Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 1070 Graphics Card Review

John Williamson / 8 years ago

Final Thoughts

Price

At the time of review, the Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 1070 can be acquired from Ballicom International for a total of £399.74 . When analysing value, it’s difficult to come to a conclusion as it greatly depends on an individual’s personal circumstances. Despite this, comparing the product to other GTX 1070s seems the best course of action, especially since there’s nothing within AMD’s line-up which provides similar performance. According to my research, the graphics card is competitively priced and cheaper than some of the more premium solutions on the market like the MSI Gaming X GTX 1070.

On the other hand, it’s possible to make a decent saving by selecting the Palit JetStream GTX 1070 which currently retails for £359.99 including delivery. Although this isn’t a fair comparison as the Gigabyte model sports higher factory overclocks and should have additional overclocking headroom due to GPU Gauntlet. Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with the product’s price point and think it’s a great option for those looking for a new, reliable GPU with exceptional performance.

Overview

The Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 1070 sports an elegant, neutral design and it’s always welcome to see a colour scheme which deviates from the widely adopted red and black theme. Gigabyte’s decision to infuse a matte black shroud and orange accents was a masterstroke and you shouldn’t encounter any issues matching the product with a huge range of components. Unlike the Palit GameRock Premium GTX 1070, the graphics card’s appearance isn’t going to be offputting for some users and has enough unique features to stand out from the competition.

Of course, there is additional customization in the form of RGB lighting and Gigabyte’s XTreme Gaming Engine utility allows you to cycle between numerous effects or select your favourite colour. Interestingly, the lighting is fairly subtle because it revolves around a small Gigabyte logo and fan stop indicator. Honestly, I prefer this because it corresponds with the graphics card’s relatively compact frame.

As expected, the Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 1070 utilises premium components including a 6+2 power delivery, 2oz copper PCB, tier 1 memory, lower temperature RDS MOSFETs and premium capacitors. These combine to enhance reliability and ensure the voltage remains extremely stable throughout demanding workloads. Another wonderful feature is the PCI-E smart power LED indicator positioned just above the connector which flashes whenever the power loads are abnormal. This could be useful if you encounter system problems and the power supply is the root cause.

Gigabyte’s Windforce 3X cooling solution revolves around 2 copper composite heat pipes and dual aluminium heat sinks with a dense fin array. Not only that, the fans have a unique blade design which aids airflow through the 3D stripe curve. Throughout the testing process, the cooling hardware performed admirably and resulted in excellent temperatures. On the other hand, the fans have a tendency to ramp up beyond 2100RPM and this really isn’t necessary. There’s enough headroom to dial back the fan curve and find a better noise to performance ratio. I experienced similar problems on the Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 1080 and hope a new BIOS version will tone down the fan noise. If this doesn’t come to fruition, then you can create a custom fan curve and optimise the noise levels to your own preferences.

In terms of performance, the graphics card is sublime and upholds a very consistent frame-rate even when using the most strenuous presets. The average frame-rate begins to falter though alongside a 4K display, but this is to be expected and you can still achieve good results with reduced settings. The GTX 1070 isn’t really designed for 4K gaming and it’s suitable for configurations ranging from 1920×1080 to 3440×1440. Rather impressively, the graphics card wasn’t miles behind highly regarded GTX 1080 cards and managed to defeat both the Palit GameRock Premium GTX 1070 and ASUS STRIX GAMING GTX 1070 OC in the majority of cases. This is a wonderful showing and exceeded my expectations. To be clear, the latest driver might have aided performance slightly but it would have taken at least a week to re-test every rival product. Honestly, I doubt the latest driver made a huge impact and deploying this version shouldn’t detract from the GPU’s extraordinary results.

Despite having a fairly decent factory overclock, it’s possible to achieve good gains with minimal effort. During the review, I managed to increase the boost clock to 1935MHz which led to an average reading of 2063MHz throughout the Valley benchmark. On another note, the memory overclock remained stable with a 664MHz improvement. I would have liked the memory to push further and hover between 700MHz-800MHz but it’s not a huge issue and 664MHz is still a solid overclock. Once overclocked, the graphics card enjoyed a huge boost in Doom and also gained a few frames when using the DirectX 11 render.

Pros

Aesthetically pleasing design
Attractive yet subtle RGB lighting
Competitive price
Excellent temperatures
Good overclocking headroom
Low power consumption
Superb performance
Three-year warranty with UK RMA base

Cons

Noisy under load

“The Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 1070 provides a superb gaming experience without breaking the bank. While there might be a few GTX 1070 models available for a cheaper price, they usually have slightly modified stock clocks and cannot contend out-of-the-box with Gigabyte’s impressive factory boost.”

Editors-Choice