EVGA GTX 1070 Ti FTW Graphics Card Review

EVGA GTX 1070 Ti FTW With a reputation for having some of the fastest graphics cards in virtually any class. The GTX 1080 Ti FTW is still our fastest GPU reviewed to date! Obviously, we're super excited to see the EVGA 1070 Ti in the office today. Equipped with their high-performance cooler design, allowing for powerful overclocking and ultra silent performance, it should be pretty quick. Of course, other features like zero RPM fan mode, and EVGA Precision XOC and OC Scanner X, you should be able to squeeze every bit of performance from your GPU. What EVGA Had to Say "Experience EVGA’s ACX 3.0 Cooled 1070 Ti FTW and its impressive technologies. The graphics card boasts all that is expected of a top-end GPU such as G-Sync, Vulkan API and DirectX 12 and more. This card built for PC gaming and comes with a phenomenal count of thermal sensors as well as visual indicators for thermal detection, a clever dual fan system and various forms of protection. The GTX 1070 Ti FTW US is a VR-ready graphics card that comes with rapid clock speeds and an impressive memory count. The FTW Ultra Silent also features embedded White LEDs allowing you to get the best look for your card." - EVGA Features With a powerful cooler and one click overclocking, this seems to be the GPU for those who want big performance with minimal fuss. Add to that the competitive 3 year warranty, and it should be peace of mind for EVGA customers. Now, let's get it on the test bench! Real Base Clock: 1607+ MHz/Real Boost Clock: 1683+ MHz; Memory Detail: 8192MB GDDR5 With the click of one button, EVGA Precision XOC will detect, scan and apply your optimal overclock! Featuring an all-new 2.5 slot cooler and Ultra Silent Fan profile Completely adjustable RGB LED and DX12 OSD Support using EVGA Precision XOC 3 Year Warranty & EVGA's 24/7 Technical Support A Closer Look Our first impressions of this card are extremely positive, as it just looks fantastic! There are two large cooling fans in there, providing a massive amount of airflow. Of course, the large fan blades should operate great at low RPM too. The GPU can passively cool in low load scenarios too, and that's party thanks to the huge amount of metal hiding under the shroud. Further cooling performance comes from this stunning backplate. It looks great with the ventilation cutouts, and even the EVGA logo is ventilated. This means the card is going to be able to breathe a little better, passively cool better, and will be much more rigid to prevent droop. Furthermore, backplates look awesome, so there's that. The front side of the of the card looks good too, with the fan shroud wrapping around to show off some of that brushed metal finish. Here you will also find two 8-pin power connectors, which is more than enough power for those eager to overclock. The card features four heat pipes through the fin stack. One of them is thicker, which I'm guessing is the one directly linked to the GPU core. Conenctivity is decent too, with three Display ports, one HDMI, and a DVI-D. The only downside, is that it takes up more than two slots, most likely just for stability, rather than the actual size of the GPU. The mesh highlights on the front, as well as the logos on the card come with built-in white LED lighting. That's right, now RGB, but this is a much classier approach in my opinion. Testing & Methodology Please note that on 16/04/2017, the graphics cards featured in this review have are retested. The retesting was done to implement new changes in the way we review, the settings we use, the software required and more. We've also made some slight hardware changes to our test benches, and all games were updated, as has the OS, graphics drivers, etc. Of course, this would mean new results would not be a fair comparison to old. For your reference, the last review to feature our past results is found here. Here is the test system used for all graphics card reviews (pictured above) and game performance analysis: Graphics Card Test System Motherboard – Asus Rampage V Extreme X99 Processor – Intel Core i7 5960X at stock with Turbo enabled RAM – Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) 2666 MHz Graphics Card – Varies per review CPU Cooler – Noctua NH-D15S Power Supply – Be Quiet Power Zone 1000W Main Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis – Lian Li T80 Open Air Test Bench Operating System – Windows 10 64-bit Additional Hardware "Killawatt” style electricity usage meter wall plug Precision Gold N05CC Decibel meter Games Throughout the testing procedure, we always use demanding presets which stress graphics cards to reasonable limits. However, in the interest of fairness, any technology which favours either AMD or NVIDIA is disabled. More specifically, this refers to PhysX, Hairworks and similar technologies. Additionally, we also disable all forms of AA, including FXAA, to gauge performance levels which aren't impacted by sophisticated AA. Theoretically, we could have employed FXAA because it only has a minor impact on the frame-rate, but many users strongly dislike the hazy image this causes. V-Sync is always disabled in our testing, graphics card power usage set to optimised or balance, and the system power mode set to High Performance. Some benchmarks may feature more cards, this is due to some tests being older or newer than others, and being used in other game specific feature tests we have conducted, so you'll find all relevant cards included in each chart as we add or remove new and old tests. Selecting strenuous presets especially at higher resolutions can cause hitching and other performance problems on graphics cards with lower amounts of video memory. For example, Rise of the Tomb Raider's Very High textures requires 4GB of RAM to maintain a smooth frame-rate. In theory, we could run the benchmarks at the High setting, but this defeats the purpose of high-end graphics cards which are designed to cope with the absolute best graphics on the market. Furthermore, the notion of enthusiast cards sporting less than 4GB memory has become less of an issue. Of course, whenever we're tackling more affordable GPUs, the settings will be altered accordingly and detailed for clarity. Identical settings are used for all resolutions, 1080, 1440, 2160, and 1440 Ultrawide unless otherwise stated. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Graphics Settings For this game, we use the Very High preset, with some small changes to increase the Texture Filtering, turn off the AA, and all V-Sync settings. Preset: Custom Fullscreen: On Exclusive Fullscreen: Off DirectX 12: On VSync: Off Anti-aliasing: Off Texture Quality: Very High Texture Filtering: 16x Anisotropic Shadow Quality: Very High Sun Soft Shadows: High Depth of Field: Very High Level of Detail: Very High Dynamic Foliage: High Ambient Occlusion: On Specular Reflection Quality: Normal Vignette Blur: On Motion Blur: On Bloom: On Tesselations: On Screen Space Reflections: On Lens Flares: On Screen Effects: On Film Grain: On Rise of the Tomb Raider Graphics Settings Preset: Custom Fullscreen: On Exclusive Fullscreen: Off DirectX 12: On MSAA: Off VSync: Off Texture Quality: Very High Texture Filtering: 16x Anisotropic Shadow Quality: Very High Ambient Occlusion: Very High Contact Hardening Shadows: On Parallax Occlusion Mapping: High Depth of Field: Very High Level of Detail: Very High Volumetric Lighting: On Screenspace Reflections: On Temporal Anti-Aliasing: Disabled Motion Blur: On Sharpen: On Bloom: On Lens Flares: On Cloth Physics: On Subsurface Scattering: On Chromatic Aberration: On Tesselations: On Far Cry Primal Graphics Settings Graphics Quality: Custom HD Textures: On Textures: Very High Shadow: Ultra Post FX: High Geometry: Ultra Terrain: Very High Water: Very High Environment: High Anti-Aliasing: Off Volumetric Fog: Very High Motion Blur: On Ghost Recon: Wildlands Graphics Settings Preset: Custom Antialiasing: Off Ambient Occlusion: SSBC Draw Distance: Very High Level of Detail: Ultra Texture Quality: Ultra Anisotropic Filtering: 16 Shadow Quality: Ultra Terrain Quality: Ultra Vegetation Quality: Ultra Turf Effects: Off Motion Blur: On Iron Sights DOF: On High-Quality DOF: On Bloom: On God Raws: Enhanced Subsurface Scattering: On Lens Flare: On Long-Range Shadows: Ultra Software 3DMark Firestrike 3DMark Time Spy Unique Superposition Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Rise of the Tomb Raider Far Cry Primal Ghost Recon: Wildlands CPU-ID HWMonitor TechPowerUp GPU-Z Noise Everyone has a reasonable noise level preference when it comes to comes to components on a computer. Some can handle all fans at 100% load to keep temperatures down; some want an entirely silent computer. To accurately gauge the noise output of a graphics card, we position a Precision Gold N05CC Decibel meter from one meter above our open-air test bench and take an average reading at idle and load. Power Consumption With electricity becoming increasingly expensive across most parts of the world the need for computer components to become energy efficient has never been more relevant. Graphics cards are often the most power-hungry components of a desktop system so having a capable graphics card is crucial to keeping power bills under control. Power is tied to heat, so lower power consumption means a graphics card is likely to run slightly cooler and put out less heat into your system, meaning your other components will run cooler with improved longevity. AMD and NVIDIA have both made power consumption an integral part of the way graphics cards dynamically overclock, so the need for graphics card vendors to use efficient VRM and PCB designs is becoming essential to maximise performance. We take power readings during idle state with no background applications running. Then again at 25%, 50%, and 99% completion of the Unigine Superposition benchmark, using the average as the final published result. Temperatures The cooling solution which graphics card vendors choose to implement is one of the main differences that consumers have to contend with when selecting a graphics cards. Apart from their acoustic properties, the thermal properties of graphics card coolers are critical. Lower temperatures are always better, and with AMD and NVIDIA opting to use dynamic overclocking algorithms that take temperature into account, it is important that graphics card vendors use high-performance cooling solutions to maximise performance. The era of graphics cards reaching critical temperatures are now in the past, but the importance of low temperatures remains. Lower temperatures mean better stability, longer component longevity, and lower fan speeds. We take temperature readings after 10 minutes of desktop idle with no background programs running, then take the recorded maximum delivered from Unigine Superposition after a 4K optimised run, confirming the numbers are accurate with HWMonitor. Ambient temperature is always kept +/- 1c from 21c. 3DMark This is a 1070 Ti, so obviously it's not going to take down the 1080 Ti at the top spot, which is also an EVGA card. Pretty much every 1070 Ti comes with the same clocks out of the box, so it's no shock that the EVGA card is keeping pace with the rest of them. The only one with a bigger cooler is the Zotac, so the EVGA card is right on the money with 19655 points and it keeps a similar position on the charts at 1440p and 4K. For the DX 12 benchmark, it keeps the pace too, scoring strong at 7043 points. Unigine Superposition Unigine is a great benchmark for pushing GPU performance, and scored 4035 points, just behind the Zotac, but beating out three other 1070 Ti's in the process. Pushing up to 4K, it's beat the Zotac, and is sitting just behind the ASUS STRIX. Overall, it's easily competitive with other flagship 1070 Ti cards. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided At 1080p, the EVGA card beasts out the rest of the 1070 Ti cards, scoring a strong 76 FPS. It managed a very respectable 49 FPS at 1440P, and 25.8 FPS at 4K, which is good given we've got the graphics settings maxed out. Rise of the Tomb Raider Our second DirectX 12 benchmark delivered competitive results too, with 144.4 FPS at 1080p, 101.3 at 1440P, and 53.7 FPS at 4K. Not the fastest, nor the slowest 1070 Ti we've tested. Far Cry Primal Now it's time to ditch DX12 and move onto Far Cry Primal. Again, we see strong results from the 1070 Ti, with it breathing down the neck of the GTX 1080 and the EVGA card scoring pretty high for this chipset. Ghost Recon: Wildlands As our most demanding benchmark, Ghost Recon Wildlands is a great test for any GPU, even if it does tend to favour Nvidia hardware a bit. The EVGA card topped the 1070 Ti's at 1080P, and continued to push some strong figures as we increased the resolution. Acoustic, Thermal and Power Testing Acoustic Performance With the card at idle, the fans stop completely, and the card is silent. What's great is that it'll continue to be silent until it hits 60c! Even when you do put some heat on it, those huge fans are whisper quiet, with the card topping out at just 42 dBa. Thermal Performance Even with the card cooling passively, it idles under 30c, which is superb, and speaks volumes for that heat sink design. The fans make light work of the heat under load too, peaking at just 63c and giving you plenty of overclocking headroom to play around with. Power Usage It reasonably efficient too, using a little less than the Palit card, and peaking at just 288W. Final Thoughts Price I honestly have no idea. MSRP means nothing at the time of writing with some retailers being out of stock, others jacking up the prices due to the crypto mining. Please check with your local retailers for accurate pricing information and be vigulant, and shop around for the best deal you can. Overview The Nvidia 1070 Ti was created to do one thing, provide some more head-to-head competition for the AMD Vega 64. Of course, knock for knock those two cards are pretty competitive. With the added bonus that this card is pretty much all the performance, most gamers need, without costing as much as the GTX 1080 or the very expensive 1080 Ti. Performance EVGA knows how to make a rock solid and great performing gaming card, and this one is no exception. It's easily competitive with every other GTX 1070 Ti we've ever tested. Of course, with that massive cooler, two powerful fans, and lots of robust overclocking features, it's got more than enough grunt to meet the demands of 1440P gaming, or high-refresh-rate gaming. Those wanting to step up to 4K will either need to move up to a faster card or drop those graphics settings. Build Quality This is one of the best built cards on the market. From the chunky heat sink design, through to the ventilated and expertly crafted backplate, to the metal shroud. Everything is neat and tidy and looks and feels like a premium quality product. Given the card runs as cool, quiet, and efficient as it does, it speaks volumes for how well it was put together. Should I Buy One? I really can't find a fault with this card, and if you're looking for a 1070 Ti, it's more than worthy of going on your shopping list. The main issue now is price, as the market is a mess. If you can find a good deal from a retailer that doesn't leave you feeling robbed, I say go for it! Pros Fantastic 1080p/1440p gaming performance Run cool and quiet even at full load Zero RPM fan mode Excellent backplate design White LED lighting Stylish shroud design Exceptional build quality Cons None