The MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Gaming Z is the big brother of the GTX 1070 Gaming X, featuring a higher GPU overclock and a memory overclock out of the box. The backplate has also been pimped, featuring an RGB LED-illuminated MSI logo. The rest is unchanged, which means the winning combination of a custom PCB design, heatsink, and fans hasn't been touched. With a base clock of 1633 MHz, the Gaming Z is one of the higher-clocked GTX 1070 cards around as only a few custom designs with clocks of 1657 MHz or 1670 MHz are faster. This large overclock provides a 5% performance advantage when averaged over our test suite. MSI's included memory overclock helps too, even though I wish it were bigger. Compared to the GTX 1080, the Gaming Z is around 15% slower, and the next-fastest AMD card is the Fury X, which is 15% behind.

MSI's famous TwinFrozr VI thermal solution does an excellent job at keeping the card cool, running only 71°C under load, which is the lowest temperature we've seen from any GTX 1070 so far. Also, the fans are whisper quiet with only 29 dBA in heavy gaming; in idle, the fans stop completely for the perfect noise-free experience during desktop work, Internet browsing, and even light gaming. These results are identical to the Gaming X, which isn't surprising because both cards use the same PCB and same cooler with what seems to be a matching fan profile. MSI's glowy logo on the backplate looks great, even when unlit, and can be adjusted to your case's color theme thanks to full RGB functionality.

Just like on the reference design, power efficiency is amazing, with huge improvements over the Maxwell architecture that is already highly efficient in the first place. However, it looks as though MSI traded some efficiency for more performance, which isn't unreasonable. Compared to the reference design, we see about 30 W more power draw in gaming, which translates into around a 15% loss in performance-per-watt. Even though this brings power consumption above GTX 1080 reference levels, I say no big deal as Pascal is so efficient the power is well spent, and a power draw of around 200 W is still extremely low for this performance class - the card is nearly silent due to its excellent thermal solution and well-crafted fan profile anyway. The only thing MSI could have increased a bit more is the board-power limit, which is set to 180 watts and is lower than some peaks we saw during gaming (measured faster than the power limiter can kick in). This means that a little bit of performance is lost as the ideal power limit would have in my opinion been around 200 W.

Unlike the reference design, which only uses a single 8-pin power connector for the sake of convenience, the MSI GTX 1070 Gaming Z requires the 8-pin and another 6-pin connector, which seems a bit too optimistic given the board's power limit, our power consumption testing, and the overclocking potential we've seen. I'm sure a single 8-pin, which is specced at up to 225 W (not a hard limit), would have been sufficient for everything people will do with the card. On the other hand, I'm sure there are a significant number of customers who would have avoided this card had it not had the "more powerful" power configuration.

You can find the MSI GTX 1070 Gaming Z online for $460, which is $10 more than the GTX 1070 Gaming X - a reasonable price increase if you don't plan on overclocking your card to instead get higher out-of-the-box overclocks that are guaranteed to be stable. If you want RGB lighting, the Gaming Z is also an excellent choice. For everyone else, well, I'm not completely sure about whether you get much in return for those 10 bucks, maybe slightly better resale value. Overclocking potential should be similar, with luck of the draw playing the bigger role than any cherry picking that may or may not have been done during manufacturing. Also, I find the price of $460 a bit high in the context of the GTX 1070, which has the cheapest cards starting at $400. The Gaming Z is essentially 15% more expensive for 5% better performance than stock, and those cards are overclocked too and also come with decent thermal solutions, which of course aren't as good as the one for the Gaming X and Gaming Z, but probably aren't that far behind either. If you have the money, you can't go wrong with either the Gaming X or Gaming Z - they both are incredible graphics cards.