Quote:Besides thinking that it would run warmer and louder than most GTX 1070s, I wasn't sure what to expect from the Katana's performance in this category so I was pleasantly surprised by the card's 82 degree result, which was a degree under the Founders Edition card despite providing slightly better performance. Of note, the card wasn't too noisy out of the box but maintaining that 82 degrees after our overclock required us to increase the fan speed to a pretty loud setting.
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When it came to power consumption, the Katana used only slightly more than the Founders Edition model and even once overclocked it still pulled less power than custom board partner cards out of the box.

Wrap Up

There you have it: a single-slot graphics card that still gets the job done, offering a bit more performance than Nvidia's Founders Edition GTX 1070 while running a degree cooler and occupying one less expansion slot. While we are impressed by the Galax GTX 1070 Katana, it's not a total shock to be testing a card of this nature considering they are now cramming GTX 1070 and 1080 GPUs into laptops.

Pricing is currently set at $420 when purchasing directly from Galax's US store, though that won't be easy because it's out of stock. Although the cheapest 1070s are selling for around $370 right now, this is the only single-slot 1070 you'll find, so it's hard to complain about the premium over a standard dual-slot version. Even so, once the Katana's availability improves, its price probably will too.

Overall, I found the card's operating temperature and volume to be acceptable, out of the box performance was great and the card itself looks smart. For those seeking a slim high-end graphics cards, there's simply no better choice -- I guess you could say that's because there is no other choice, so fortunately this one checks out.