Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 insane benchmark scores revealed

[ufdisciple]

Necro? Mini-necro? Do I care? Is the 1070 a good card?
The answer to only one of these questions is "Yes". Read on to find out which one...


I got my GTX 1070 on Saturday. A colleague was in the market for a 1080 and Rebeltech just took stock of some EVGA Superclocked ACX 3.0 cards (shown as out of stock atm, I also paid R200 less than the price right now ) and the 1080 my colleague bought that I'm not talking about. The guy had to go to Jo'burg anyway and Rune was cool enough to allow him to collect on Saturday even though they aren't actually open over weekends (shout out to Rebeltech for excellent price and service once again). And then life happened and it was only possible for me to install this little beast on Sunday evening.

OK, so down to the juicy part: It is everything the online benchmarks and reviews promised. Let's just get that out of the way right now. (Go here to see a full review of my specific card, done by professionals not by a giggling idiot as I was when I unboxed and installed it)

My current setup:
i5 6500 CPU
16GB DDR4 ram
120GB SSD boot drive
3TB media drive
430w 80+ Bronze PSU
2x 23" LG 1020p displays (third one to arrive as soon as Fed-Ex grows a pair and delivers; FFS it's been in your hands since the 9th! It took you one [1] day to get it from Cape Town to Jo'burg, then took you five days to get it to "Orion North West". I live in the Freestate, FFS. Why North West? Remember, if it's cold, it's free. And the Freestate is very cold atm). Anyway.

Now, you're probably thinking "Triple screen surround on a 1070? Not going to max out any games on that." And you are right. But according to my calculations I'll be able to still play triple screen on higher settings than what I had (R9 270X). I've managed to max out every game at playable FPS* on two screens but it is a shit experience thanks to the bezels. You either get your character/gun behind the bezel, or you have to stretch it, making the guy look like he's constantly on his way to the local McDonalds. Depending on how you set it up. And, of course, some games just doesn't do multi screen very well (XCOM: Enemy Unknown, I'm looking at you). Tip for anybody looking at a multi screen setup: Look at bezels before anything else.
So why 3 screens in the first place? Actually for work, not play. But if I can play a bit as well I want a semi-decent card to pull those screens. Heaven forbid I need to, gasp, lower the resolution...

The other thing is the PSU. I was worried that 430W is just not enough, especially for a factory overclocked card. Turns out the EVGA in question has a 10W lower TDP than the R9 270X I had before. And the FE clocks in at 30W less! 30W equates to a decent NAS with two mechanical HDD, if you were wondering.

I'm not going to bother too much with benchmarks (check the link above if you're interested) but let me just mention GTA V. Everything set to max. MSAA? 8x sounds good. Oh, I can switch on FXAA and MSAA at the same time? Why not. Grass goes to Ultra? Shot, bru. (Didn't switch on the oversampling, though. That would just be too much. Like clowns at a clown's birthday.)
Bench at 1080p. Minimum doesn't drop below 58fps (VSYNC is on). OK, so we do it on two screens. Minimum doesn't go below 33fps, and only for a second or two.
So I'll have to dial back back for 3 screens, but such is life.

So: 1080 vs 1070 vs 1060 vs RX480? Obviously the 1080, duh. Oh, sorry, you're on a budget?
I haven't tested any of the other cards but my opinion of the 1070 is this:
A great card for 1440p or 144hz gaming and should be capable enough for multi screen setups (if dialled down a bit, I'll report back more detailed findings once my screen arrives). If you're looking for something that will cover maxed out 1080p gaming for the next 3, 4 or maybe even 5 years, I think this is the card for you. But who knows what the future holds?
If you have between 8K and 10k to spare, go for it.
If you have 13k or more to spare, just buy a damn 1080 and be smug.
If you have more than 20k to spare, buy a PS4 and 3 games.
If you just need to game FHD, check out the RX480 or 1060 and spend the difference buying my Steam Trading cards at the next sale. I need the money






* I grew up poor. Playable FPS for me is 40fps average and minimums above 30.

I think your assessment in the 1070 is pretty much spot on. It's overkill for 1080p 60FPS, but would be great for a higher refresh rate monitor at 1080p. But even at 1440p and 4K (which is mostly playable), it presents a better Rand per framerate than the GTX 1080, even with the 1080 having better overall performance.

 

[Mister 44]

As I promised a few weeks ago, I'm back here to brag... *cough* share some of my adventures with a triple screen setup and the GTX 1070.

Unfortunately I don't own any of the current AAA titles like Doom to test with but I have benched a few older titles with FRAPS as well as in-game where available. I've run FRAPS while running the in-game benchmarks (so they are benching the same thing on screen) and will give both numbers. Needless to say, these mostly don't differ by more than a few fps.

First a few words about NVidia surround and my current setup. I have 3 screens. All LG, all 23", all with a native resolution of 1920x1080 in a 3x1 setup. Not the exact same models, though.
This should give me a resolution of 5760x1080 but because of bezel correction, the actual resolution is 6000x1080. Once you have surround configured, Windows will no longer see 3 screens but only one with the chosen resolution. Getting surround to work is not difficult. The internet is full of people having problems but if you can read on screen instructions and in the case of trouble know how to Google, you should be fine.

Something that can be a little off-putting with multiple screens is the stretching that are most evident on the sides of the outer screens (mostly to do with field of view, I think) and then also the fact that straight lines seem to bend if you have the outer screens at an angle to the centre one (the game doesn't know about the angle, so it renders it as if the screens form a straight line). These issues will hopefully be a thing of the past when games start to incorporate NVidia's simultaneous multi-projection. I'm really holding thumbs that it gets widely included, but as these things go, I won't be holding my breath.

Right, on to the benchmarks (all fps rounded to the nearest frame).

First up, AdVenture Capitalist.
Terrible game for a triple screen setup. It just can't handle custom aspect ratios.
The fps are pretty strange as well.
Graphics settings has been set to "Fantastic".
FRAPS: Min 0, Max 63, Avg 57.
AdVenture Capitalist doesn't have a built in benchmark, so these numbers are from actual game play. Best to leave this one in a window.

Next, Tomb Raider (2013).
Tomb Raider looks pretty good over three screens. A little stretching but nothing terrible.
Graphics settings: Everything maxed with only SSAA dialed down to x2.
In-game benchmarks: Min 31 Max 52 Avg 41
FRAPS: Min 31 Max 53 Avg 41
Tomb Raider is the kind of game that makes this setup worth it.

Followed by GTA V.
GTA V handles the 3 screen setup superbly. Even better than Tomb Raider. There is one bug where the game sometimes "forgets" to run in fullscreen and then reverts to windowed mode after a benchmark but it's not a deal breaker. Almost no stretching at all in this title.
Graphics settings: You can either have ultra grass or anti-aliasing but not both. All other settings pushed to max.
I've benched with MSAA x2 + FXAA turned on and grass pushed back to Very High.
In-game: Not sure. GTA doesn't give a summary. But from what was shown on screen, FRAPS looks spot-on.
FRAPS: Min 26 Max 47 Avg 37
Worth noting that I didn't cheat with the above. I only ran FRAPS for the final benchmark (the one with the jet) because FRAPS registers 271fps when scenes load and that pushed my avg to above 80.

Lastly Batman Arkham Knight.
Arkham Knight plays pretty well over 3 screens. And let's face it, the words "Arkham Knight plays pretty well" aren't words that have been written down very often with regards to the PC version. Again some stretching, but not so much to be distracting.
Graphics settings: Everything maxed with motion blur turned off (it doesn't work well over 3 screens for this game) and the enhanced rain effects turned off because I don't like it.
In-game: Min 21 Max 55 Avg 44
FRAPS: Min 33 Max 57 Avg 44
Right at the start of the benchmark, there is a stutter that results in the minimum values. I've spoken to my colleague that owns the 1080 and he's seen it as well (his card registers a minimum of 26 for the in-game benchmark). I haven't seen this sort of stutter in actual game play. Yet.

To summarise, I'm pretty happy with the way things turned out. I was expecting poorer fps at these resolutions and settings, to be honest. GTA V has the lowest results here but it still runs smooth and stutter free.

It is worth noting that not all games play well with a surround setup. For example, MURDERED: SOUL SUSPECT (who gives a game a title in all-caps, honestly?) doesn't work. There is a piece of software called Flawless Widescreen that can patch a number of games to work on multiple screens and it does work for MURDERED but the stretching is so severe, I rather switched off the surround and just played it on one screen. Playing around with the FOV didn't sort it out either.

So, yeah. There you have it. A couple of very long posts in this thread but maybe somebody contemplating a multi screen setup powered by a GTX 1070 may find it useful someday.