Asus GTX 1070 Strix Features DirectCU III Cooler, Too

By Derek Forrest
published

It's launch day for Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1070, and Founder’s Edition cards are already on the market (and selling out) from many of the top OEMs. Along with the initial reference offerings, companies such as MSI, Colorful and EVGA are announcing versions of the GPU with aftermarket cooling and higher clock speeds. Now, Asus joins the fray with two Strix-edition GTX 1070 graphics cards.

The Asus Strix GTX 1070 cards are almost identical to the company’s Strix GTX 1080 cards in appearance, with three Aura-LED fans, an angular design, and DirectCU Cooling III. Side by side, you wouldn’t be able tell the difference between the 1080 and the 1070 Stix-edition GPUs.

Swipe to scroll horizontally
ProductStrix-GTX1070-08G-GamingStrix-GTX1070-8G-Gaming
Base Clock- 1,632 MHz (Gaming Mode)- 1,657 MHz (OC Mode)1,506 MHz
Boost Clock- 1,835 MHz (Gaming Mode)- 1,860 MHz (OC Mode)1,683 MHz
CUDA Cores19201920
Memory Clock8 Gbps8 Gbps
Memory Interface256-bit256-bit
Outputs- HDMI 2.0 x2- DisplayPort 1.4 x2- DVI-D- HDMI 2.0 x2- DisplayPort 1.4 x2- DVI-D
Dimensions (L x W x H)11.73 x 5.28 x 1.57 inches11.73 x 5.28 x 1.57 inches
Price$449.99$429.99

The Asus Strix GeForce GTX 1070 has two models; one matches the Founder’s Edition clock speeds, and the other card is overclocked with two different modes of operation (it also costs more). Both Stix GTX 1070 cards offer plenty of output options, with two HDMI 2.0 ports, two DisplayPort 1.4 interfaces and a DVI-D port. 

As part of Asus’s Beyond VR Ready program, the GTX 1070 Strix cards tout performance exceeding the requirements for exceptional VR performance, and the dual HDMI outputs are a welcome feature for enthusiasts that had to reserve the one HDMI port on their previous-generation GPUs for a VR HMD.

You can order the Asus Strix GeForce GTX 1070 sometime next week, and the base model rings up for $429.99. The OC edition will cost $449.99.

Derek Forrest is an Associate Contributing Writer for Tom’s Hardware and Tom’s IT Pro. Follow Derek Forrest on Twitter. Follow us on Facebook, Google+, RSS, Twitter and YouTube.

Derek Forrest
Derek Forrest
Derek Forrest is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He writes hardware news and reviews gaming desktops and laptops.
19 Comments Comment from the forums
  • JackNaylorPE
    Wow ... that's a pretty nice premium over the FE ... and $100 more than the 9xx series .... curious as to why they'd start with such a shocking sticker price ....I don't see that lasting wrong unless they are finally trying to make peeps think the jump to the 1080 isn't so bad.
    Reply
  • jasonelmore
    Nvidia should have never did the founders edition. That just gave everyone else a reason to charge $100 more for their $20 coolers
    Reply
  • Aspiring techie
    Maybe they're more expensive because they're harder to produce. My guess is that they're not making more profit per card than the 9xx series simply because the process node is new and Pascal's die is very large, causing poor yields and thus a higher manufacturing cost.

    Right now is AMD's time to pounce. Their dies are smaller, so they can afford lower prices relative to Nvidia's. If the RX 480 is truly as powerful as the GTX 970, then buying two and going Crossfire is the way to go. They GTX 1070 is slightly more powerful than a Titan X, but two GTX 970s are even more powerful yet. Thus, for about $400, two RX 480s in Crossfire should equal or surpass the $450 1070 Founders (or $400 third-party cards). If AMD can produce and price cards like this the whole way up and down their line, they could be poised to capture over 50% of the market, which they desperately need in order to have a decent future.
    Reply
  • hotroderx
    I honestly think this is because of AMD here me out!... Right now AMD has said there not going to release anything to complete with the 1070/1080's for least a few months!. That means right now Nvidia cards are the only player on the field so they can charge a ridiculous premium and get it. Once AMD's cards launch as long as there competitive are semi competitive then Prices will drop! I also agree founders edition cards have kinda set a benchmark for pricing also which hasn't helped at the moment.
    Reply
  • turkey3_scratch
    18101888 said:
    Maybe they're more expensive because they're harder to produce. My guess is that they're not making more profit per card than the 9xx series simply because the process node is new and Pascal's die is very large, causing poor yields and thus a higher manufacturing cost.

    Or they just want to make more money. I'm sure their financial advisers said, "If you charge $100 more you'll get more money because about the same amount of people will still purchase it".
    Reply
  • JackNaylorPE
    18101816 said:
    Nvidia should have never did the founders edition. That just gave everyone else a reason to charge $100 more for their $20 coolers

    They'd be stoopid not to ... what are you gonna do, keep buying 970s ? It costs tons of money to release that 1st card ... in order to make back that R&D, development costs, marketing, overhead etc, you need to sell a certain amount of cards. At this point, nViida must have a whole team of peeps pushing wheelbarrows full of cash around.

    Why haven't they dropped the price, why haven't they lowered the launch price...

    1. Cause they don't have to ... no competition but themselves
    2. Cause they don't have to ... peeps are sitting on the newegg site hitting refresh every 30 seconds so they can be the 1st one on their block to get one.

    Let's also not forget the e-tailors role here..... these are the days of limited releases where certain folks get exclusives.... and as long as demand is higher than supply, they have no incentive to drop margins.

    Reply
  • Unolocogringo
    Last I looked AMD had about 22% market share. Getting back up to 50% is a long way to go.
    Reply
  • JackNaylorPE
    That was a long time ago. The 970 made it a lot worse ... 76 - 24 in Q4 2014


    Continue that slope for another 6 quarters.....
    Reply
  • king3pj
    Like I said in the EVGA announcement article it sucks that none of the custom cards seem to be coming in anywhere close to the MSRP of $380. Really, $430 for a card with no factory overclock?

    I'm thinking at this point I might just bump all the way up to the EVGA ACX 3.0 1080 for $620. I know I'm not really proving any point by purchasing an even more expensive card but the custom 1080 models feel more reasonably priced to me. They are significantly cheaper than the Founders Edition while everyone seems to be trying to get as close as possible to Founders Edition pricing on their 1070s. Will anyone offer a 1070 for less than $400?
    Reply
  • JackNaylorPE
    The EVGA SC series usually finishes last going up against the comparably priced cards from Gigabyte, Asus and MSI. Typically the SC is a plain reference PCB; I have seem them swap out the VRM from the reference design but when it includes the same number of phases, I really don't see the point. Meanwhile the other guys are using higher quality VRMs with more phases, high end chokes, adding heat sinks and thermal pads to the MOFSETS, VRM and other components to aid in cooling. With all these differences, it.s no wonder that the SC almost always fails to catch the other Big 4 offerings.

    When ya read the bottom third of pages 2-4 in the article below, it won't come as a surprise when ya get to the end and see how they rank when overclocked.

    http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2014/09/19/nvidia-geforce-gtx-970-review/14

    let's also remember the $329 MSRP of the 970 ... right after release. these crept up to $349 quickly enough and sometimes more... and then settled down after a while ... the ones in high demand did maintain a price premium for quite some time tho.
    Reply