Micro-Star International Company based in Taiwan provides high quality MSI brand graphics cards. In each version it offers, it brings a little extra compared to its competitors. This time we will test and give our opinion on the MSI Gaming GeForce GTX 1070 card which was first released on May 6, 2016 with an MSRP price of $379. This card is currently available on the web for the price of approximately $577 (price on Amazon).
Presentation of the MSI GTX 1070 GAMING graphics card
The MSI GTX 1070 GAMING graphics card comes in an aggressive gamer look in red and black colors. The frames are robust with an exceptional quality finish. The graphics card has 5 video outputs including 3 DisplayPort, 1 HDMI and 1 Dual-link DVI. The card measures 27.9 cm x 11.1 cm with a thickness occupying 2 slots. It includes 1920 shader processors or CUDA cores . The GPU of this GTX 1070 Gaming card in Gaming mode operates at 1.582 GHz. When overclocked, the 7.2 billion integrated transistors switch with a peak frequency of 1.797 GHz . 8GB GDDR5 memory running at 8.108GHz. The memory uses a 256-bit memory bus to pass data over a bandwidth of 256 Gb/s . The GPU was cast under a 16-nanometer etching process. The GTX 1070 card consumes a TDP power of 150 Watts. Therefore, the power supply is 500 Watts.
This card supports virtual reality with NVIDIA VRWorks. It also supports DirectX 12, OpenGL 4.5, OpenCl 1.2 and Vulkan 1.2 technologies. NVIDIA VRWorks technology helps reduce latency and provides compatibility with recent VR headsets. The GTX 1070 Gaming is excellent at 720p and streaming games with NVIDIA SHIELD . GTX series cards are known for speed and performance. They also integrate the latest technologies such as NVIDIA Gameworks . The latter allows for fluid games and high-quality graphics. This allows realistic animation. It includes, among others, all of Santa Clara's technologies, physX, Hairworks, etc. It is a precursor system to Ray Tracing offering already breathtaking light and shadow effects. The technologies supported by the card allow you to take a 360° screenshot. In terms of the lighting system, the LEDs can be controlled from the Gaming App . You can flash each LED, turn it on, off etc.
Nvidia has optimized the color compression system. This allows for a performance gain of almost 20% compared to the previous architecture (Maxwell). Asynchronous calculations are now better managed by this Pascal architecture card which dynamically allocates loads according to available resources. An additional buffer has been added to increasingly reduce processing latencies and avoid tearing problems. Everything is optimized by the brand new vertical synchronization process called Fast Sync.
In terms of the cooling system, MSI has implemented Torx 2.0 fans . The design has been redesigned to have more than 22% airflow compared to the previous generation. The blades are indeed more curved. This allows an acceleration of the air flow and better air circulation. The cooling system is more efficient and quiet at the same time. The fans are also equipped with 2 rows of bile. This provides a robust ventilation system that will not let you down during your intense gaming sessions.
MSI has introduced a system called Zero Frozr since 2008. It consists of reducing as much as possible the noise pollution produced by the cooling system. The fans stop rotating when the temperature does not exceed 60°C. They therefore generally do not work when the PC goes into standby mode, is running a fairly light game or when it is in office use. MSI has also made some improvements to have a more efficient cooling system: a rubber band to prevent bending, a cooling plate on the memory for more advanced overclocking and micro-grooves on the PWM radiator for cooling a bit more.
The MSI GTX 1070 Gaming card performs well in cryptocurrency mining. It manages to generate 832 Mh/s in Bitcoin (Sha256), 2.83 Gh/s in Decred, 28.69 Mh/s in Ethereum, 1.75 Gh/s in Siacoin, 0.65 kh/s in Zcash and 435.21 Sol/s in Zcash.
Benchmarking of the GTX 1070 graphics card
Tested on Fortnite, the GTX 1070 displays 425 images at 720p in one second (425 FPS). This card is not made to play in QHD/1440p, because the average frame obtained with this resolution is around 0.5.
Comparing the performance of the GTX 1070 with similar cards, the following cards show equivalent performance: Radeon R9 Fury , GeForce GTX 980 Ti , Titan X Pascal , Radeon R9 Nano , GeForce GTX 980 and Radeon R9 390X .
Analyzing the performance of the GTX 1070 card (G3D Mark score 13,330) on G3D Mark against different popular cards, we see that it outperforms the following cards: Radeon RX 580 (G3D Mark score 8,766 ), Radeon RX 470 (G3D Mark score 7,944), Radeon HD 7970 / R9 280X (G3D Mark score 5,257), Radeon HD 7950 / R9 280 (G3D Mark score 4,775), Radeon R9 270 / R7 370 (G3D Mark score 4,269). However, it is less efficient than the following cards: GeForce RTX 2060 (G3D Mark score 14,001), GeForce GTX 1080 (G3D Mark score 14,806), Radeon RX 5700 XT (G3D Mark score 16,739), GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER (G3D Mark score 18,092).
On 3DMark, the GTX 1070 card obtains a score of 9107. It is therefore -6.2% from the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary , -4.8% from the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT , + 2.7% of the AMD Radeon VII and 3.4% of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER .
MSI GeForce GTX 1070 card is appreciated for the fact that it is silent and supports a lot of features. The cooling system has been well thought out so as not to let the graphics card overheat. Which allows the card to be pushed into overclocking. Although the Ray Tracing system is not yet on the agenda but the supported features including NVIDIA GameWorks allow for breathtaking and quite realistic graphics. The MSI GeForce GTX 1070 card is ideal for 720p gaming, not QHD. This card is available online and in particular on Amazon for the price of approximately $577. As for the MSRP price, it is $379.
