# MSI GTX 1070 Gaming X 8 GB



## W1zzard (Jun 27, 2016)

MSI's GeForce GTX 1070 Gaming X is an overclocked custom-design variant of the GTX 1070 that is whisper quiet even during heavy gaming thanks to its dual-fan TwinFrozr thermal solution. We also overclocked this $439 card in our review, where it's even faster than the GeForce GTX 1080.

*Show full review*


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## Chaitanya (Jun 28, 2016)

Is that also overclocked like those 1080s?


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## W1zzard (Jun 28, 2016)

Chaitanya said:


> Is that also overclocked like those 1080s?


No, I've tested with the retail BIOS if that's what you're asking


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## proxuser (Jun 28, 2016)

Peak gaming power consumption is more than maximum. Maybe is an issue  

Thanks for review. Good card but Can't find it anywhere in stock


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## Nokiron (Jun 28, 2016)

MSI's newest cooler is really on point!


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## MxPhenom 216 (Jun 28, 2016)

The Gaming X is still $459. At newegg, the none X version is $439 which is the same thing as the Gaming X card, just without the clocks.


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## Legacy-ZA (Jun 28, 2016)

I have been waiting for this one from you W1zzard, thank you.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Jun 28, 2016)

Legacy-ZA said:


> I have been waiting for this one from you W1zzard, thank you.




Agreed. This is the card I want, but price is a bit steep for me, at least right now. maybe itll drop once Nvidia stops doing this low chip shipment BS that lets retailers jack prices up until AMD releases there shit.


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## HD64G (Jun 28, 2016)

@W1zzard : OC testing shows a 232MHz increase in max clocks, not 132MHz as you wrote.

And thanks for the review!


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## Moin Uddin (Jun 28, 2016)

Why dx12 game Ashes of the Singularity skipped in the review? I want to know how it perform in dx12 games rather than dx11 games. Again all games are optimized for nVidia. Can you please review some AMD favored games as well?


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## DarkOCean (Jun 28, 2016)

HD64G said:


> @W1zzard : OC testing shows a 232MHz increase in max clocks, not 132MHz as you wrote.
> 
> And thanks for the review!


it's from 1987mhz to 2101. look on the http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_1070_Gaming_X/28.html


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## Tatty_One (Jun 28, 2016)

Moin Uddin said:


> Why dx12 game Ashes of the Singularity skipped in the review? I want to know how it perform in dx12 games rather than dx11 games. Again all games are optimized for nVidia. Can you please review some AMD favored games as well?


Rise of the Tomb Raider is DX12?


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## headik (Jun 28, 2016)

MxPhenom 216 said:


> The Gaming X is still $459. At newegg, the none X version is $439 which is the same thing as the Gaming X card, just without the clocks.


Yep wrong price in review(it is 460USD) + WTH did he give that card 9.9 when it cost 40% more than GTX970 at launch?
So next generation 1170 will cost 600USD and again no one will give crap and again we will see 9.9?
This nonsense must end.If reviewers dont start criticise cost we are all doomed.


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## Moin Uddin (Jun 28, 2016)

Tatty_One said:


> Rise of the Tomb Raider is DX12?


So far I know Rise of Tomb Raider does not use full dx12 features like Ashes of Singularity. Also it's again nVidia favored games.
I would like to see benchmark for Hitman dx12 and Ashes of Singularity.


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## epuscasu (Jun 28, 2016)

If I were to buy a 1440p 144hz monitor, I reckon a 1070 might not be the card for me then?


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## Tatty_One (Jun 28, 2016)

Moin Uddin said:


> So far I know Rise of Tomb Raider does not use full dx12 features like Ashes of Singularity. Also it's again nVidia favored games.
> I would like to see benchmark for Hitman dx12 and Ashes of Singularity.


That's not my understanding, limitations in the DX12 version are accredited to a lack of mature drivers (this is a pretty new GPU to be fair), all I can suggest is to go look for other reviews to see if they cover other games you enjoy.

Edit:  Techradar include ashes.


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## notb (Jun 28, 2016)

Moin Uddin said:


> So far I know Rise of Tomb Raider does not use full dx12 features like Ashes of Singularity. Also it's again nVidia favored games.
> I would like to see benchmark for Hitman dx12 and Ashes of Singularity.



The whole point of the tests that TPU does is about comparing results of different cards from a decent time span. As a result you can check if upgrading is sensible or if an older card (but still available) is worth buying compared to newest options. That's why they use the same games for a while. 

As for the "Nvidia favored games": most titles that TPU uses are mainstream, popular games. Even if you're right and they are mostly optimized for Nvidia cards, this is not because of biased choice of TPU. It's a result of general market preferences (Nvidia's share of discrete GPUs is 80%).
Ashes of Singularity is a niche game compared to WoW, Fallout or Witcher.

So even if you really want to play Ashes of Singularity (and you're not an AMD fan at all ), I bet you'll buy more games in the future. Guess which brand of GPUs will they be optimized for... 

BTW: actually most people today use computers with Intel's GPU and game developers spend a lot of time and money to make games playable (with minimal usable details) on these integrated chips. So actually most games are "Intel favored" - at least at the lowest settings.


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## 64K (Jun 28, 2016)

headik said:


> Yep wrong price in review(it is 460USD) + WTH did he give that card 9.9 when it cost 40% more than GTX970 at launch?
> So next generation 1170 will cost 600USD and again no one will give crap and again we will see 9.9?
> This nonsense must end.If reviewers dont start criticise cost we are all doomed.



I understand where you're coming from with the prices going up but W1zzard did give it a thumbs down for price in the conclusion page. The way I understand the score is that it is mostly based on the overall performance of the card and it's left to the individual to decide for themselves if that performance is worth the price tag. We all have different views on what a cards performance is worth in terms of $$$.


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## FreedomEclipse (Jun 28, 2016)

Nokiron said:


> MSI's newest cooler is really on point!



I wouldnt call it a 'new' or 'newest' cooler. My 970s have the exact same cooler mounted and ive had them from the first day they were made available in the UK.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Jun 28, 2016)

FreedomEclipse said:


> I wouldnt call it a 'new' or 'newest' cooler. My 970s have the exact same cooler mounted and ive had them from the first day they were made available in the UK.



Thery arent the same....


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## Kissamies (Jun 28, 2016)

"DVI output no longer includes analog VGA signals"

This should be in pros instead of cons. Using VGA with a high-end gaming card isn't a thing anyone should do in 2016.


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## W1zzard (Jun 28, 2016)

proxuser said:


> Peak gaming power consumption is more than maximum. Maybe is an issue


It's not an issue. My power testing setup has a very short reaction time, faster than the power limit circuitry on the card. So during gaming power goes up, beyond power limit, my measurements pick that up, then boost reduces clocks and voltage to go below the power limit, and repeat. Obviously this costs a little bit performance, not a lot. Still, would be better if the power limit was higher.



MxPhenom 216 said:


> The Gaming X is still $459. At newegg, the none X version is $439 which is the same thing as the Gaming X card, just without the clocks.


You are right, I looked up the wrong price. The review has been updated. Score has been reduced to 9.8



HD64G said:


> @W1zzard : OC testing shows a 232MHz increase in max clocks, not 132MHz as you wrote.


I'm comparing max boost to max boost.



Moin Uddin said:


> Why dx12 game Ashes of the Singularity skipped in the review? I want to know how it perform in dx12 games rather than dx11 games. Again all games are optimized for nVidia. Can you please review some AMD favored games as well?


Because Ashes is not a popular game, it seems it's just used for benchmarking, not played by a lot of people. Also I don't think it's a typical DX12 game. 

Hitman DX12 was completely broken at the time I did the last rebench, that's why I used DX11 mode.


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## jabbadap (Jun 28, 2016)

Well for dx12 games Total War Warhammer would be good game to add in the future rebench. Not that I'm complaining current game list, W1zzard has hell lot of a work to do bench that much games/graphics cards combinations. And I agree benchmarking games which people plays is always better than not so popular games, technology demos or synthetic benchmarks.


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## W1zzard (Jun 28, 2016)

jabbadap said:


> Well for dx12 games Total War Warhammer would be good game to add in the future rebench. Not that I'm complaining current game list, W1zzard has hell lot of a work to do bench that much games/graphics cards combinations. And I agree benchmarking games which people plays is always better than not so popular games, technology demos or synthetic benchmarks.


Is the DX12 patch out yet? To me the game seems kinda abandoned .. no patches, no news, not even DLC


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## jabbadap (Jun 28, 2016)

W1zzard said:


> Is the DX12 patch out yet? To me the game seems kinda abandoned .. no patches, no news, not even DLC



That's actually good question, now that you mention it there's no dx12 on retail version yet. CA said they will release it shortly after the launch(release date was btw. 24th may 2016), but yeah they are still working on it.


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## HammerON (Jun 28, 2016)

Interesting card...
Thanks for the review


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## FreedomEclipse (Jun 28, 2016)

MxPhenom 216 said:


> Thery arent the same....



More pipes?


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## Nokiron (Jun 29, 2016)

FreedomEclipse said:


> I wouldnt call it a 'new' or 'newest' cooler. My 970s have the exact same cooler mounted and ive had them from the first day they were made available in the UK.


Not the same. Different heatpipe layout, better heatpipe placement, slightly larger aswell as better board cooling.


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## Krahl (Jun 29, 2016)

Thanks for the review W1zzard. It is indeed a very interesting card albeit it comes at a premium pricing

I'm quite a bit curious as to what brands you'll be reviewing this time around for the 1070/1080 cards? Will we be seeing the Gainward/Palit cards as I'm finding those brands increasingly solid and well-rounded in pricing/performance/vs the more well-known brands


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## P4-630 (Jun 29, 2016)

Well I own one! Very pleased with it! 
I'm using afterburner for a fan profile, at idle I let the fans spin at a quiet 1000rpm.
Temps idle 29 degrees with 23 degrees room temp.
Once I play GTA V, the temps stay just over 40s in Los Santos and can run up to 50s in Blaine County.
Pretty cool card!

I did not OC the card myself yet, for benchmarking I use MSI Gaming App (yeah it's crap I know) for the higher clocks temporary.


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## jihadjoe (Jul 1, 2016)

Holy cow! OC performance actually brings it up to par with a (stock) 1080.
Very impressed.


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## Caring1 (Jul 1, 2016)

jihadjoe said:


> Holy cow! OC performance actually brings it up to par with a (stock) 1080.
> Very impressed.


Not even close, if you see the top bar in the FireStrike picture, that is 980 SLI, which is roughly a stock 1080.


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## SpAwNtoHell (Jul 5, 2016)

Thank you w1zzard for a great review, but as i was so annoyed i could not get 1080 msi gaming x on stock i jumped on this one a while back, tho 5 min later after buying it was out of stock so was a impulse buy really. You just confirmed to me that i did not do a bad choice... is indeed silent and great performance... my one lives in a itx case(very tight i know...) and never went over 70 Celsius what i noticed tho in most of the games from this review, as i have half of them with Pascal i5 starts to be a bottleneck? i7 seems to push extra 10-15% over i5 at least with this card... and seems i have to upgrade from i5 6600k to i7 6700k...


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## P4-630 (Jul 8, 2016)

@W1zzard I see I got the same VBIOS as your review card, so it seems I got a review sample with the higher default clocks?






Mine:


 

Boost clock core OC mode to 2012MHz memory @2025MHz OC mode.


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## EarthDog (Jul 8, 2016)

Seems you have a modified version or something... I have the 'review sample'/OC BIOS and its base clocks are 1607/2027. I boost to 2012 and after like 64C drop to 1987 Mhz...


You BIOS version is different than mine as well.. I show 86.04.1E.00.40. It appears neither card you linked above has the OC BIOS on it.

See attachment for what the OC Bios is...


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## P4-630 (Jul 8, 2016)

EarthDog said:


> Seems you have a modified version or something... I have the 'review sample'/OC BIOS and its base clocks are 1607/2027. I boost to 2012 and after like 64C drop to 1987 Mhz...
> 
> 
> You BIOS version is different than mine as well.. I show 86.04.1E.00.40. It appears neither card you linked above has the OC BIOS on it.



The GPU-Z screenshot above mine is from @W1zzard his card from the review.


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## EarthDog (Jul 8, 2016)

Well aware of that...(dont care who's it is honestly though)!

My point still remains...the OC Bios clocks or OC Mode clocks are 1607/2027..

Boost Clock / Base Clock
1797 MHz / 1607 MHz (OC Mode)
https://us.msi.com/Graphics-card/GEFORCE-GTX-1070-GAMING-X-8G.html

Though oddly enough their site shows 2002 in OC Mode... perhaps I have the weird  BIOS, LOL!

But yeah, that is what mine defaults at. If I flash to normal BIOS and hit OC Mode, it goes to 2027 for me...


You do realize that every time you post the @UserName you are sending them notifications, right?


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## P4-630 (Jul 8, 2016)

EarthDog said:


> You do realize that every time you post the @UserName you are sending them notifications, right?



Well aware of that.....I did that on purpose because I asked W1z..

I also see different clocks on various sites that have tested this card.

Example:
"The memory comes in at 8108 MHz GDDR5 which yields 256 GB/s bandwidth. Base clock speed for the Pascal core comes in at a whopping 1582 MHz by default with a 1771 MHz boost clock…which we all know they end up boosting much higher. In the case of this card, we hit 1987 MHz out of the box (using the OC Mode)."

http://www.overclockers.com/msi-gtx-1070-gaming-x-8g-video-card-review/

Well mine does 2012MHz OC mode.


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## EarthDog (Jul 8, 2016)

Twice you sent notifications, LOL.

Anyway... not sure.. As I said, mine, which is reportedly OC Mode, is 1607/1797 boost/2027.


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## JTwrenn (Jul 20, 2016)

Any chance of getting the power listing when in silent gaming mode?  Wondering if it will pull the same as stock or more because of the different pwm.  We have a location with some heating problems and are looking for something extra efficient, but want the better cooling of these cards as well.


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## SpAwNtoHell (Jul 21, 2016)

JTwrenn said:


> Any chance of getting the power listing when in silent gaming mode?  Wondering if it will pull the same as stock or more because of the different pwm.  We have a location with some heating problems and are looking for something extra efficient, but want the better cooling of these cards as well.



Are you woried about psu or the cooling of the card? My personal experience with the card tho i jumped and bought it before this review is that my psu fan never comes on, system fan and cpu never went above 1000 rpm, system fan stays mostly off and only kicks in when 35 celsius is registered by motherbord. As for this card, i rarely see the fans come on and i have it in gaming mode. The average room temperature where i keep the itx unit is 35 celsius. The top temperature registered of the card in stres test was 71cesius but it hoovers from mid 50 celsius to low 60's in gaming.

Hope it helps, myself never dreamed i will get something to ron this cool eficient and with almost no noise as i can distinguish only a faded fan sound only at night if i pay atention.


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## JTwrenn (Jul 21, 2016)

SpAwNtoHell said:


> Are you woried about psu or the cooling of the card? My personal experience with the card tho i jumped and bought it before this review is that my psu fan never comes on, system fan and cpu never went above 1000 rpm, system fan stays mostly off and only kicks in when 35 celsius is registered by motherbord. As for this card, i rarely see the fans come on and i have it in gaming mode. The average room temperature where i keep the itx unit is 35 celsius. The top temperature registered of the card in stres test was 71cesius but it hoovers from mid 50 celsius to low 60's in gaming.
> 
> Hope it helps, myself never dreamed i will get something to ron this cool eficient and with almost no noise as i can distinguish only a faded fan sound only at night if i pay atention.




Worried about the heating of the room, so all about the wattage going into the card.  We are looking for the best card to keep that down and I am hoping to see the amount of wattage used at different settings.  I think the wattage in the review is all on the OC setting, but that is also tricky as it seems like different cards get different OC settings.  Would love to see the other 2 settings especially the lower power/silent mode.  Thanks for the reply though, any info on this is good info.


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## spradhan01 (Jul 28, 2016)

I was looking for a 1070 FTW review but couldn't find one anywhere. Would you recommend 1070 FTW or 1070 Gaming X?


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## EarthDog (Jul 29, 2016)

Same shhhhhhh different piles honestly. They are both aftermarket PCB, and have aftermarket cooling. So it comes down to looks and price honestly.



JTwrenn said:


> Worried about the heating of the room, so all about the wattage going into the card.  We are looking for the best card to keep that down and I am hoping to see the amount of wattage used at different settings.  I think the wattage in the review is all on the OC setting, but that is also tricky as it seems like different cards get different OC settings.  Would love to see the other 2 settings especially the lower power/silent mode.  Thanks for the reply though, any info on this is good info.


Unless you are in a closet, a few watts different won't matter bud.


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## JTwrenn (Jul 30, 2016)

EarthDog said:


> Same shhhhhhh different piles honestly. They are both aftermarket PCB, and have aftermarket cooling. So it comes down to looks and price honestly.
> 
> Unless you are in a closet, a few watts different won't matter bud.


2 systems under the same desk with low air flow....doesn't matter much to the room but the heat build up under the desk can suck.  Just curious really probably going for it anyway but seems like power numbers for the 3 modes would be a good thing to have.



EarthDog said:


> Same shhhhhhh different piles honestly. They are both aftermarket PCB, and have aftermarket cooling. So it comes down to looks and price honestly.
> 
> Unless you are in a closet, a few watts different won't matter bud.


Sorry realized i didn't add the real reason for wanting as long a number as possible...this is all about convincing my wife to let me buy them sooner.  The cards we have now are 2 gtx 970 msi g4s.  They run pretty hot but down clocking would mess with performance.  The 1070 has enough performance that going to silent mode wouldn't but me.  So I am hoping for as much firepower as possible before pushing the cards.  Also, I want to make sure I don't say "hey these will produce less heat" and turn out to be a liar.


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## EarthDog (Aug 1, 2016)

They may be around the same temperature... but its putting out a lot less heat. Tell it to her like this (the truth):

Which is hotter? A lighter with a yellow flame or a bonfire with a yellow flame? The answer...... same temp. But CLEARLY a bonfire has a lot more energy behind it. Same thing here. 300W @ 70C is a lot more difficult to cool than 150W at 70C. 

The difference is a couple of watts. The profiles MSI or other makers put on are such a small overclock and they don't touch voltage so... like I said, a few-several watts difference at most between default and OC profile.


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## JTwrenn (Aug 1, 2016)

EarthDog said:


> They may be around the same temperature... but its putting out a lot less heat. Tell it to her like this (the truth):
> 
> Which is hotter? A lighter with a yellow flame or a bonfire with a yellow flame? The answer...... same temp. But CLEARLY a bonfire has a lot more energy behind it. Same thing here. 300W @ 70C is a lot more difficult to cool than 150W at 70C.
> 
> The difference is a couple of watts. The profiles MSI or other makers put on are such a small overclock and they don't touch voltage so... like I said, a few-several watts difference at most between default and OC profile.


Uhm...totally fine with explaining this to her...would just like the numbers.  I get that you disagree and think it will be a small amount...I would like to know what that amount is.  If nobody deems to help that is fine, I will find it on my own.


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## Caring1 (Aug 1, 2016)

MSI GTX 1070 Gaming





MSI GTX 970 Gaming




Looks like we have a winner.
The 970 runs cooler, but the 1070 performs better.


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## EarthDog (Aug 1, 2016)

JTwrenn said:


> Uhm...totally fine with explaining this to her...would just like the numbers.  I get that you disagree and think it will be a small amount...I would like to know what that amount is.  If nobody deems to help that is fine, I will find it on my own.


I gave you the numbers in that post... The GTX 970 is a 150W card. Two in SLI is 300W. A single 1070 is a 150W card.


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## JTwrenn (Aug 1, 2016)

Caring1 said:


> MSI GTX 1070 Gaming
> 
> 
> 
> ...



GPU temps don't matter for this.  That is more cooling based.  Looking at amount of energy dumped into a room


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## JTwrenn (Aug 1, 2016)

EarthDog said:


> I gave you the numbers in that post... The GTX 970 is a 150W card. Two in SLI is 300W. A single 1070 is a 150W card.



Well.  Sort of.  The if you look at a this..





You can see what I mean.  The nvidia 1070 card pulls 30w less than a 1070 msi card.  But this is on OC mode I believe ( can't find the article that says the mode right now).  I am wondering if when on silent mode it is equal to or less than the 1070 stock card.  I am thinking it will be close, but because the card has a very different power system I am worried it won't be and instead will be 175w no matter what because of the voltages.  I think it will go down, but don't know how much.  The decision will then be based on the amount of power do I go stock or MSI.  I really want to go MSI and will probably do so anyway but 30w difference is not tiny so I want to make sure I know what I am deciding between.  Make sense?


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## EarthDog (Aug 2, 2016)

I do not have the FE card to compare. With how limited the voltage control is on Pascal, I find it difficult to believe there is that much (talking ~20% more) difference. But hey, his testing is his testing and I believe it. With how little the difference is between clocks, I am not sure that 30W will be made up from OC Mode to Silent mode. I don't think the modes touch the voltage in the first place... 

Cutting through your self imposed minutia, the end game here is a single 1070 is ~175W while your current solution is 300W.


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## Proppie (Sep 2, 2016)

Why do they show the 970's SLI as having 8Gb RAM? It was said in the test it's using Dx11 so why do they stack the VRAM?


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## P4-630 (Sep 2, 2016)

Proppie said:


> Why do they show the 970's SLI as having 8Gb RAM? It was said in the test it's using Dx11 so why do they stack the VRAM?



Good one, I just see it now, and a single GTX970 seems to perform better than GTX970 SLI in the graphs


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## W1zzard (Sep 2, 2016)

Proppie said:


> Why do they show the 970's SLI as having 8Gb RAM? It was said in the test it's using Dx11 so why do they stack the VRAM?


VRAM in multiGPU doesn't combine. In order to keep a uniform display format it is displayed as "8 GB".

We know that you know that it doesn't combine.


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## Cityman (Sep 27, 2016)

It looks a good card,and if I was building a new system,I'd probably go for the msi x or z variant of it.But running a 390x msi card which retails in the UK at about £300,compared to the msi x at £450/z at £525,I see no reason to buy it, given the 390x vs 1070 x benchmarks are neck and neck.Ok,it probably costs me £10 per annum more to run the amd 390x,but then,15 years is a long time to get your money back ;-)


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## P4-630 (Sep 27, 2016)

Cityman said:


> It looks a good card,and if I was building a new system,I'd probably go for the msi x or z variant of it.But running a 390x msi card which retails in the UK at about £300,compared to the msi x at £450/z at £525,I see no reason to buy it, given the 390x vs 1070 x benchmarks are neck and neck.Ok,it probably costs me £10 per annum more to run the amd 390x,but then,15 years is a long time to get your money back ;-)



I think a GTX1070 is far better in gaming then a 390x...
Why talk about 15 years? Lol...


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