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How We Tested GeForce GTX 1070 Ti
Nvidia’s latest and greatest will no doubt be found in high-end platforms. Some of these may include Broadwell-E-based systems. However, our U.S. lab is sticking with its MSI Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon motherboard, which was recently upgraded to host a Core i7-7700K CPU, for performance measurements. The new processor is complemented by G.Skill’s F4-3200C14Q-32GTZ memory kit. Intel’s Kaby Lake architecture remains one of the company’s most effective per clock cycle, and a stock 4.2 GHz frequency is higher than the models with more cores. Crucial’s MX200 SSD remains, as does the Corsair H110i cooler and be quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 850W power supply.
As far as competition goes, the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti is rivaled most closely by Radeon RX Vega 56. Of course, we imagine that gamers also want to know how 1070 Ti fares against the faster/pricier GeForce GTX 1080 and 1080 Ti, so we include them in our benchmark results. Similarly, we add GeForce GTX 1070 to bookend the Pascal architecture-based hardware. AMD’s Radeon RX Vega 64 is the other relevant entry in this class; it’s present and accounted for, too.
The 1070 Ti card used for our game testing is MSI’s GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Titanium 8G. Its performance should be representative of Nvidia’s Founders Edition board or any other partner card, since they all operate at similar frequencies.
Comparison Products
Leading up to today's review, we completely revamped the software side of our platform. Installing the Windows 10 Creators Update caused all sorts of problems with PresentMon, OCAT, and our own custom front-end, but we thought it important to get our operating systems current. As such, we used a combination of OCAT 1.1.0 and PMG 0.9.21 to collect data, along with a fresh build of our log file interpreter to get that information into Excel. All of the Nvidia cards were benchmarked using driver versions 388.00 and 388.09, while AMD's cards were tested with Crimson ReLive Edition 17.10.3.
Our conventional gaming selection now includes Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation, Battlefield 1, Destiny 2, Doom, Metro: Last Light Redux, Middle-earth: Shadow of War, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Tom Clancy’s The Division, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands, The Witcher 3, and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III.
The test methodology we use for the other games in our suite comes from PresentMon: Performance In DirectX, OpenGL, And Vulkan. In short, all of these games are evaluated using a combination of OCAT and our own in-house GUI for PresentMon, with logging via AIDA64. If you want to know more about our charts (particularly the unevenness index), we recommend reading that story.
Test Systems
We introduced our new test system and methodology in How We Test Graphics Cards. If you'd like more detail about our general approach, check that piece out.
In this case, only the CPU, RAM, motherboard, and cooling system are different.
| Test System and Configuration | |
|---|---|
| Hardware | Germany Intel Core i7-6900K @ 4.3 GHzMSI X99S XPower Gaming TitaniumCorsair Vengeance DDR3-32001x 1TB Toshiba OCZ RD400 (M.2, System)2x 960GB Toshiba OCZ TR150 (Storage, Images)be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11, 850W Power SupplyWindows 10 Pro (Creators Update)U.S.Intel Core i7-7700KMSI Z270 Gaming Pro CarbonG.Skill F4-3200C14Q-32GTZ1x 500GB Crucial MX200be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11, 850W Power SupplyWindows 10 Pro (Creators Update) |
| Cooling | GermanyAlphacool Eiszeit 2000 ChillerAlphacool Eisblock XPXThermal Grizzly Kryonaut (For Cooler Switch) |
| Monitor | Eizo EV3237-BK |
| PC Case | Lian Li PC-T70 with Extension Kit and Mods Configurations: Open Benchtable, Closed Case |
| Power Consumption Measurement | Contact-free DC Measurement at PCIe Slot (Using a Riser Card) Contact-free DC Measurement at External Auxiliary Power Supply Cable Direct Voltage Measurement at Power Supply 2x Rohde & Schwarz HMO 3054, 500MHz Digital Multi-Channel Oscilloscope with Storage Function4x Rohde & Schwarz HZO50 Current Probe (1mA - 30A, 100kHz, DC) 4x Rohde & Schwarz HZ355 (10:1 Probes, 500MHz) 1x Rohde & Schwarz HMC 8012 Digital Multimeter with Storage Function |
| Thermal Measurement | 1x Optris PI640 80Hz Infrared Camera + PI Connect Real-Time Infrared Monitoring and Recording |
| Acoustic Measurement | NTI Audio M2211 (with Calibration File, Low Cut at 50Hz) Steinberg UR12 (with Phantom Power for Microphones)Creative X7, Smaart v.7 Custom-Made Proprietary Measurement Chamber, 3.5 x 1.8 x 2.2m (L x D x H) Perpendicular to Center of Noise Source(s), Measurement Distance of 50cm Noise Level in dB(A) (Slow), Real-time Frequency Analyzer (RTA) Graphical Frequency Spectrum of Noise |
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