ZOTAC GTX 1070 - Last Piece of my Puzzle
Sometime ago I made posts about my new gaming PC in another community which shall not be named, but now I've gotten to the part where gaming performance really changes, for the better.
Recently I managed to build a PC with brand new parts for really cheap, around $250.
i5 8400, 16GBs of DDR4 RAM and a 500GB sata SSD + some random HDDs I had lying around.
I also spent another $180 on a RX 6400, which seemed like a great deal. However, a friend of mine from literally just 8 blocks down, offered me his GTX 1070 in exchange for the RX 6400.
Of course I'd have to give some money back but $80 is more than fair enough.
I was not however expecting this.
This is the ZOTAC GTX 1070 Amp Extreme. Essentially the best version of the 1070, that allows huge overclocking and also has insane 2000mhz+ boost clocks from the factory.
Right out of the gate I had a problem in my hands: my PSU was just 400w and didn't have two 8 pin power connectors, something that this insane model needs.
My friend offered me a Molex to 8 pin power connector... Which I promptly said NO NO NO.
Okay, so I bought another one, 600w... It was some Chinese crap, no two 8 pin power connectors. My old colleague from my previous job offered me an EVGA 500w, which did have the connectors I needed, good guy.
From that picture you might be able to tell that my case is a little... small.
It's way too small in fact, with a horizontal length of a measly 35cms. I was very worried, and boy, it was CLOSE.
After I was done installing the new PSU, my cable management looked like trash, but that's fine. And despite all the hard drives being so close to the GPU they never go beyond 50c, so I'm fine with that.
Another thing I noticed was the GPU was flexing. Not by much and I'm not sure how much this could actually negatively impact my motherboard, but I came up with a signature Brazilian solution: use whatever the hell works.
So I used this little brick I remember getting as a kid in a set in the town of Nova Veneza at least 13 years ago or more. Thank you grandma, this helped.
It's actually the perfect height as to not flex the the graphics card, so I was in some real good luck here.
Now, such a big and heavy and sexy card must be good at overclocking, right? Well it is... But with just 500w and not a lot of headroom for much, or maybe just losing the silicon lottery, I managed to get a small stable overclock of 95mhz+ on boost clock and 200mhz+ on mem clock.
Did it help? According to Unigine Valley:
Before
After
Absolutely yes.
Not by a lot, but since I worry a lot about mins if averages are high, this is a totally welcome improvement?
The software for overclocking provided by ZOTAC is kinda simple.
Don't mind the stock settings right now, I was testing things out and they crashed because I'm absolutely stupid
I mean, it's good enough, but it's nowhere near as good as MSi Afterburner or even AMD's built in overclocking features. But still, it works, it's fine.
The Spectra section is RGB, of course it has RGB, what did you expect?
I wish we could have more control such as setting the color based on temperature, something my Sapphire RX 580 could do, but the options here are good enough.
In fact, have a little gif of it running in "breathing mode".
We all know RGB is the most important thing in the world, but what about framerates?
Well, so far I've tested 4 games and I don't have comparisons to my previous GPU... seeing as how it's not even mine anymore, but:
Cyberpunk 2077, high settings, 1080p: 55-60FPS, more when indoors
Overwatch, epic settings, 1080p, 150% resolution scale: 130-180FPS
Call of Duty BOCW, max settings, Raid map, 1080p: 90-110FPS
Battlefield 1, ultra settings, 200% resolution scale: 80-105FPS
I'm really really impressed with the performance of this baby and I can't wait to play things that my previous 6400 struggled so badly at.
Even in Overwatch I'd get stutters at low settings. Of course I'll still use mid-high there, but it just feels soooo good man. No more graphics bottleneck.
I'm just so insanely happy, and if I ever get to record some gameplay for here, expect some good framerates and nice looking graphics, specially with such good OC capabilities, incredible out of the box performance and the NVENC encoder...
Wow, an encoder, the stupid 6400 didn't even have that.
Shoutots to @stk-g for getting a sneak peek at this post and for @igormuba for encouraging me to write about tech again.
It's not about work, but it's still something fun to write about.
Expect gameplays and even more from me!
Thanks for reading!
Good GPU! Congrats.
Thank you very much!
Very happy with it.
Let's go play some VRChat?!
DUUUDE, good idea! Now we can lmao.
I wish I could get a headset but at least now the game won't crash.
Now you will be able to play lots of games!
!1UP
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The 1070 is still a great card, especially if you're someone who's more into Single Player games. You managed to get quite a solid deal as well I'd say. In my older rig I have the Strix GTX 970, which still performs quite well on low to medium settings for around 50 to 60 FPS. I got this card back in 2015, and it's still running great.
However, there's not much time left before the 900 and 1000 series of GTX cards become obsolete, I give it about 2 to 3 years highest, that too for single player titles only. The only card that might survive among all categories would be the 1080ti, which is still quite capable of pushing 100fps on 1080p in many, many latest games.
The 2000 series will still do amazing for single player and well optimized titles for 4 to 5 more years, simply because of the features that RTX provides. I myself was considering getting a Zotac 2070 Super for my new rig, but then I thought about putting in a bit more for a 3070/70ti, but the prices here are still quite ABSURD, almost double the international MSRP.
So, in the end I went with the 6700XT, for one hell of a deal as well; so far it's performing WAY better than a 3070/70ti, almost as good as a 3080 in many games.
Hopefully this card will serve you well, you've built one solid rig over here. If the newer games are well optimized then you'll get some really good performance.
For a 2016 card to hold up this well still is quite impressive, comparing it to the 770 or 670, the way in which it has managed to maintain its relevance surprises me.
Usually people worry more about raw power but the 1070's got some tech going on too. Close to latest Vulkan, OpenGL, DX12, etc.
I give it 3 to 4 years so start being pretty much useless (not counting newer edge-pushing titles), however until then I'll have upgraded to a 30 series card, no doubt.
It'll be up for time to show me how this card holds up, but I'm really quite impressed at the results.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
The 900 and 1000 Series are some of the greats, 2000 and 3000 series are there as well, but the older gens we're just built for longevity it seems. The 4000 series so far is a disappointment, especially with the 4080 lineup, thanks goes to Nvidia's greedy tactics; seems as if they just wanna dig their own graves.
Yet, this is a good chance for AMD and Intel to shine and get some of the market share, and that's what I really want. Nvidia dominating for this may years has got to their head, they need a reality check.
Absolutely 100% agreed.
The 3000 series has some bangers but I don't see much reason to upgrade to it now, whilst at the same time the 4000 series is expensive as all hell and the 4060 will likely be a 4050 in disguise.
I'm definitely going Arc. I went AMD for the past 4 years and loved it, but Intel seems promising, specially for the Linux side with Wayland support, not to mention the decent pricing.
Legit brooo xD
I'm hyped for Intel, and with them all the way. We need a third big gun in the GPU market. 💙
This is my first AMD GPU, so far the experience has been amazing. It just humiliates the 3070/70ti on the games that I play, and I haven't even properly tuned my setup or GPU yet. Only God knows what will happen after a proper bit of tweaking and tuning. I really thought Nvidia was a MUST have for me, but it seems that I was wrong as HELL. AMD surely deserves more attention and praise.
The hate for AMD is insane and there are genuine complaints, but people exaggerate way too much. Most of the time it just god damn works lmao
EXACTLY.
That GPU is soooo good looking, I can't stop laughing at the brick tho aksjaksa, I'm so happy for you dude.
Thank youuu ❤️
The brick is the famous "Brazilian Engineering"
I just came back from a LAN party with the PC on the car through a really bumpy road, brick stayed there, doing its job diligently. I think it's pretty much the perfect height lol.
that's kinda risky, I wouldn't do that, but I'm sure that brick has the perfect height lmao
I fully expected the brick to fall, so I kept the PC on its side. But when I got there and shined a light through the acryllic side, the brick was still up!
Kinda crazy
Who knew that a small brick could help you use such an amazing GPU? The differences with overclock are too noticeable imo, +20 FPS is really important in basically any game.
Congrats on your new GPU mate. I really want to buy a new one for my PC but my FX 6100 is already bottlenecking my GTX 960, what would happen with a 1070? XD
Oof, that CPU is... Sad hahaha.
The 960 can still push frames pretty well but if I were you, I'd wait a while longer, get something like a 2060. And probably upgrade that motherboard and CPU first, since they're cheaper to do xD
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