Let us preface this summary by making one thing perfectly clear. We are in no way shape nor form saying that everyone should buy a more powerful card just to mine. People must consider crypto currency like gambling and never spend money that they cannot afford to lose. Rather it is indeed a possible way to make a card pay for itself, but only if things do not go ‘pop’ – and make no mistake we are in the middle of a crypto bubble. Instead what people should do is think about the difference in price between the card that is indeed in their budget and the one they want. This difference is what you are gambling with. Nothing more nothing less. As such it will really not take all that long for the STRIX 08G Gaming to pay for itself over its slightly cheaper brethren… even if the bubble is a short term ‘Tulip’ craze that is here today and gone (virtually) tomorrow.
With all that taken care of the ASSUS STRIX GTX 1070 08G Gaming (aka STRIX 1070 08G) easily justifies its slightly higher asking price. Even excluding mining from the equation, as mining is not right for everyone and only you can decide if it is worth the risk, this card is a veritable hungry beast that gobbles up frames per second and spits out the most amazing results we have ever seen from a GX 1070 class card.
Even unlike most ‘custom’ GTX 1070s that come with a factory overclock these paper specifications are mere suggestions to this card and we routinely saw it stay well above its specifications even when not messed with. The reason for this is simple: it has the most over-engineered and over-built cooling solution we have ever seen. Even MSI and their TwinFrozr design comes up short – and that is really saying something. The best example of how powerful this cooling solution is not its ultra-low noise profile, and rather its ultra-low temperature readings. Even when not messing with the stock fan profile this card at ‘factory” overclock settings (1900+MHz in the real world) never breaks 60 degrees Celsius… even after days of 24/7 mining. That is how good this card is.
This amazing amount of temperature headroom means that this card is a true pleasure to overclock. When setting the dial to 11 the end results is still a card that only hits the 70-degree range with factory fan profile and mid 60s when using a more custom ‘aggressive’ fan profile. Even then this card is not loud and rather is darn near whisper quiet. This combination of great cooling with great overclocking means that it can easily punch above its weight class and we see very little reason to even think about the GTX 1070Ti class of cards. Instead to really find its equal buyers will have to think about GTX 1080s… and even here reference edition models loose when people spend the few moments it takes to unleash this true card’s potential.
In other words, yes this card costs more than most GTX 1070s but it is easily the best GTX 1070 we have ever had the pleasure of using. Put another way not only does it justify its asking price it makes justifying the costlier 1070Ti and even 1080 class of cards rather difficult. That makes the ASUS STRIX GTX 1070 08G Gaming a veritable no-brainer. One where you do not need to lose any sleep over worrying about it being a good investment. The only thing you will lose sleep over is whether or not the STRIX GTX 1080 is even a bigger beast or not. Hopefully in the future we can showcase it and some other ASUS video cards and answer this burning question too!
