Temperature & Clock Rates
Comparing the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Titanium 8G’s gaming frequencies to those of Nvidia’s Founders Edition card yields an interesting finding: the latter achieves a slightly higher GPU Boost clock rate in spite of significantly higher temperatures. Did we get a bad sample from MSI or a great one from Nvidia? A comparison using boards from Zotac, Gigabyte, Colorful, and Gainward suggests that we really hit the jackpot with our Founders Edition card, similar to previous launches.
Otherwise, the two boards act as you'd expect them to. Subjected to rising temperatures, Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1070 Ti FE drops from its initial 1911 MHz to alternating numbers just above the 1800 MHz mark, whereas MSI's GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Titanium settles right below the Founders Edition’s range.
The stress test results paint a similar picture. Running the MSI card in an open or closed case doesn’t really seem to make much of a difference.
Our voltage measurements shed some light on those clock rate results. The Founders Edition card hosts a gem of a GPU. Its slightly higher voltages allow it to hit more aggressive frequencies. What are the chances we'd see two stellar samples? In fact, our U.S. and German labs both scored real winners, so maybe someone who pre-ordered a card from geforce.com could chime in with their experience using the comments section.
More Data: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Ti FE Infrared Pictures
The GeForce GTX 1070 Ti FE exhausts all of its waste heat out the I/O bracket, so there's no point in taking measurements using an open test bench. Bottom line: Nvidia’s design is great for cooling, regardless of your case.
More Data: MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Titanium Infrared Pictures
MSI’s Twin Frozr VI thermal solution does its job well, and is almost inaudible to boot. Small changes to the GTX 1080 Gaming X’s cooler clearly have some noticeable effects. Most important, the memory hot-spot we complained about previously is gone. Some credit for this goes to Nvidia's use of GDDR5, rather than hotter GDDR5X.
The memory’s maximum temperature of 95° is never reached during our stress test, either. These are great temperatures to report.
More Data: Cool Down Process Infrared Pictures
These pictures illustrate the cold spots we get from MSI's and Nvidia's coolers. The GeForce GTX 1070 Ti FE cools down uniformly across its surface, whereas MSI's Titanium 8G board has a much cooler spot above its GPU package.
Thermal performance is lost due to the lack of contact between MSI's VRM sink and the main cooler.
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