Gadgetory

on hand today is the new msi gtx 1070 gaming x 8g using the company's latest twin frozen six cooler there are three twin throws of six models which are called the gaming 8g gaming x ag and gaming z 8g the standard gaming model apparently misses out on the IDB lighting and operates at the reference clock frequencies then we have the special x and z models both of which feature fancy lighting and come factory overclocked you might assume that the x version is the more extreme of the two but that isn't the case the set actually comes at the highest clock speeds but before we check out the clock speeds let's take a look at the 1070 gaming xhe board design and cooler the latest generation twin frozen features tox 2.0 fans zero frozen stay smooth heat pipes and air flow control technology okay so he for marketing nonsense there but what does it all mean the talks 2.0 fan feature means there are two fans working together to cool the 1070 game eshg the fan blade design is said to generate 22% more air pressure which improves cooling performance and reduces the operating volume every second fin features a steeper curved blade which accelerates the air flow apparently increasing its effectiveness the fans are supported by double ball bearings - which - improves your ability longevity and help to reduce the operating volume zero frozen technology eliminates fan noise and low load situations by stopping the fans when they're not needed GPU temperatures can rise up to roughly 60 degrees before the fans are become active unlike some of the extreme cards we've seen from the likes of gigabyte in game with the 1070 gaming xhe isn't a triple slot card instead we have a 42 millimeter wide dual slot card and despite that it still manages to squeeze in two large fans on top of a rather big heat sink which is supported by a squad of five nickel plated copper heat pipes these heat pipes have been smooth on the base of the heatsink to ensure maximum contact with the copper base plate which has also been nickel-plated MSI tells us that a premium thermal compound has been applied to ensure optimal heat transfer from the GPU to the base plate it looks like pretty standard stuff but then I guess you can't really tell how premium a thermal compound is by just looking at it so we'll have to take that word on it covering the heatsink is an impressive red and black theme fan shroud that comes even more impressive once the cards been powered up once active the embedded LEDs make this graphics card come to life the lighting can be controlled with the MSI gaming app and there's a few pretty cool effects on offer here too the shroud just overhangs the PCB taking the card to a total length of 279 millimeters so pretty standard stuff for a gtx 1070 graphics card however what isn't standard is the height this thing stands 140 millimeters tall thanks to a super-sized PCB that we'll look at now on the rear of the card we find a full size black back plate which features some neat looking cutouts along with a cool silhouette of a dragon the backplate doesn't feature any backlighting on the X model whereas on this dead model it does removing the bulk of the cooling we find two additional heat spreaders covering the gddr5 memory as well as the vrm area so that's great to see with a 1070 gaming xhe strip completely naked we get a good look at the massive PCB and how msi is designed this graphics card as is often the case with high-end MSI graphics cards their military class 4 grade components have been used this is another marketing exercise for the most part but there's still some good stuff here such as the super farad chokes and the component selection does follow mal STD 8 100 G certification speaking of chokes we find a 10-plus two-phase design on board which when coupled with an additional 6 pin connector will be able to keep gtx 1075 with enough power to maintain those 2.1 gigahertz overclocks out of the box the card operates at a base clock of 1582 megahertz with a boost clock of 1771 megahertz which is a mild five percent overclock using the msi software gamers can switch to an OC mode setting which improves the base clock to 1607 megahertz for a boost of 1797 megahertz of course thanks to invidious unpredictable GPU boost 3.0 technology the card will likely run higher than the 1797 megahertz for the most part for quick and easy overclocking gamers can refer to the MSI gaming app which allows for quick switching between the various operating modes games can also control the LED lighting here as well and it's possible to enable on-screen overlay information too then for some serious overclocking MSI has their separate afterburner utility afterburners a program I often use for GPU overclocking but it's nice to actually use it to overclock an msi card with afterburner we increase the voltage percent to plus 100 the power limit to 126 percent this allowed the core clock to be increased by 140 megahertz and the memory clock by 600 megahertz gpu-z tells us this is a 17 47 megahertz base clock and a 1937 megahertz boost clock which seems much lower than what we're able to do with the gigabyte 1070 extreme gaming of course to do invidious GPU boost 3.0 we know the car can run faster than the suggester boost clock if kept under the thermal and power targets in the case of the extreme gaming this allowed the card to hold an operating frequency of 20 139 megahertz after 20 minutes stress test which is bloody awesome the msi 1070 gaming x 8g was just as impressive in fact more so held a frequency of 20 167 megahertz during the same stress test so then I guess it's time to see how performs let's jump into the benchmarks and see how it got on out of the box the gaming acts with just a single frame slower than the extreme gaming and 5 fps faster than the fans Edition so a good result for MSI however better still of the customer clocking results is the gaming expect the extreme gaming by four fps margin to get within 7 FPS at the GD X 1080 founders Edition graphics card again out of the box the gaming ax is just a single frame slower than the extreme gaming yet once overclocked it overtakes the extreme gaming by a convincing margin with a 73 FPS average that's a decent 12 percent boost over the factory overclock and 20% faster than the founders Edition graphics card this time the gaming X was 2 FPS slower than the extreme gaming out of the box there was 5 FPS faster than the founders addition once overclocked the gaming X again came on strong sustaining an average of 92 fps making it for FPS faster than the extreme gaming this was a 7% boost over the overclocked founders Edition and 19% faster than the stock reference graphics card which is really impressive now this is where things get interesting the gtx 1070 founds Edition consumes very little power our entire test system consumed just 236 watts on average while gaming with it installed and overclocked the founders edition raised the total power usage to just 245 watts out of the box the MSI gaming acts push the system consumption to 254 watts an 8% increase over the Nvidia reference card compared to the extreme gaming the MSI model only increased the total system consumption by 2 percent nothing to write home about here however once we take our maximum custom overclocked results into account we find a different story when I reviewed the gigabyte 1070 extreme gaming last week I was surprised by how much power consumed to an overclocked pushing the system usage 272 watts the MSI model smashes that figure reaching 295 Watts virtually the same power draw scene when using the gigabyte GT X 1080 Xtreme gaming this that explains why the MSI gaming X is able to produce such impressive results when overclocked still this makes me wonder how the third was impacted as well as the operating volume surprisingly despite the increased power draw when overclocked the gaming acts only around two degrees hotter than its out-of-the-box configuration at 68 degrees the car was obviously quite cool when compared to the stock 77 degree operating temperatures of the founders edition still it did run quite a bit hotter than the massive gigabyte extreme gaming card which just managed to keep below 60 degrees when using the factory overclock what's interesting or rather surprising is that the 1070 gaming s didn't generate any more noise once overclocked the card remained whisper quiet as the fans continued to spin it just 1,100 rpm this is an incredible result especially considering it allowed the card to maintain a clock speed in excess of 2.1 gigahertz ever sized delivered what I expect to be one of the very best geforce gtx 1070 graphics cards around out of the box the gaming has pretty much matched the frame rate performance of gigabytes extreme gaming the thermals weren't as impressive despite being a big improvement over the fans edition still it's worth noting that the extreme gaming does take up three slots whereas the gaming x is a more traditional two slot card the higher overclocking temp the gaming ax didn't impact the overclocking performance either in fact we're able to extract around 20% more performance when compared to the stock fans edition which was mighty impressive the only potential blemish on an otherwise perfect report card is the power consumption overclock the gaming X was a bit of a power Pig consuming almost 30 watts more than the 1080 founders Edition roughly 60 watts more than the 1070 founders edition it also consumed a little over 20 watts more than the overclocked extreme gaming out of the box the power consumption was very similar to the extreme gaming's there isn't much of an issue there even so our custom overclock didn't push the total system draw above 300 watts and that includes a core i7 6700 K processor clocked and locked at 4.5 gigahertz so in reality the power consumption shouldn't be an issue particularly given how cool and quiet the gaming X runs on overclocked the only other potential issue is the design how the card looks personally I really like it though I recognize you ideally want to have a red and black theme going on which thankfully for MSI seems to be 97% of all gamers the LED lighting is cool though the RGB side logo is a little pointless given the LEDs on the face of the card can't be changed from red price-wise the 1070 gaming ax is currently 460 u.s. or 750 ozzie right now the lowest asking price for a 1070 on newegg.com is 430 us nut card happens to be the msi 1070 r murrow c so they really aren't charging much of a premium for the gaming X in a nutshell the msi gtx 1070 gaming x 8g is quiet overclocked swell provides excellent out-of-the-box performance operates at sub 70 degree temperatures doesn't throw it well even when overclocked and only takes up two slots so in other words it's a real winner what do you guys think let me know in the comments like you always do I'm your host Matt as always and I'll see you guys next time youtubers like 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