EVGA GTX 1070Ti SuperClocked Black Edition

To help keep the hate mail to a minimum let’s start this closing statement with our usual waiver. If you find an EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 SC (or similar class of card) or even just an EVGA GeForce GTX 1070Ti FTW2 (or similar class of card) for the same as the EVGA 1070Ti SC BE … get the higher performance model. It may actually occur as the GeForce GTX 1070Ti was not a class of cards all that well understood and was much maligned. In the more likely circumstance of finding one of these EVGA 1070Ti SC BE’s going rather cheap you will not be disappointed if you decide to buy it. At games we doubt anyone would notice the difference between this card overclocked vs the typical reference GeForce GTX 1080. The fewer Cuda cores or not.

The reason for this simple. The typical NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 comes with rather mediocre ram… whereas the GTX 1070Ti comes with only the best of the best of GDDR5. As with most things a seemingly better paper specification does not matter all that much in the real world. This RAM overclocks to darn near parity and has lower latency. That nullifies most of the arguments in favor of the more expensive GeForce GTX 1080 class of cards. There are exceptions but for the most part the ‘late comer’ may be the red-headed step-child of the 10-series but it is a winning design. This is especially true for (some) alt coin miners as the RAM speed is what matters and here the difference is very, very minor to say the least.

Now with all that said there are a few caveats to keep in mind when choosing this card over more expensive options. First and foremost is the ACX 3 custom cooling solution is not as smart as the ICX based designs. This means the EVGA 1070Ti SC BE components (not the core) run hotter than its ICX brethren. This translates either to running custom fan curve profiles (easy enough via software) or having hotter running components. Heat is the true killer of most cards. As such the EVGA 1070Ti SC BE does make more noise than its ICX brethren when run at proper fan speeds.

This is not being entirely fair to the EVGA 1070Ti SC BE as it still is a quiet card. GTX 1070Ti’s are not fire breathers by nature and even when overclocked are fairly easy to keep cool. The same can not be said of blower style cards… that are most likely going to be found in the same price range as this hidden gem. This lack of truly advanced temperature sensors is where – most of – the disparity between the EVGA GeForce GTX 1070Ti FTW2 and the EVGA GeForce GTX 1070Ti SuperClocked Black Edition stem from.

Put another way yes there are some sacrifices that have to be made, but the overall abilities of it make this card one heck of a value now at retail prices and will only get better in the near future. So we recommend being on the look out for this card… we know we will be trying our best to pick up half a dozen more to add to our ‘farm’.