Gigabyte GTX 1070 Xtreme
Xtreme Hardcore to the max
Gigabyte recently introduced its Xtreme Gaming Range at Computex, following in the footsteps of the likes of Asus’ Republic of Gamers brand. It’s meant to separate premium products from their general range, and the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070 Xtreme Gaming is the first graphics card we’ve seen from this new brand. We have to say it’s appropriately named, as it contains some rather special extras unique to this card.
The biggest change is the use of a binning process to hand-select the very best GPU. Binning refers to testing all computer chips, and then taking out the top-performing samples, and Gigabyte has used this process on this card. They call it “Gauntlet GPU Sorting” and it’s resulted in a card that has a very healthy factory overclock. Based on the GP104 chip that is also found in the GeForce GTX 1080, but with a few edges trimmed back, Gigabyte has given this card a healthy kick in the pants. The default GeForce GTX 1070 has a core clock speed of 1607MHz, but Gigabyte has increased this to 1695MHz in OC mode (the same mode we used for all testing). The boost clock has also been, well, boosted, increasing from the default of 1733MHz in standard GeForce GTX 1070s, up to 1898MHz. It’s not quite the magical 2GHz we wanted, but when we tested this card in action using MSI’s demanding Kombustor 3 stress test software, we found it actually ran at 2025MHz.
Given this speed, you’d expect this card to be a howler, but Gigabyte has introduced a clever new cooler to keep this thing quieter than a mosquito’s fart. During our OC test, it hit just 40dB on the sound meter, making it the quietest GeForce GTX 1070 we’ve ever tested, even those clocked at stock speed. This is thanks to the new WindForce Stack 3X cooler. It cleverly places one 100m fan underneath the other two fans, ensuring the entire cooling radiator gets fresh air, with no hot spots missed.
Another fantastic feature are the extra two HDMI 2.0b ports on the opposite end of the card to the usual I/O ports. This is aimed at VR users who want to pass through HDMI 2.0b to the front of the PC case, and there are already several of these cases on the market.
Our benchmarks show the overclock doesn’t lead to a massive increase in performance over other, similar products, but the sheer silence of this card plus the twin HDMI 2.0b ports on the opposite end make this a winner in our books. It might be a tad more expensive than competing premium GeForce GTX 1080 cards, but these two features alone make it our favourite new take on the GeForce GTX 1070. Highly recommended.