The EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti FTW2 Review: iCX Brings the Lights and Sensors
by Nate Oh on January 31, 2018 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- EVGA
- GeForce
- NVIDIA
- GTX 1070 Ti
The Test
Returning to the topic of Spectre and Meltdown, there has been a flurry of security-related activity to address these exploits. The security fixes ultimately incur a performance penalty, though the penalty only measurably affects select cases, such as certain database and I/O-heavy workloads.
More relevant to us, is the workstation-level mitigations; in this case, Windows Updates and BIOS updates with microcode changes. And the various mitigations have run into a number of complications, such as random reboots and data loss on Intel processors, and freezing on AMD ones. And so there has been the emergency Windows patch days after Spectre and Meltdown were publicly disclosed, and just this week Microsoft released an emergency patch to undo an Intel microcode update that was responsible for the rebooting and potential data corruption issues. Now, the current industry guidance is to hold off on firmware updates until stable tested updates are available.
Incidentally, NVIDIA has also patched up their driverset to harden them against Spectre attacks. It was earlier misinterpreted that the GPUs themselves were vulnerable, but to reiterate quickly, GPUs do not engage in speculative execution, which is what these vulnerabilities apply to.
Suffice to say, we are looking into the effect of Spectre and Meltdown mitigations on our GPU benchmarks. For the time being however, including this review, benchmarks are being run without any Meltdown/Spectre mitigations enabled, allowing them to be comparable to our existing dataset.
For our review of the EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti FTW2, we have used NVIDIA's 388.71 driver. The 2017 benchmark suite remains identical to the one described in the GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition review. Like all our other GPU reviews, gaming results are average framerates and/or framerates at the 99th percentile.
As always, we try to use the best performing API for a particular graphics card.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-7820X @ 4.3GHz |
| Motherboard: | Gigabyte X299 AORUS Gaming 7 (BIOS version F7) |
| Power Supply: | Corsair AX860i |
| Hard Disk: | OCZ Toshiba RD400 (1TB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill TridentZ DDR4-3200 4 x 8GB (16-18-18-38) |
| Case: | NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition |
| Monitor: | LG 27UD68P-B |
| Video Cards: | AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 (Air Cooled) AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 AMD Radeon RX 580 AMD Radeon R9 Fury X NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti FTW2 iCX NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA Release 388.71 AMD Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition 17.12.2 |
| OS: | Windows 10 Pro (Creators Update) |
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Dr. Swag - Wednesday, January 31, 2018 - link
Fury x always was faster than a 980DnaAngel - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link
Heck my old R9 390 would match or outperform the 980 in a good amount of titles. Which was always comical, as the 390 was supposed to compete with the 970, which it did at launch with launch drivers, but after a few months of driver improvements, it was going toe to toe with not the 970, but the 980 lol.masouth - Wednesday, January 31, 2018 - link
Either I'm just missing your sarcasm or you are dredging up 2.5 year old GPU news regarding the Fury X being faster than a GPU released 9 months before it while simultaneously ignoring that the GTX 980ti which was released 2 weeks before the Fury X was faster than the Fury X?Sounds like another day in the world of GPUs. Anybody that thinks buying the top tier is going to stay there for much more than 6-12 months either caught the market at the absolute perfect time or is basically delusional.
masouth - Wednesday, January 31, 2018 - link
and yes I realize you are commenting on the charts but how data ends up on charts seems like old news as well.Makaveli - Wednesday, January 31, 2018 - link
So winning by 3-5 fps in a game is destroying now??nice troll bait.
CiccioB - Thursday, February 1, 2018 - link
You made my day... comparing the Fury X with the 980 to signa point... wait.. the new flagship Vega64 is faster than the 1050Ti!!!!!!!!!Yes, all 1050Ti owners are crying out for that result!
AMD fanboys can really become ridiculous
BurntMyBacon - Thursday, February 1, 2018 - link
I completely agree that the Fury X vs 980 is a bad comparison and I have no intention of defending what should not be defended.Regarding ridiculousness however, the 980 is a single SKU below the proper competition (980Ti) and still in the same high end classification. While not the case here, there have often in the past been price disparities between the top end SKUs from ATi and nVidia that warrant such a comparison.
1080Ti > 1080 > 1070Ti > 1070 > 1060 > 1050Ti
N/A > Vega64 > Vega56 > N/A > 580 > 570
On the other hand, your Vega64 vs 1050Ti comparison is pitting AMDs top GPU against a card 5 SKUs below nVidia's top GPU (4 SKUs below the proper competition) and classified lower mid range at best. Then you proceed to suggest these comparisons are somehow similar and label IGTrading as a "ridiculous" AMD fanboy. IGTrading's comparison was certainly the wrong comparison, but who's more deserving of the "ridiculous fanboy" label?
DnaAngel - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link
That analogy doesn't really work. Maybe in 4K, but only a small fraction of users are at 4K right now. The majority are in 1080/1440p and at those resolutions, the 1070Ti is not only trading blows, but sometimes outperforming not the Vega 56 it was meant to compete against, but the 800 dollar Vega 64.Jad77 - Wednesday, January 31, 2018 - link
...the Lights and Sensors and the weirdest graphics card cosmetics I've ever seen. Why didn't EVGA use the new 1080 ti shrouds? Whatever, I've gone without Pascal this long I'm waiting for Volta.Gunbuster - Wednesday, January 31, 2018 - link
I'm confused on that as well. It's got a half-hearted Tron sorta thing going on with the light diffusers, but then has the steampunk rivet looking screw things, then the dollar store electronics looking badges laid over and blocking two of the lights...