Synthetic Benchmarks
To start off my testing of the EVGA GTX 1070 SC Gaming ACX 3.0 I ran the card through our synthetic benchmark suite. These tests don’t always compare exactly to in game performance, but they are a consistent way to be able to compare from card to card. Before I get into the results I did want to address one quick thing. The 1070 from MSI that I had previously tested was one of the cards sent with the OC mode on by default to reviewers. So we have to keep in mind that the results from that card are going to be a little higher than they should be. In fact, the EVGA card I’m testing today has the same Base and Boost clocks as the Gigabyte card and both are higher than the clocks that the MSI will ship with. With that said, I started off testing with 3DMark using the DX11 Fire Strike benchmark and the slightly controversial DX12 benchmark Time Spy. In Fire Strike, I tested in all three performance settings to see how the card performed at 1080p, 1440p, and 4k. In the performance mode, the EVGA card came in just a touch above the equally clocked Gigabyte card and just under the overclocked MSI results. The results are similar in the other two resolutions as well. In Time Spy the Gigabyte pulled slightly ahead but even being at the bottom of the GTX 1070’s was still WELL above the next closest card, the GTX 980 Ti.
In Valley Benchmark the MSI pulled ahead a surprising amount with its slight overclock and the EVGA and Gigabyte cards were almost dead even in FPS. Once again the gap between the 1070 and the GTX 1060 is huge.
In Catzilla I tested at all three resolutions as well (1080p, 1440p, and 4k), the results were more of the same once again. The MSI was a little ahead with its OC mode clock speed bump and the Gigabyte and EVGA are dead even in all three tests with their matching clock speeds.
In my last benchmark, I ran the EVGA through the SteamVR benchmark. This gives us a 0-11 result to show how good the card will perform in VR. As we know, VR is like running two monitors that have to be at a higher consistent frame rate. On top of that, there is some additional overhead due to having to calculate the two different angles your eyes would see. That said the EVGA’s results were a bit of a surprise. It capped out the test at 11 where the other two GTX 1070’s were a hair off at 10.9. This doesn’t mean the EVGA 1070 is faster than a GTX 1080, this is just as high as the test goes and excel likes to put the newest entry at the top when there is more than one matching result. That said it is clear that the Superclocked GTX 1070 isn’t going to have trouble in VR. I can’t wait to get into more VR testing to find out just how good it will perform.
