My MSI GTX 1070 GAMING X 8G mini review

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KevinG

Limp Gawd
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Jun 21, 2003
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**EDIT - partially based on a wrong first impression... read further down for a more informed impression. **

So, after days of watching nowinstock, and missing a bunch of times on both 1080s and 1070s, I finally got lucky and grabbed both a Gaming, and a Gaming X from newegg. Before they shipped, I canceled the regular Gaming and decided on the Gaming X for the extra $20. It arrived yesterday.

It is replacing an AMD 280x. Generally, I've been playing FO4 (at 4K, with some settings lowered), RotTR (also, I think at 4K, with a bunch of settings lowered), and the Doom demo (at 4K). The 280x has been pretty decent. I've tried playing at lower resolutions, but, my particular monitor looks pretty terrible (IMO) when playing at lowered resolutions (even ones that are even multiples, like 1920x1080). So, I deal with it...I'm not a settings snob.

I booted into safe mode, and ran the driver uninstaller. Installed the 1070, and booted the PC. At that point, my 4k monitor (which I moved from displayPort on the old card to HDMI on the new card) wasn't recognized as primary, so I had to deal with my secondary (portrait, DVI, 1920x1200) monitor being primary, and not properly rotated. So, with my head tilted sideways, I downloaded the nVidia drivers. Very shortly after the install started, my primary monitor sprung to life. And, oddly, it also knew the position, and orientation of both monitors...I guess the driver cleaner didn't clean that part up? Anyway. I was back in business.

I downloaded Afterburner, I downloaded MSI's gaming app, I downloaded GPU-Z, I downloaded Firestrike Demo, I downloaded Valley and Heaven.

I launched FO4. It couldn't detect my video card. Huh? That's strange. Never had it do that before (across two other cards - my AMD, and a previous nVidia). Reboot the PC. Same deal. Google tells me that plenty of other people seem to have this problem as well (not limited to this or any particular video card, it seems). I guess I'll have to manually configure that one.

Move onto RotTR. For some reason, I'm unable to make this one look good. Not as good as I remember it looking/playing a few weeks back on the 280x. My memory could be clouded here, but my son (who also plays) remembered it the same way. I tried lower resolutions, I tried tweaking a bunch of settings. Nothing great. Odd.

Move onto Doom. Very nice 4k, even nicer than the 280x which did it as well, but with some settings lowered.

Okay, so that's out of the box. What about overclocking?

I launched MSI's gaming app. Nothing. Tried again. Nothing. It won't launch. Great. I paid up the extra $20 for this card *because* of the built in OC settings, and the app that lets me use them won't launch? Google tells me that, once again, I'm not alone. *sigh*

There's enough evidence out there already that says that using afterburner is the way to go anyway, so I skip the gaming app, and bring up afterburner. First thing I do is crank up the fan speed. Nice...I can't really hear the card over my WC radiator fans, so, no harm in letting them ramp up early.

I figure I'll use firestrike as the test tool. And I run it to get baseline numbers before any OC.

After MUCH trial and error, I find that my particular card isn't a great OCer.

I set the voltage to %110. I set the base clock at +65. I set the memory at +50 (though I didn't play with it at all to see if higher or lower was better). At those settings with my fan spinning at like 60%, my temps maxed around 55.

If I raised the base clock to +75, firestrike would crash. Seemed odd since the card wasn't getting hot.

After that, I went back to FO4, and manually entered settings and got pretty nice 4k speeds. Certainly better than the 280x.

RotTR took a lot more work, but in the end we got something that seemed okay. We both left it thinking that it might have been better before somehow. (I'm considered restoring my entire rig from my nightly backups and swapping the old card back in just to solve this mystery once and for all...)

In the end, I'm not sure I would do it again if given the chance. It wasn't a large enough jump in performance. My opinion may change as I try other games, though.

I'd appreciate any thoughts on my seemingly low OC, if anyone cares to share.

Thanks!

**EDIT - partially based on a wrong first impression... read further down for a more informed impression. **
 
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So what does +65 on the core frequency get you to? On my MSI Gaming 1070 (non-x) my core offset seems to be based on the maximum boost out of the box, which was much higher than the guaranteed boost level. +65 might not be so bad if say your card boosted to 2050 mhz out of the box. Not so good if you were only at 1900 mhz to start with.

For comparison, my 1070 hit 1911 mhz at completely stock settings. The highest I've been able to get it to go is 2114 mhz but it won't hold it. Highest is usually 2088 mhz during gaming or benchmarking.

Your card does seem to run much cooler than mine though. I regularly get up to 75C under load with a very, very aggressive fan curve. My case doesn't have great airflow / ventilation near the GPU...I think it's holding me back since I've noticed that there seems to be a "tier" every 5C where the card will lower its clockspeed if it's running too hot.
 
From memory (I'm at work, numbers are written down at home), +65 was just over 2000 mhz. As far as temps go, I have good airflow (radiators are top mounted, blowing heat out through the top, very good fresh air intake front bottom), and my ambient is pretty low (basement stays pretty cool). When stock, the card would hit 60 very quickly...changing the fan profile made a dramatic difference.

In the meantime, I watched some youtube vids on overclocking using afterburner. One thing that was mentioned was to turn off the overlay FPS stuff...which I didn't do (but also didn't notice being on), so I'm looking forward to trying again with some different settings... It seems like +100 is almost a given, yet I can't come close...so I feel like I've done something wrong.
 
I just recieved my MSI GTX 1070 Gaming X yesterday. I just played a game for 30 minutes and the clocks stayed at 1911/4007 the whole time and a max GPU temp of about 75C (this is with the stock fan curve, it's extremely quiet). That's just the stock "OC" profile. So the stock speeds are significantly higher than the FE. I haven't begun to overclock mine, but +50 would be 1961Mhz, which while not an amazing overclock is not terrible since stock is 1683Mhz.

I haven't had any issues with it up to this point.
 
Reading your experience is interesting.

To start, you don't have any FPS numbers. There's only qualitative statements, but suspect.

Doom is playable on 4k on a 280x. That's odd. I never would have expected that. Some settings lowered, but from that one sentence it doesn't give me the impression that you were impressed.

According to this review, the 285 is <10fps at 4k. So the 280X would be about the same.

Your impression of FO4 was "certainly better than the 280X" and RoTR "got something that seemed okay"

RoTR comparison page:
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 review

Since you said you weren't sure if you would do it again and "wasn't a large enough jump", those statements are contrary to the review numbers. I would expect a GTX 1070 to be a HUGE jump over a Radeon 280X.

I'd really like to know why you feel this wasn't a substantial upgrade. Could you post some apples-to-apples FPS numbers (with the same graphics settings) for those games?

I've been considering buying a GTX 1070, and I was expecting it would be a huge difference at 1440p.
 
J Macker said:
To start, you don't have any FPS numbers. There's only qualitative statements, but suspect.

Doom is playable on 4k on a 280x. That's odd. I never would have expected that. Some settings lowered, but from that one sentence it doesn't give me the impression that you were impressed.

According to this review, the 285 is <10fps at 4k. So the 280X would be about the same.

Your impression of FO4 was "certainly better than the 280X" and RoTR "got something that seemed okay"

RoTR comparison page:
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 review

Since you said you weren't sure if you would do it again and "wasn't a large enough jump", those statements are contrary to the review numbers. I would expect a GTX 1070 to be a HUGE jump over a Radeon 280X.

I'd really like to know why you feel this wasn't a substantial upgrade. Could you post some apples-to-apples FPS numbers (with the same graphics settings) for those games?

I've been considering buying a GTX 1070, and I was expecting it would be a huge difference at 1440p.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what to say... Unfortunately, I too was expecting a large jump...so I didn't bother benchmarking the 280x or writing down any FPS numbers before swapping cards.

Your link to a Doom review with <10fps is ignoring the fact that they were using Ultra settings (the 380x is on the graph at 21fps, not < 10fps, and a bit of research seems to indicate that the 280x and 380x perform about the same?), and I already said that I turned settings down. And probably down from "Medium" or whatever. As I said, I'm not a settings snob. I pick 4k, and I adjust the settings until it is playable. Doom happened to be quite playable while still looking absolutely fantastic.

FO4 has consumed much of my time recently. I'm very used to how it looks and feels. The 1070 is "certainly better."

RoTR is confusing to me as well. I wonder if the settings are stored somewhere obvious in a file or something...I could easily fetch that from a backup to see what I was running with on the 280x if that is the case...

I agree that the reviews say there is a huge jump. But, my experience just doesn't agree. It's quite possible that if I were gaming at 1080, or 1440 that I would feel that. More than likely, it goes something like this: "The 280x can't play at 4k without drastically lowered settings, and, neither can the 1070, though the settings don't have to be lowered quiet so much." And, if we take that as fact, I would say that the difference in "required" settings between the 280x and the 1070 in order to play at 4k don't amount to a HUGE difference in enjoy-ability of the game.

Since you are a 1440 gamer, you are probably safe in ignoring my opinion entirely, as it is formed by gaming at 4k.

-Kevin
 
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Quix said:
...since stock is 1683Mhz.
Click to expand...

Thanks. That puts things in perspective. I'm merrily gaming along at about 2000Mhz, so I guess that's closer to a +300 OC when you look at it that way.
 
I read this review as "I don't really notice if my games are played at lowered settings". There's nothing wrong that, it's a pragmatic approach.

Sounds like you got the OC figured out, but you have to ignore everyone's +xx numbers since it's card specific and based on how it boosts already.
 
KevinG said:
From memory (I'm at work, numbers are written down at home), +65 was just over 2000 mhz. As far as temps go, I have good airflow (radiators are top mounted, blowing heat out through the top, very good fresh air intake front bottom), and my ambient is pretty low (basement stays pretty cool). When stock, the card would hit 60 very quickly...changing the fan profile made a dramatic difference.

In the meantime, I watched some youtube vids on overclocking using afterburner. One thing that was mentioned was to turn off the overlay FPS stuff...which I didn't do (but also didn't notice being on), so I'm looking forward to trying again with some different settings... It seems like +100 is almost a given, yet I can't come close...so I feel like I've done something wrong.
Click to expand...

Hm, so you were boosting above 2000 mhz out of the box? That's pretty darned good. +65 on top of that isn't too bad at all. If you're settling into the 2050 mhz range during games then that's right around what most people seem to be reporting. The + offset numbers don't tell the whole story. +65 on your 2000 out of the box boost clock is getting you to almost the same speeds as I have with a +175 offset (1911 out of the box).
 
Eric1285 said:
Hm, so you were boosting above 2000 mhz out of the box? That's pretty darned good. +65 on top of that isn't too bad at all. If you're settling into the 2050 mhz range during games then that's right around what most people seem to be reporting. The + offset numbers don't tell the whole story. +65 on your 2000 out of the box boost clock is getting you to almost the same speeds as I have with a +175 offset (1911 out of the box).
Click to expand...

No, it is reaching 2012mhz after the +65, not before.

-Strelok- said:
Specs of the rest of your system?
Click to expand...

i7 2600K, running at 4.2.
 
Okay, Update.

So, I don't know WTF happened. But things are different now, and all for the better.

I ran nVidia's gaming experience app, and pointed it at my steam folder. I let it optimize Fo4, and RotTR. In both cases, it picked 4k (probably because they were already set there, or because of the monitor), and made a bunch of changes. Now we're talking! Both are significantly better than they were yesterday. So, my first impressions in this case were not valid...I must have somehow just chose the wrong options when manually configuring...

Back to the OC.

I'm hitting 2012 Mhz, 4050 Mhz mem, max temp of 52 running firestrike.

14503 overall
18799 graphics
11100 physics
6259 combined

Thoughts?

Question about afterburner. Should I unlock/tweak core voltage? So far the only thing I did aside from the fan profile was bump power limit to 110%, core clock +65, mem clock +50.

Thanks, and sorry for the reporting on malformed first impressions. There's a big difference from the 280x!

-Kevin
 
Hm, that's on the lower end of overclocking results then but still within the typical range that I've seen. Just bad luck I guess?

Have you tried playing around with GPU boost 3.0 at all? This is the custom voltage / frequency curve (you can access it by pressing Ctrl + F in MSI Afterburner). It gives you finer control of your overclock but I haven't played with it much. I think there were a couple of reviewers who said they were able to get a few more mhz out of their cards this way.

It's still early...I'm waiting to see what happens when we get custom BIOS'.
 
Eric1285 said:
Have you tried playing around with GPU boost 3.0 at all?
Click to expand...

No, I haven't. Like I mentioned, I haven't even hit the box to unlock core voltage...don't know if I'm supposed to be tweaking voltage at all. I still have more to go on the memory overclock. I'm up to 4100 Mhz now, and still haven't run into any issues. I plan to spend some more time on that to find the limit. In the relative scheme of things, I'm not worried about the extra 50 or 100 Mhz some others are getting out of their core OC...It amounts to very little FPS in the real world, so I'll be happy with whatever I end up with.
 
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