ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition Graphics Card Review

The much awaited ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition is here, I know some of you have eyes set on the 1080 but the GTX 1070 is the one I’ve been waiting for – it costs much less than the 1080, basically GTX 980 Ti level performance at much reduced price and power draw.

The design of the Founders Edition unit aka reference cooler is much nicer compared to reference cards before, a design with many edges, much like a diamond.

A closer look from the fore section shows that there’s an opening towards the front, no power connectors placed there.

The blower fan cooler will intake air from the fore section and push it towards the back where the I/O panel is.

From the top, the GTX 1070 carries the signature GEFORCE GTX logo, it glows when powered on and its lighting behavior can be set in the GeForce Experience interface.

The GTX 1070 comes with SLI connector heads and as you can see there’s a nice looking backplate.

A backplate? Yes, unlike the reference cards of before the Founders Edition card now comes with a beautiful looking backplate.

Here’s another view of the backplate, you can see GeForce GTX 1070 written there.

Here’s the I/O panel, good to see that Nvidia still keep DVI users in mind.

Below is the GPU-Z screen capture.

Test Setup

Overclocking

I managed to clock an additional 250Mhz to the core but it wasn’t usable through all the benchmarks, and I ended up settling with 230Mhz which is still a good overclock.

As for the memory I managed to add 250Mhz to it, making it 9Ghz in total.

Benchmarks

Unigine Heaven 4.0

*NOTE : Details are set to maximum.

Metro Last Light

Shadow of Mordor

Settings : Set to ULTRA, V-sync off.

Bioshock Infinite

Settings are at
2 – UltraDX11_DDOF | 2 – Custom | 1 – 16:9 | 4 – FullHD / 4K

Grand Theft Auto V

Settings : Every option to the MAX setting available.

The Division

Settings : Set to ULTRA, V-sync OFF.

Performance Analysis : I do not have the reference GTX 980 Ti with me so they were not included in the results of some of these benchmarks. Now comparing it with the results I had from the GTX 980 Ti both reference and overclocked, it seems that the GTX 1070 is faster than the reference GTX 980 Ti on all tests but it’s not as fast as the overclocked GTX 980 Ti, however it is able to catch-up or even outpace the GTX 980 Ti once it’s overclocked.

What the GTX 1070 lacks in comparison to the is that the GTX 980 Ti has 2816 CUDA cores while the GTX 1070 has only 1920, and the GTX 980 Ti’s memory bandwidth is – 336.5 Gb/s while the GTX 1070 is at 256 Gb/s. With that, it’s not surprising that it can’t outpace the GTX 980 TI at 4K UHD resolution while in some tests it still falls behind an overclocked GTX 980 Ti despite itself being overclocked.

To sum up the GTX 1070’s performance – it’s as good as the GTX 980 Ti.

Temperature

Furmark Burn-in Test was used to stress the card. Fan settings are at Auto. Room set to ~25c.

The fan hovers at around 53% on AUTO settings where the noise level is quite audible, after all it’s a blower type fan.

Power Consumption

The stress was done with Furmark Burn-in Test. Power consumption reading was taken from the watt-meter, actual power draw by the entire system from the wall point. I’m using an Cooler Master V850 with around 90% efficiency and the estimated system power draw (CPU, not including GPU) during Furmark test is 107w.

Absolutely beautiful, based on my experience a non-reference GTX 980 Ti typically goes beyond 400W wall draw on Furmark test but the GTX 1070 here doesn’t even cross 300W, not even close.

With my calculation, it seems that unlike the GTX 980 Ti that consumes some over 250W power, the GTX 1070 under the same load just draws about half of it which is around 49%

The Verdict

The ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition (basically looks like any other FE card out in the market) is a beautiful card, nice cooling shroud design with backplate that makes it look even better. Overclocking headroom is good and performance gain is significant while still maintaining very low power draw. Based on my record the power draw is even better than a GTX 970!

The card retails at RM 2,399 – you get GTX 980 Ti-leve performance level, at the price of GTX 980, with the power draw of the GTX 970. 😀 It’s all so sweet!