NVIDIA is readying a new GeForce GTX 1070 refresh graphics card, according to well-placed sources. Positioned between the current GTX 1070 and the GTX 1080 11 Gbps in performance, the refreshed GTX 1070 could at least displace the current GTX 1070 from its price-point, if not replace it. NVIDIA could carve the new chip out of the latest stepping of the GP104 silicon, and give it more CUDA cores, likely 2,048 (on par with GTX 1070 Mobile), if not higher. It could also get faster memory, likely 9 Gbps GDDR5 or even 10 Gbps GDDR5X. Its core and GPU Boost clock speeds could even be dialed up a little.

NVIDIA's objective here appears to be convincingly outperforming AMD Radeon RX Vega 56, at a lower power-draw. There's a 20 percent performance gap between the current desktop GTX 1070 and GTX 1080, and the new GTX 1070 refresh could find a price-performance equation somewhere in the middle. As NVIDIA's product-stack currently stands, the GTX 1080, which was refreshed with faster 11 Gbps GDDR5X memory, has a wider performance gap with the GTX 1070, creating room for a GTX 1070 refresh SKU somewhere in the middle, which could perform within the 90th percentile of the original GTX 1080 with 10 Gbps memory. What NVIDIA could name the SKU is anybody's guess. Historically, NVIDIA has updated SKU specifications without changing the name. The GTX 1080 and GTX 1060 6 GB were refreshed with faster memory, by simply prominently mentioning the memory clock below the SKU branding, there's also the remote possibility of the GTX 1070 Ti branding to combat the "grandeur" of AMD's RX Vega branding. NVIDIA could have the new GeForce GTX 1070 refresh SKU out in time for Holiday.