGA only changes the bios for the cards going forward, or will they all come with the thermal pads?

edit:

I stand corrected regarding the thermal pads. Apparently, tech support is saying as follows:


I just called to play devil's advocate. The rep said if you are still within 30 days of purchase..you can RMA and receive a new card with thermalmod and new bios pre-installed. Otherwise after 30 days...refurb....
 
So I read some reviews and comparisons and ended up with these 4 GTX 1070 variants:

Palit GameRock Premium Edition
Palit Super JetStream
Gainward Phoenix GLH
Gainward Phoenix Golden Sample

Thoughts?
 
So I read some reviews and comparisons and ended up with these 4 GTX 1070 variants:

Palit GameRock Premium Edition
Palit Super JetStream
Gainward Phoenix GLH
Gainward Phoenix Golden Sample

Thoughts?

Palit GameRock and Gainward GLH are more or less the same (gainward belongs to palit). So either take the gamerock or the glh both are huge and heavy but have good and silent cooling. They also seem to overclock well.
 
Palit GameRock and Gainward GLH are more or less the same (gainward belongs to palit). So either take the gamerock or the glh both are huge and heavy but have good and silent cooling. They also seem to overclock well.
Thanks! The Palit Gamerock PE is 510$ and the Gainward GLH is 536$ here in Switzerland.

I think I'm going to get the Gainward because is I like the design more.
 
FWIW, I've had a Palit 970 Jetstream and I loved it. Totally silent, no coil whine, overclocked fine. It did have a less quality feel in your hands than my MSI cards, i.e. it was too easy to bend the plastic surrounding the fans etc.
 
So I read some reviews and comparisons and ended up with these 4 GTX 1070 variants:

Palit GameRock Premium Edition
Palit Super JetStream
Gainward Phoenix GLH
Gainward Phoenix Golden Sample

Thoughts?

If the Super Jetstream and Gamerock PE prices makes any difference to you, I'll take the Super Jetstream.

I have the JetStream version, which is below Super Jetstream and I'm really satisfied with it.
They all have exactly the same cooling solution. Only difference is the plastic shroud. OC capabilites of 1070 is usually the same 2050-2100 range.

Keep in mind this is a 3 slot card. If you have or thinking about a mini-itx build someday, this could be a problem.

Other than that it's a great card.
 
The SuperJetstream is even cheaper here (485$) and it's in stock while the other 2 aren't.

I don't really get the difference between the Super JetStream and the Gamerock PE.
 
The SuperJetstream is even cheaper here (485$) and it's in stock while the other 2 aren't.

I don't really get the difference between the Super JetStream and the Gamerock PE.

Higher clock out of the box. Which you can negate by just doing manual OC. That's why i just bought the cheapest option of the card, the Jetstream.

Oh, and Gamerock has 8 phase + 2 PWM, Jetstream has 8 phase PWM. Don't know what it means though, maybe someone who is more knowledgeable can explain.
 
Higher clock out of the box. Which you can negate by just doing manual OC. That's why i just bought the cheapest option of the card, the Jetstream.

Oh, and Gamerock has 8 phase + 2 PWM, Jetstream has 8 phase PWM. Don't know what it means though, maybe someone who is more knowledgeable can explain.
So the cards with higher clock aren't preselected?
 
This micron memory issue is confusing the hell out of me. I think the BIOS update ASUS put out made it even worse. I had to dial back the memory overclock entirely and I have the GPU clock set to just under 1900. I guess that's better than nothing, but before the update, I seemed to have been able to have a little bit more of an overclock.

EDIT: Maybe my GPU OC was set too high. I put it back a little bit, and now it's letting me have a healthy memory clock of around 8800. Eh, confusing.
 
With the Skyrim SE coming out I decided I'd try my 1070 FTW at a modded vanilla Skyrim. I installed a similar mod setup to what I was using on my previous card (670 FTW) but did pick a different ENB since I couldn't remember what I had before. I did this because I knew the type of performance I was getting before, and Windows 8 and 10 don't let you use your full VRAM with DX9 games due to some nonsense bug that they refuse to fix. Thanks MS.

The game runs like ass. Easily worse than what my 670 ran it at. The ENB I had is more taxing for sure, but even with toggling it on and off in game it's only ~8 FPS loss. I can't even hit 60 FPS toggling the ENB off when doing that same with my old card would easily cap my FPS in nearly every situation. The thing dips down to 40-45 often with some nasty, random dips to the mid 30s, but no where near the known trouble spots in that game.

I even started an un-modded game and I still can't hit 60 FPS consistently. No mods and I'm struggling to hit 55.

I know the Skyrim engine is ass, but shouldn't my 1070 at least run at least equal to my old card?
 
Got myself an MSI 1070 Gaming Z as a quick fix to my old GFX card acting weird.

Card is lovely, cool and quiet. My ancient CPU is getting its ass handed to it, holded the gpu back. But at least I can play The Division at mostly 60 fps :D (yay!)
 
So yeah, with this EVGA mess I went ahead and set up a cross ship RMA for my 1070 FTW last week after finding out they're waiving putting a hold on credit cards for the full price of the video card. The way they're still downplaying the thermal padding still as "optional" and on top of there being alignment or thermal pad thickness issues for the VRAM I stopped just being okay applying the pads whenever they arrive, I just want a card with this shit taken care as it should've been in the first place.
 
So yeah, with this EVGA mess I went ahead and set up a cross ship RMA for my 1070 FTW last week after finding out they're waiving putting a hold on credit cards for the full price of the video card. The way they're still downplaying the thermal padding still as "optional" and on top of there being alignment or thermal pad thickness issues for the VRAM I stopped just being okay applying the pads whenever they arrive, I just want a card with this shit taken care as it should've been in the first place.

They've lost all credibility.

You don't install "optional" kit on all cards going forward. It's a complete mess - while they're providing fixes they're not actually owning up to all the issues (granted offering fixes is probably more than their competitors would do but it's still poor form).

I'm fine with doing it myself and it'll be fun for me but I empathize with people who don't want to do it themselves but are outside of the 30 day window to get a new replacement and / or don't want louder fans.
 
What a bugger. I swapped to an EVGA SC to get on the prime brand.
My think is not religiously used but it does sit inside a MiniITX case, one big fan on top.

Thing is, I ordered it from the US. Don't really want to mod it myself, but also not looking forward to a massive round trip to the states with it.
 
I don't know why everyone praises Nvidia for their drivers and their software.

Shadowplay isn't even working 90% of the time for me in BF1.

Overlay is working in the menu, but when you're ingame you need to be lucky to be able to open it. So, if youre lucky and it opens, you have to enable highlight recording again or it doesn't work. If you're even more lucky, it saves a highlight for you. And with a 50/50 chance you're getting a video like this:

jLaHpAr.jpg


Awesome. Really. I don't know what to do...

Win10 x64, fresh installed when the card came. Drivers are up to date.
 
I don't know why everyone praises Nvidia for their drivers and their software.

Nobody has praised their drivers in long time, they really need to get their shit in order, getting progressively worse with each version with good drivers once in a year.
And now with GF Experience/Shadowplay having that spyware telemetry, can't see anyone sane praising them about that either, at least it can be disabled with some tricks if you really need the program for something.
 
Bar81 said:
(granted offering fixes is probably more than their competitors would do but it's still poor form).

None of their competitors fucked up as bad as them. For +400$ cards , anyone would trip over themselves to offer fixes, really there's nothing to praise about this.
 
None of their competitors fucked up as bad as them. For +400$ cards , anyone would trip over themselves to offer fixes, really there's nothing to praise about this.

That wasn't praise but don't kid yourself - others would have done jack and ignored it since VRM temp is mostly a non-issue. But it should never have happened in the first place - no excuse for that.

What's bothered me the most is their lack of professionalism or communication and once the VRAM issue popped up in addition it became obvious that they've been asleep at the wheel for some time.

Probably the last EVGA card I buy but I'll reassess next time I'm in the market.
 
How much of a big issue is this for bog standard users? Is it bad for those who like to clock but not so bad for people running out of the box?
 
How much of a big issue is this for bog standard users? Is it bad for those who like to clock but not so bad for people running out of the box?

It's a problem for everyone.

You have VRAM and VRMs with no heatsinks (the former because the thermal pads are too short to make contact with the heatsink and the latter because EVGA just figured they would save some money by not redesigning the heatsink to cover them). You may or may not have issues ultimately depending upon how good your case airflow is and your luck of the draw in how well your silicon holds up, but it's some of the poorest cooling design/implementation on a high end card I've ever seen.
 
Originally bought an EVGA 1060 SC 6gb but I didnt open it and returned it for an EVGA SC 1070 8gb. Jumping up from an MSI 2gb 680 its amazing how great everything runs and this thing barely breaks a sweat at 1080p/max settings. Changed my mind to the 1070 though because I feel like within the next year I'll upgrade my monitor to 1440p and I'll be set instead of having to lower settings with the 1060.
 
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