In our NVIDIA GTX 1080 review, we were stunned by the awesomeness of NVIDIA's flagship card. Today, we've reviewed its smaller brother, the GTX 1070, and oh boy, things are looking good. The GTX 1070 is built on a similar platform as the GTX 1080. The only noteworthy differences are the reduced number of shaders (1920 vs 2560), a move from the more expensive GDDR5X memory to GDDR5, but with higher clocks to make up for the loss in bandwidth (256 GB/s vs. 320 GB/s), and a slightly reduced base clock (1506 MHz vs 1607 MHz). The clock frequency difference is actually minimal in real-life due to Boost 3.0, which runs both cards at around 1780 MHz on average.
As a result, the GeForce GTX 1070 is 20 percent behind the GTX 1080 at 2560x1440, conclusively beating the Titan X by around 10% while also delivering 5% better performance than GTX 970 SLI - at much better pricing. Compared to the previous-generation GTX 970, the performance uplift is 61% - impressive! AMD's fastest, the R9 Fury X, is 14% behind, just like the GTX 980 Ti.

The GeForce GTX 1070 uses the same renewed thermal solution as the GTX 1080, giving the card a more edgy look. The cooler uses two slots, comes with a nice thin backplate that doesn't block SLI airflow significantly and can be partially removed to improve SLI airflow even more. However, its cooling performance seems largely unchanged over previous versions of the NVIDIA reference design. The cooler still runs above 80°C during serious gaming, which means gaming performance will be slightly reduced by Boost to keep temperatures in check. While idle fan noise is low, the card does not include the highly popular idle-fan off feature. Also, during gaming, noise levels are decent, but not nearly as quiet as what we've seen on some custom GTX 980 Ti designs with much higher heat output. In terms of power consumption, the GTX 1070 sits slightly below the GTX 970, which means performance-per-watt has nearly doubled. Given we've seen plenty of virtually noise-free GTX 970 variants, I expect the same for custom GTX 1070 boards. The cooler is the weakest part of the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080, which gives add-in board partners room to improve on this otherwise awesome card.

Power efficiency of GTX 1070 is nearly as good as with the GTX 1080 since performance-per-watt is just a few percent lower. Still, both cards play in a league of their own, being nearly twice as power efficient as AMD's Fury X. The 16 nanometer process by TSMC Taiwan has certainly paid off. It will be interesting to see what AMD can achieve with their next-generation Radeon RX cards built on a 14 nanometer GlobalFoundries process - the bar is set sky high.

Overclocking on the GTX 1070 worked well, reaching 2088 MHz GPU clock, which is in the same range as the GTX 1080 that managed 2114 MHz. It looks like most Pascal GPUs go up to 2000-2100 MHz (I have a bunch of custom designs here already). Memory overclocking is truly amazing, setting a new record here at TPU with 2330 MHz, which brings the card close to the memory bandwidth of the GDDR5X based GTX 1080.

Pricing of the GeForce GTX 1070 is good, with an MSRP of $379, which would make it the price-performance king, no matter the performance segment as it is only beaten by R9 280X. At NVIDIA's Founders Edition pricing of $449, the card still delivers excellent performance-per-dollar that is, however, more in-line with what the GTX 970 currently offers, just at a higher price-to-performance point.

AMD's upcoming Polaris cards will be nowhere near the GTX 1070 in terms of performance. Rather, expect RX 480 to perform about 20-30% slower. But AMD's $199 pricing for the 480 could stir things up, so if you don't need a new card immediately, maybe wait a few weeks and see how things pan out, which would also allow you to see how the custom GTX 1070 designs by board partners turn out. The GeForce GTX 1070 will be available online and in stores today, but stock is probably limited, so if you want to pull the trigger, pull it fast.