Sure, Nvidia’s $600 GeForce GTX 1080 is the most badass graphics card ever created, delivering both outrageous power efficiency and obliterating in-game performance. But ever since Nvidia hosted the GTX 10-series reveal two weeks back, the Internet’s been asking one question over and over and over again: “What about the GTX 1070?”
Teased almost in passing alongside the GTX 1080, Nvidia has only publicly said that the GTX 1070 will pack 8GB of GDDR5 RAM and Titan X-level performance for a juicy $380 ($450 for the Nvidia Founders Edition).
Until today.
Update: Nvidia’s GTX 1070 landing page is now live.
Earlier this morning, alleged specifications for the GTX 1070 began popping up around the web. We’ve confirmed with Nvidia’s Bryan Del Rizzo that the technical details are accurate, and will go live on the GTX 10-series website tomorrow. So here’s an early preview of the card’s high-level details, as first reported by TechPowerUp:
- 16nm “GP104” silicon, 7.2 billion transistors
- 1,920 CUDA cores, 15 out of 20 Streaming Multiprocessors enabled on the GP104 silicon
- 120 TMUs, 64 ROPs
- 256-bit GDDR5 memory, 8GB
- 1,600MHz max GPU boost core clock frequency Update: The GTX 1070 page list clock speeds at 1506MHz base, 1683MHz boost
- 6.75 TFLOP/s single-precision floating point performance
- 150W TDP, single 8-pin PCIe power connector
- 3x DisplayPort 1.4, 1x HDMI 2.0b
- 2-way SLI with SLI HB bridge support
So as expected, this is a cut-down version of the full-fat GP104 GPU found inside the GTX 1080.
With a quarter of the GP104 GPU’s Streaming Multiprocessors disabled in the GTX 1070, the mainstream variant of Pascal definitely won’t punch quite as high as the monstrous GTX 1080. But with the GTX 1080 offering roughly 25 to 30 percent higher in-game performance than the Titan X—as we covered in our GTX 1080 review—it’s very feasible that the GTX 1070 could indeed achieve Titan-level frame rates. That’ll depend on how much the clock speed reduction affects performance, however. While the GTX 1080 boosts up to 1733MHz and hits 1607MHz as its baseline, the GTX 1070 hits hits much lower targets.
It’s also worth noting again that the GTX 1070 packs 8GB of traditional GDDR5 memory, rather than the cutting-edge GDDR5X RAM found in the GTX 1080.
All in all, the GTX 1070 looks like it could very well be a worthy successor to the GTX 970, aka the most popular graphics card among Steam users. Expect to see more granular technical details as the GTX 1070’s June 10 release date draws closer.
Editor’s note: This article was initially published on 5/17/16, but was updated 5/18/16 when Nvidia’s landing page went live.