NVIDIA 1070: High-level graphics at a medium pricing

2016 is the year when Virtual Reality has picked off, and every manufacturer has been going towards that, to make VR compatible hardware. But the most important component for any VR has been the GPU, and if you wanted VR last year, it was expensive. This year around, the jump has been extraordinary. The jump has been so huge, that 1070 is faster than last year’s undisputed king, Titan X for less than half the price.

This year Nvidia cards are powered by PASCAL architecture with a few tricks up its sleeve like Ansel and Multi Projection. The card is capable of pushing boundaries with support for 4K gaming and flawless VR.

Specifications

• 1920 CUDA Cores

• 8GB GDDR5 RAM

• 1506MHz Base Clock Speed

• 1683MHz Boost Clock Speed

• 7.2 Billion Transistors

1070 improves upon the 970 by Miles. The Nvidia 970 made use of Maxwell Architecture which used a 28nm Process which they’ve been sticking with for four long years. 1070 uses a brand new Pascal Architecture which makes use of a 16nm processor, which let them fit in more transistors. This results in faster performance and at the same time reducing the power consumption. 1070 consumes only about 150W of power and requires only one 8-Pin power connector to power it.

Hardware and Design

1070 which we reviewed was the Founder’s Edition, manufactured by Nvidia. During the initial launch, there was a lot of confusion about what the Founder’s Edition was. It is nothing but the reference model. The reference model has a blower fan and a metal backplate which looks stunning with sharp cuts. On the side, it has an SLI port and Nvidia officially supports two-way SLI. If you want to have more cards, you can unlock it from Nvidia’s website. On the other end for power, it has a single 8-Pin port.

For display connectivity, the Nvidia 1070 has one HDMI port, one DVI port and three Display ports which are more than enough. Although, cutting down on one display port for an extra HDMI port would’ve been easier for VR setups.

New Features

Concerning new features, the Nvidia 1070 brings in two new things to the table: Simultaneous Multi-Projection and Ansel. These are features which are available for both the 1070 and 1080.

Simultaneous Multi-Projection supports 16 different view points. What it means is that, if you have a multi-monitor setup for gaming, the game sees it as three separate flat displays. With simultaneous multi-projection, it adapts to the position of the display for an immersive experience.

The next feature is Ansel, which is impressive. It is an API which has to be used by developers in their games. With Ansel in, you can take three-dimensional screenshots, bump up their resolution and add filters. One of the games which supports Ansel right now is Witcher 3 and with Facebook supporting 3D photos now, you can share those breathtaking landscapes on Facebook! You can check out some of the Ansel Screenshots by Nvidia here.

Benchmarks:

For Benchmarks, we had the last year’s 980 and 980Ti. We ran some of the latest titles and measured the average FPS we got. Here are some of the games we benchmarked it with:

Tested with Ultra Settings

Tested with Ultra Settings

Tested with Max Settings

Tested with Max Settings

Tested with Max Settings

1070 is splendid if you have something specific in mind. The Nvidia 1070 could run most of the games on a 1440P display above 60FPS and games on a 2160P display above 30fps. For 1080P gaming, with some settings bumped down, we got to 120FPS gaming.

1070 is an excellent card if you’re looking to game on a 1440P display and we decided to test the Overclocking performance of that. Here is what we got:

In all the games we tried, we consistently got over 10FPS with overclocking. There’s not a lot of Overclocking going here, but it’s there if you need it.

Pricing and conclusion

The Nvidia 1070 Founder’s Edition is priced at about Rs. 40,000 and at this price, it is not cheap. But comparing it with 1080, it is cheaper by about Rs. 23,000 and serves a very specific purpose. Nvidia also recently launched 1060 which should be good enough for older titles, not set on ultra for 1080P display. But if you want anything more than that and you game on a 1440p screen, 1070 is just perfect. If you want more than that, 1080 is the one you should look out for.

1070 is a beast by itself. For comparisons, it is as fast as last year’s Titan X. This should be good enough or even an overkill for your Gaming and VR needs.