Asus GTX 1070 Strix Features DirectCU III Cooler, Too

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Wow ... that's a pretty nice premium over the FE ... and $100 more than the 9xx series .... curious as to why they'd start with such a shocking sticker price ....I don't see that lasting wrong unless they are finally trying to make peeps think the jump to the 1080 isn't so bad.
 

Aspiring techie

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Maybe they're more expensive because they're harder to produce. My guess is that they're not making more profit per card than the 9xx series simply because the process node is new and Pascal's die is very large, causing poor yields and thus a higher manufacturing cost.

Right now is AMD's time to pounce. Their dies are smaller, so they can afford lower prices relative to Nvidia's. If the RX 480 is truly as powerful as the GTX 970, then buying two and going Crossfire is the way to go. They GTX 1070 is slightly more powerful than a Titan X, but two GTX 970s are even more powerful yet. Thus, for about $400, two RX 480s in Crossfire should equal or surpass the $450 1070 Founders (or $400 third-party cards). If AMD can produce and price cards like this the whole way up and down their line, they could be poised to capture over 50% of the market, which they desperately need in order to have a decent future.
 

hotroderx

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I honestly think this is because of AMD here me out!... Right now AMD has said there not going to release anything to complete with the 1070/1080's for least a few months!. That means right now Nvidia cards are the only player on the field so they can charge a ridiculous premium and get it. Once AMD's cards launch as long as there competitive are semi competitive then Prices will drop! I also agree founders edition cards have kinda set a benchmark for pricing also which hasn't helped at the moment.
 


Or they just want to make more money. I'm sure their financial advisers said, "If you charge $100 more you'll get more money because about the same amount of people will still purchase it".
 


They'd be stoopid not to ... what are you gonna do, keep buying 970s ? It costs tons of money to release that 1st card ... in order to make back that R&D, development costs, marketing, overhead etc, you need to sell a certain amount of cards. At this point, nViida must have a whole team of peeps pushing wheelbarrows full of cash around.

Why haven't they dropped the price, why haven't they lowered the launch price...

1. Cause they don't have to ... no competition but themselves
2. Cause they don't have to ... peeps are sitting on the newegg site hitting refresh every 30 seconds so they can be the 1st one on their block to get one.

Let's also not forget the e-tailors role here..... these are the days of limited releases where certain folks get exclusives.... and as long as demand is higher than supply, they have no incentive to drop margins.

 
That was a long time ago. The 970 made it a lot worse ... 76 - 24 in Q4 2014

bNqJYgA.png


Continue that slope for another 6 quarters.....
 

king3pj

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Like I said in the EVGA announcement article it sucks that none of the custom cards seem to be coming in anywhere close to the MSRP of $380. Really, $430 for a card with no factory overclock?

I'm thinking at this point I might just bump all the way up to the EVGA ACX 3.0 1080 for $620. I know I'm not really proving any point by purchasing an even more expensive card but the custom 1080 models feel more reasonably priced to me. They are significantly cheaper than the Founders Edition while everyone seems to be trying to get as close as possible to Founders Edition pricing on their 1070s. Will anyone offer a 1070 for less than $400?
 
The EVGA SC series usually finishes last going up against the comparably priced cards from Gigabyte, Asus and MSI. Typically the SC is a plain reference PCB; I have seem them swap out the VRM from the reference design but when it includes the same number of phases, I really don't see the point. Meanwhile the other guys are using higher quality VRMs with more phases, high end chokes, adding heat sinks and thermal pads to the MOFSETS, VRM and other components to aid in cooling. With all these differences, it.s no wonder that the SC almost always fails to catch the other Big 4 offerings.

When ya read the bottom third of pages 2-4 in the article below, it won't come as a surprise when ya get to the end and see how they rank when overclocked.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2014/09/19/nvidia-geforce-gtx-970-review/14

let's also remember the $329 MSRP of the 970 ... right after release. these crept up to $349 quickly enough and sometimes more... and then settled down after a while ... the ones in high demand did maintain a price premium for quite some time tho.
 

George Phillips

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I have hard time to decide to buy this one or Gigabyte's GTX 1070 G1 Gaming. Any thoughts? Both have custom PCBs and lights I like. Both look great and will run better/faster/cooler/cheaper than the reference design.
 
Who sits at the top tends to run in streaks .... the G1 was the top performer last generation, but it had an relatively extreme high number of dissatisfied users last time around:

In order of most popular

MSI Gaming 4G (608 reviews)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127832
70% (424) 5 eggs
13% (80) 4 eggs
7% (40) 3 eggs
4% (23) 2 eggs
7% (41) 1gg

Gigabyte G1 (498 reviews)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125684
57% (283) 5 eggs
10% (51) 4 eggs
6% (30) 3 eggs
7% (35) 2 eggs
20% (99) 1egg

Asus 970 Strix (458 reviews)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121899
66% (303) 5 eggs
12% (55) 4 eggs
8% (35) 3 eggs
6% (28) 2 eggs
8% (37) 1 egg

EVGA 970 SC (420 reviews)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487076
60% (253)
18% (77)
8% (34)
6% (26)
7% (29)

So what we can gather from the above, that the number of users who were extremely dissatisfied with their purchase was 7% for MSI and EVGA and a comparable 8% for Asus. Gigabyte however was 3 times higher at 20%. I'd like to see Gigabyte make a recovery with this generation.

Performance wise, however, there's no denying that Gigabyte held the performance crown w/ Guru3d reporting a 1516 OC. MSI followed w/ a 1501, Asus got to 1443 and EVGA wasn't tested but the design defect was noted here:
http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/evga-geforce-gtx-970-acx-has-misaligned-gpu-vs-heatpipes.html

Most sites had them finishing in the same order but of course the silicon lottery led to some exceptions.

Don't know much about the1070 components as yet, the 970 review by bit-tech had them ranked MSI > Asus > EVGA component and 'build quality" wise, but unfortunately Gigabyte was not included ... I expect Giga would have done very well in this respect.

Build quality wise, the only thing I know so far is...

MSI 1070 Gaming = 10 phase design
Gigabyte 1070 G1 = 6+2 design
Asus 1070 Strix = 6=1 design

If its between the Giga and the Asus, I'd take the Giga assuming all other things equal. Also don't forget fit may be an issue.. the G1 970 was 12.28 inches long ... Asus was 11" and MSI was 10.9"

In short, ... Need input" ! ... "more input !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pj-qBUWOYfE
 

George Phillips

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Hi JACKNAYLORPE , It is an awesome analysis. In terms of power phase design, MSI is the best, so I will also consider MSI cards. Build quality wise, I see that MSI and ASUS have more emphasis on their own custom designs with "military grade" components.. especially MSI. And MSI 1070 Gaming X card had crazy design with 10 phase design:
https://www.msi.com/Graphics-card/GEFORCE-GTX-1070-GAMING-X-8G.html#hero-overview
It will still be a hard pick, considering I like the look of ASUS a little more than others. I will probably skip EVGA this time.
 


This is probably a custom PCB like their other Strix designs and I also noticed the article failed to mention that the fan shroud is modular, you can remove parts and create your own designs/colors using the 3D printer model they shared, which I can't find the link anymore but that is stated on the product page.

I do think the FE cards were a mistake though because now we are paying more than we need to for the same product.

 


I think buying in the 1st weeks after a release is unwise:

1. Supply is short, vendors will take advantage knowing that every card they ship will be sold the same day it arrives.

2. Retailers jump on the same bandwagon.

3. Drivers are not quite up to snuff as yet, making comparisons difficult especially when considering single versus multi-card options.

4. There are no tear down articles as yet detailing VRM, MOFSETS, chokes, .. are there heatsinks / thermal pads used to help cool these, etc ?

5. The aftermarket cards are all in their first stepping... in other words "bleeding edge". Remember last generation (9xx series) 1st stepping cards ? For example...

a) The 1st round of EVGA 970 SCs had a cooler where 1 of the 3 heat pipes, missed the GPU. At first EVGA ridiculously claimed that it was "designed that way", but they didn't wait long to release the SSC model that corrected that problem.
b) The MSI cards had an adhesive plastic that oft damaged the fans when removed.
c) Initially the user reviews on newegg had the Giga G1 with almost 30% highly negative user reviews, it jhas since dropped to 20% (the other 3 of the "big 4" are at about 7%) indicating that the newer cards are getting less complaints.

It also must be noted that the assumption that the GFEs will be more expensive id not universal.. in Euope the FE cards are all £399.00 inc VAT... the non-refence designs are running £25 - £30 more. here, one of EVGAs cards is $10 less than FE, another is clocked exactly the same as the FE is as $30 less. The question is... where will the card versions people actually want like the Strix, Gaming, and G1 be ?
 


It's a bit of both. The full GP100 chip is the largest Nvidia has ever made. So much so that the 1080, 1070, and 1060 are all cutdown versions of it. Nvidia is getting very few of these chips per wafer so I can imagine the cost is very high. Of course Nvidia is throwing an additional Nvidia tax on top of that. The RX 480 is coming out a bit slower but for less than half the price while the RX 490 is rumored to be around $300. Nvidia is going to get it's money while it can because once AMD releases it's cards they are going to have to drop prices by at least $100.
 

Sam Hain

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Going back to Aspiring Techie's remark about the red-team's 480...

I think it may have been somewhere here on Tom's, within the last two weeks where it was stated that two 480's (CF) could run with, if not light up a 1080... stock.

If this holds true on the hardware side of things, along with the pricing, this setup within the 1070's price-range but with 1080 (or better performance w/OC'ing).

Yes, there are games that don't kiss CF/SLI ass but this does not discount the performance gains overall.

Not an AMD fan (using 2 Giga GTX 980 Ti Xtreme OC editions) but the 480 itself and in a CF configuration poses a very interesting jab.
 


I agree 100%.

Normally the after market cards are a bit more expensive than nVidias stock design but now they have a higher level to price at and people will buy.



It is hard to justify dual GPUs performance vs a single GPU. For one a single GPU will normally use less power, takes up less space and create less heat. There are many benefits outweighing it beyond just the "CF/SLI does not work for all games" or has performance issues.

I personally stick to one GPU which is why I don't even consider CF/SLI performance. If someone DOES consider it I take that into account but there is just too much to consider other than performance.
 

Sam Hain

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I guess we'll agree to disagree here... But, I'll take dual/multiple GPUs, in order to crank graphics settings to their limits in order to maximize quality along with bumping up those frames for better playability; games that are not "optimized" for CF/SLI have proven to be a non-issue for my particular setup, which is by no means earth-shattering but fits my needs nonetheless. Heat can be an issue, I'll agree BUT can be negated by one's case/fan config or creativity and $$ with water.

Cheers!
 
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