Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070

WHAT IS THE NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1070?

2016 has been a great year for PC gamers. We’ve seen the arrival of top-notch virtual-reality headsets, such as the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, plus super-powered VR-focused graphics cards to back them up, such as the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080.

With all the hype and optimism flooding the PC gaming market, you could be forgiven for overlooking the GTX 1080's less powerful sibling that's on test here. After all, if you’re going to upgrade your rig then the best option is the flagship, right?

But those who dismiss the 1070 will be making a serious mistake. Sharing a common “Pascal” DNA with the 1080, the 1070 is one of the best value-for-money offerings available and should be the first on the list for any PC owner looking to enjoy judder-free 1440p gaming.

Update: Since my original review of the GTX 1070, Nvidia has fleshed out its range of Pascal graphics cards, adding the new, VR-ready GTX 1060 to its roster. Not only is the GTX 1060 ready for whatever your Oculus Rift or HTC Vive throws at it, it also offers a much cheaper route into 1440p gaming. If you’re prepared to make some sacrifices in areas such as anti-aliasing and other fancy effects, it’ll reward you handsomely.

Take a look at our benchmark results on the second page of this review for more information on the differences between the two cards.

NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1070 – SPECS AND TECHNOLOGY EXPLAINED

Nvidia didn’t shy away from making big claims about the 1080’s performance when it unveiled the card earlier this year. The company went so far as to claim it would outperform the £1,000-plus Titan X at certain tasks. Unsurprisingly, the 1070 took a back seat as Nvidia went all-out on 1080 marketing, but many onlookers expected the former to be Nvidia's dark horse this year.

The 1070 has a lot to live up to; its predecessor, the 970 is running on one in 20 gaming PCs according to statistics from Valve's Steam gaming service.

On paper, the card isn’t just a huge improvement on the 970, it can also hold its own against Nvidia’s £550 GTX 980 Ti.

The 1070's use of Nvidia’s Pascal architecture plays a big part here. Pascal is the successor to Nvidia’s previous Maxwell GPU architecture. It improves on Maxwell using a smaller manufacturing process, which reduces the chip’s fabrication nodes from 28 nanometres to 16nm.

The Pascal architecture enables Nvidia to fit more transistors onto a smaller piece of silicon, thus increasing performance while reducing power consumption to a modest 150W.

Thanks to Pascal, Nvidia has been able to cram 1,920 CUDA cores onto the 1070 – the foot soldiers of a GPU that do the majority of the computational-heavy lifting. This is a marked improvement over Nvidia’s GTX 970 card, which houses 1,664 CUDA cores, but still firmly behind the 1080's 2,560.