With Pascal GP104 cards out now, AIB partners have been rushing to show off their custom graphics cards. Gigabyte has played it cool so far with the GTX 1080, announcing only the G1 Gaming so far. For their GTX 1070 lineup, it looks like more of the same with the GTX 1070 G1 Gaming being the only custom card unveiled so far.
Like the GTX 1080 G1 Gaming, the GTX 1070 G1 Gaming also features the WINDFORCE 3X cooler. The design has been updated since the GCN and Maxwell days with a new cooler shroud. Interestingly, the cooler only features 2 copper heatpipes which is quite low. This is likely due to their large diameter, special composite nature and the small size of GP104. The card also features the new RGB Spectrum LED lighting for extra customizability as well as backplate.
Unfortunately, the card only features a single 8pin PCIe power connector which may limit overclocks. Gigabyte hasn’t revealed the factory overclock speeds yet but they’ll likely be within the 100mhz range if the GTX 1080 G1 Gaming is any indication. Otherwise, the card sports the standard complement of 8GB of GDDR5, DVI-D, HMI 2.0 and 3x DP.
Honestly, with Pascal and Polaris focusing so much on power consumption, larger coolers aren’t quite as necessary as they used to be. Instead, the main challenge will be dealing with heat density as transistors get packed tighter and tighter. Hopefully, we ‘ll see some RX 480 design come out soon.
