Quote:NVIDIA is readying a new GeForce GTX 1070 refresh graphics card, according to well-placed sources. Positioned between the current GTX 1070 and the GTX 1080 11 Gbps in performance, the refreshed GTX 1070 could at least displace the current GTX 1070 from its price-point, if not replace it. NVIDIA could carve the new chip out of the latest stepping of the GP104 silicon, and give it more CUDA cores, likely 2,048 (on par with GTX 1070 Mobile), if not higher. It could also get faster memory, likely 9 Gbps GDDR5 or even 10 Gbps GDDR5X. Its core and GPU Boost clock speeds could even be dialed up a little.

NVIDIA's objective here appears to be convincingly outperforming AMD Radeon RX Vega 56, at a lower power-draw. There's a 20 percent performance gap between the current desktop GTX 1070 and GTX 1080, and the new GTX 1070 refresh could find a price-performance equation somewhere in the middle. As NVIDIA's product-stack currently stands, the GTX 1080, which was refreshed with faster 11 Gbps GDDR5X memory, has a wider performance gap with the GTX 1070, creating room for a GTX 1070 refresh SKU somewhere in the middle, which could perform within the 90th percentile of the original GTX 1080 with 10 Gbps memory. What NVIDIA could name the SKU is anybody's guess. Historically, NVIDIA has updated SKU specifications without changing the name. The GTX 1080 and GTX 1060 6 GB were refreshed with faster memory, by simply prominently mentioning the memory clock below the SKU branding, there's also the remote possibility of the GTX 1070 Ti branding to combat the "grandeur" of AMD's RX Vega branding. NVIDIA could have the new GeForce GTX 1070 refresh SKU out in time for Holiday.

Quote:NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce GTX 1070 Ti performance-segment graphics card, which could be launched toward the end of this month, with market-availability following in early-November; could feature 9 Gbps GDDR5 memory, and not the previously-thought 8 Gbps GDDR5. This "almost-GTX 1080" answer of NVIDIA to AMD's RX Vega 56 features 2,432 CUDA cores, 152 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 8 GB of memory. It will be available at a price-point competitive with AMD's RX Vega series, and could come in custom-designs by NVIDIA's add-in card partners.

Quote:TechARP obtained leaked specifications of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti, which is being launching October 26 and available (supposedly) November 2. While the cards will carry a suggested retail price of $429 USD, which incidentally is higher than the Radeon RX Vega 56, it is anyone's guess what they will actually retail at if miners take an interest in the card.

As anticipated, only one of "GP104" Pascal's twenty streaming multiprocessors is being disabled, which means the GTX 1070 Ti will have 2432 CUDA cores, along with 152 TMUs and 64 ROPs. Core clock speed is being raised to 1607 MHz, unfortunately the boost speed (1683 MHz) is identical to that of the GTX 1070. The increased performance comes not surprisingly with a higher TDP (180 W), which is the same as the GTX 1080. All of which points to performance very close to the existing GeForce GTX 1080. And, if you are wondering how the GTX 1070 Ti stacks up against Radeon's RX Vega, TechARP prepared a chart of that as well:

Quote:This score spaces it significantly apart from the GTX 1070, which typically scores around 5,400 points in this test, and the GTX 1080, which puts out around 7,000 points. The GTX 1070 Ti manages to keep frame-rates of AotS consistently above 60 frames per second. Much like the Radeon RX Vega 56 it's designed to compete with, the GTX 1070 Ti will find its comfort-zone with the 1440p resolution, even though it will be capable of playable (≥30 fps) frame-rates at 4K Ultra HD.

Quote:Courtesy of the team at Tech ARP (via Hexus), we have a list of specs that was apparently confirmed by the product page posted by KFA2. The GTX 1070 Ti will almost certainly use a less-neutered version of the GP104 GPU that underpins the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080.

Of the 20 Pascal streaming multiprocessors on board GP104, the GTX 1070 Ti will purportedly have 19 of them active, for a total of 2432 shader processors, 152 texture units, and 64 ROPs. Those figures are only slightly behind the resources of the GTX 1080's, so the GTX 1070 Ti might sit uncomfortably close to that card in Nvidia's product stack (at least reference clock for reference clock). We'll see just how close in a moment.

The biggest difference between the GTX 1070 Ti and GTX 1080 will apparently be in the lesser card's memory subsystem. Where the GTX 1080 uses 8 GB of GDDR5X RAM clocked at 10 GT/s or 11 GT/s, the hypothetical GTX 1070 Ti might stick with 8 GB of GDDR5 RAM running at 8 GT/s. That means the pumped-up GTX 1070 could offer just 256 GB/s of memory bandwidth, down substantially from the GTX 1080's 320 GB/s at reference speeds.

The beefed-up GTX 1070 Ti doesn't gain any extra pixel fill rate compared to its less-shiny forebear, but its peak texturing and compute capabilities make it a better match for the RX Vega 56. The green team doesn't seem willing to let its competitor hold even a dead heat in the graphics-card horse race, it seems. It'll remain to be seen how Nvidia manages to keep the GTX 1070 Ti from cannibalizing GTX 1080 sales, though, given how closely-matched the cards are in almost every measure of theoretical performance we can bring to bear.

Quote:NVIDIA's decision to prohibit AIB partners from factory overclocking their GTX 107 Ti graphics is a decision that may not sit well with hardware enthusiasts, but it's one that makes the most sense from a business perspective. As it is, it's expected that overclocked versions of the GTX 1070 Ti graphics cards, which have come to offer a more compelling NVIDIA option against AMD's Vega 56 graphics card, will offer performance that is by all accounts comparable to that offered by its more expensive (and older) GTX 1080 graphics cards. So NVIDIA is just ensuring that its introduction of the GTX 1070 Ti with its $459 MSRP doesn't cannibalize sales of their higher tier graphics card through higher out-of-the-box performance via factory overclocking.

This generates some issues for AIB partners, since now they have one less data point to help them differentiate their products from competitor's: performance. The only indirect claim to performance they now have is through efficiency of their cooling solutions, but that's a cloudy metric at best; as such, companies are finding ingenious ways to avoid going up against NVIDIA's restrictions, while offering some differentiating factors to their GPUs.

Quote:Granted, the GeForce enjoys big advantages in power, noise, and overclockability. But slightly better stock performance than Vega 56 at a similar cost doesn’t get our blood pumping like GTX 1080/1070 when it launched, or GTX 1080 Ti more recently. The real coup would have been nudging GeForce GTX 1070 Ti closer to $400, then moving the vanilla 1070 down to fill an almost-$150 hole between the 1070 and GeForce GTX 1060 6GB. After all, Nvidia’s partners were supposed to be selling 1070s starting at $380 back in mid-’16.

One aspect of this launch that we do applaud is Nvidia’s decision to sell its GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition card through geforce.com for $450, leaving none of the pricing ambiguity that dogged Radeon RX Vega (damaging AMD’s credibility in the process). We may not love the 1070 Ti’s positioning, but at least enthusiasts can grab one without getting gouged if their opinions differ.

Quote:The GTX 1070 Ti is a completely capable card, but it also feels underwhelming. This long after the first Pascal parts launched, it's hard to get excited about a new part that fills a gap, particularly when it's a small gap and it's not really a huge bargain. Trying to determine who should upgrade to the 1070 Ti gets a bit messy. Did the GTX 1070 and 1080 not entice you to pull the trigger on a graphics card upgrade last year? The 1070 Ti is in the same boat this year. But maybe you had a recent windfall, in which case it's a reasonable option. But if you're willing to spend $450, why not go for the faster GDDR5X and additional cores in the GTX 1080 for less than $50 more?

If you want proof of the lack of innovation that happens when the market leader remains unchallenged, look no further. Had AMD's Vega taken down GTX 1080 Ti, Nvidia would be doing far more than a rehashed GP104 that lands between two existing products. Ryzen and Threadripper forced Intel to step up to the plate and deliver more cores and better pricing per core with Skylake-X and Coffee Lake, and the CPU market at least has been very exciting this year. With the GTX 1080 still beating the RX Vega 64, never mind the 1080 Ti and Titan Xp, Nvidia has given us a very competent product, but nothing revolutionary or even evolutionary.

The GTX 1070 Ti isn't a bad product at all, but it's going after a relatively small niche between the $400 and $500 graphics cards. Most gamers are buying cards in the $200-$300 range, and will continue to be served by Nvidia's GTX 1060. There's a chance the 1070 Ti will cause retail pricing of GTX 1070 cards to drop a bit more, but we still haven't returned to the pre-cryptocurrency-craze prices of as little as $350 for a GTX 1070. Hopefully that will happen during the holiday shopping season.

Quote:Price-wise, the GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition clocks in at $450, which also seems to be the lowest price point any GTX 1070 Ti can be bought at - at least for now. AMD magically found Vega supply in the last days and their prices are now at to the levels that we were promised at launch: $400 for Vega 56 and $500 for Vega 64. This makes Vega 56 a relatively interesting value proposition, beating GTX 1070 - if you don't care about power or noise. GTX 1070 Ti steps in here and offers decent performance gains at a relatively modest price increase, especially when you take overclocking into account. GTX 1080 is not a lot faster, but has the advantage of offering out-of-the-box-overclocked custom designs, which make setup more easy. The GTX 1070 Ti ends up matching the GTX 1070 in performance per Dollar despite its higher price. Even at $500, Vega 64 seems too expensive compared to GTX 1070 Ti, and GTX 1070 Ti is a huge win when you care about power and noise.

• Anonymous comments on 1070 Ti from within the industry
  
• No pre-overclocked 1070 Tis, due to Nvidia, but it can be bypassed with tuning software that can load an pre-configured OC profile
  
• Board partners are saying that lack of factory OCing will impact 1070 Ti sales, due to less differentiation between 1070 Ti cards
  
• Board partners are frustrated by the lack of factory OCing, this also dents the value of aftermarket-cooled 1070 Tis, there's nothing they can directly do about it
  
• The 1070 Ti is aimed to respond to the Vega 56
  
• Board partners mostly think that the 1070 Ti will not heavily impact 1080 sales, and one said it might impact 1070 sales more than 1080 sales
  
• One partner said they had to rename one of their 1070 Ti products at the last minute because the original name involved OCing
  
• Nvidia will not prevent end users from OCing the 1070 Ti