Zotac Geforce Gtx 1070 Ti Amp Extreme

Be sure to visit IGN Tech for all the latest comprehensive hands-on reviews and best-of roundups. Annotation that if you click on one of these links to buy the production, IGN may become a share of the sale. For more, read our Terms of Utilize.

Simply when y'all idea Nvidia had laid all its Pascal GPUs on the table, along comes one final GPU - the GTX 1070 Ti. This card has been rumored for awhile, and though some internet commenters merits it's aimed at the mining market I think it's designed to smack down the Radeon RX Vega 56. It merely didn't sit down well with Nvidia that the Vega 56 was then shut in performance to its GTX 1070, so Nvidia wanted to deliver a new piece of silicon that would go out no doubt which GPU is superior.The GPU launching today volition exist available in both Founder's Edition trim for $449 from Nvidia, and fancier versions from Nvidia'due south partners. The bill of fare I am specifically evaluating hither is the flagship offering from Zotac; the Amp! Extreme Edition (See information technology on Newegg) . This card is huge and could easily be mistaken for a GTX 1080 Ti due to its 12.8" length, 2.5 slot blueprint, and tri-fan cooling. It retails for $499 and should exist one of the fastest versions bachelor, and I say that based on my testing of previous AMP! Farthermost cards. These puppies are equally high-cease as information technology gets.

Design and Features

As I said, this is a massive GPU. The company is offer smaller versions, including a GTX 1070 Ti Mini (it should exist very similar to the 1080 Ti Mini), but this is the big enchilada. Information technology is fabricated with the same GP104 die used in the GTX 1080 and 1070, but it's been trimmed slightly from the GTX 1080 configuration. It'southward very, very shut to a GTX 1080 (as opposed to the 1070), as y'all tin see in the following spec chart:

What's well-nigh interesting to me about this chart is the GTX 1070 Ti has the exact aforementioned 180w TDP equally the GTX 1080, and has just five percent less Texture units and CUDA cores. Though the 1070 Ti's Boost Clock is lower on the spec sheet than the 1080's, that'due south irrelevant due to the GPU Boost engineering science baked into every 10-series GPU. I have no doubt information technology'll exist up effectually i,900MHz or so in one case it's under load, so y'all can ignore the clock speed numbers for the almost part. On the other side of the equation, information technology has 25 percent more CUDA cores and texture units than the GTX 1070, so it should offering a decent operation boost over that GPU.

More Adept Tech Roundups

In add-on to being near thirteen" long, information technology features Carbon "Exoarmor" that wraps all the style around the GPU, and includes a thick metal backplate forth with carbon fiber accents. The EKO fans have dual blades, or blades on the blades, for better airflow. Zotac's Spectra RGB lighting is included too on the side logo and on a silly "Push the limit" tagline on the top of it. You can customize the lighting color to your gaming rig's, or plough them off altogether. Each LED is controlled separately as well, so you lot can leave only one light on depending on your mood. Zotac is too introducing "ane click" overclocking to this model, which is a first for Zotac. Y'all'll be able to click a button in the Firestorm software that overclocks information technology automatically, merely again, with GPU Boost doing virtually of the heavy lifting I doubt this volition offering much of a benefit. Output connectors include three Displayport 1.4a connectors, 1 HDMI two.0 connector, and a dual-link DVI port. It's also SLI compatible.

Software

Zotac offers its Firestorm software suite for overclocking, checking temps and controlling fan speed, and of course customizing the lighting. Despite Zotac providing "one click" overclocking for the commencement fourth dimension, information technology'southward still convoluted and requires a lot more steps than say MSI or Gigabyte's GPUs where you literally but open the software and click a button. Zotac'due south method requires uploading an .ini file, and then clicking the "OC" push in the interface. On my card information technology immediately increased the GPU offset by 150MHz, which is pretty decent, but it should exist a little simpler as you have to follow instructions to become information technology all set. Zotac claims it should boost functioning past 4-6 percentage, simply of grade each menu varies.

Zotac's one-click overclocking boosted our GPU's clock speed by 150MHz.

Zotac's ane-click overclocking boosted our GPU's clock speed by 150MHz.

The Spectra lighting lets you choose from seven colors and set it to static, animate, stroble, or cycle. You tin can turn each light off, and modify them individually. It's pretty basic as far as lighting goes, but it's fine for most people I'm sure since you'll just set information technology to any colour your other lights are using and leave it. Whatever color you choose for the side logo as well affects the lesser of the GPU equally at that place are four light bars on the bottom of the card, and so information technology emits a stiff glow into the bottom of your case.

Benchmarks

To test the Zotac GTX 1070 Ti AMP! Extreme I tossed information technology into our mitt-made test bench that nosotros used for all previous GPU tests, and ran it through its paces on a multifariousness of benchmarks. Our examination system is comprised of an Intel Core i7-7700K CPU, 8GB of DDR4 RAM, an Asus motherboard, Intel SSD, and an EVGA power supply. Overall testing went smoothly, and I was curious to see how it fared against both the GTX 1080 and the Vega 56. Here are the numbers:

Looking at the 1080p numbers first, the 1070 Ti trades blows quite well with the RX Vega 56 and by and large seems faster, but I also saw a few outlying benchmark numbers where the Ti was slower than the GTX 1070. I tried troubleshooting these errors for quite a while only wasn't able to resolve them. Such is life for PC gamers. A few odd results aside, it looks like at lower resolutions the Zotac 1070 Ti was more often than not able to handily outpace the vanilla 1070, and it trounced the Radeon in Shadow of Mordor, Sky, and Tomb Raider. It was faster than the 1070 in Shadow of Mordor by 17 percent, and 16 per centum in Tomb Raider.

Moving up to 2560x1440 we get-go to encounter the GTX 1070 Ti stretch its legs and pull away. At this resolution it was consistently faster than the Radeon carte du jour in every test aside from another odd result with Batman, which again resulted in a slower bench than the 1070. Still, it was 25 percent faster than the 1070 in Mordor and 12 pct faster in Tomb Raider. Overall, at this resolution, the 1070, 1070 ti, and 1080 are well-nigh perfectly spaced it seems.

More than Comprehensive GPU Reviews

At 4k resolution, I again saw the 1070 Ti outperform the Radeon carte in every test aside from Batman, proving (to me at least) Nvidia made this card just to stomp on the Radeon carte. At this resolution the 1070 Ti was also quite shut to the GTX 1080 also, and though it tin can't quite hit 60fps in every game, merely similar the GTX 1080, it was really close in three games and would probably be fine running that resolution at medium levels of particular.

Overall information technology seems the Zotac GTX 1070 Ti Amp! Extreme is indeed generally faster than the Radeon RX Vega 56. I don't think anyone would fence otherwise. It even nips at the heels of the 1080 from fourth dimension to time besides. In general this should come up as no surprise to anyone. We've seen all these cards before and tin can easily guess where the fries volition autumn based on their price and specs. Clearly Nvidia designed this card to get after the Vega 56, and it seems it has succeeded.

Overclocking

In that location was some chatter before this card launched about how it wouldn't be overclock-able, but that'south bunk because this GPU overclocks all past itself simply like every other x-series Nvidia GPU I've tested, and it let me overclock information technology every bit high as I could too. Using Zotac's Firestorm utility I was able to overclock it to an impressive 2.1GHz, which is well-nigh 450MHz over the official "Boost Clock" of i,683Mhz. I only looped Heaven 4.0 and kept nudging the GPU beginning upwardly until I started seeing artifacts, which resulted in a hard lock. Even at this insane clock speed, the AMP! Extreme was however running at 60C, and I never had to touch the fans. It was also whisper repose the entire fourth dimension, and I honestly couldn't fifty-fifty tell if the organisation was turned on or not. That'due south non besides surprising given the size of its libation, but for anyone who thinks these massive coolers are strictly for looks, they practise serve a very important function when overclocking. Overall I'd exist shocked if I run across another GTX 1070 Ti overclock to this level as I've tested all of the 10-series GPUs and take never gotten on to run at these clocks.

Purchasing Guide

The Zotac AMP! Extreme is the make new flagship GTX 1070 Ti offer from Zotac, and as such is beingness offered for $499 on Amazon. Zotac will be offering a few other variants of this GPU still, and you can see them below:

See the Zotac GeForce GTX 1070 Ti AMP! Extreme on Newegg - $499
See the Zotac GeForce GTX 1070 Ti AMP! Edition on Newegg - $469
Come across the Zotac GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Mini on Newegg - $449

Overall the GTX 1070 Ti delivers pretty much exactly what yous'd expect. It slots in nicely between the GTX 1070 and 1080, and rains on AMD's parade at the same fourth dimension. That'due south a win-win for NVidia, merely for gamers it's a tougher call. I wouldn't pick this GPU over a $500 GTX 1080, but compared to a $600 GPU information technology's clearly the better value. As always pricing is a bit tricky to predict in the GPU market right now, but at $450 MSRP it'south a darn practiced GPU and among the fastest GPUs for the money. Information technology's too incredibly tranquility and overclocks like crazy.