MSI Gaming GTX 1070 Ti Graphics Card Review

Final Thoughts

Price

The MSI 1070 Ti is available now for just £488.99. That’s about the same as an entry-level GTX 1080, although one of those with a decent cooler and clock speeds will set you back closer to £550. Why buy the GTX 1070 Ti then? Well, £70 isn’t an insignificant amount of money, so if the Ti is better for your budget, it’s a pretty good deal. It’s also about £70 more than the GTX 1070, so it’s really in the middle like we expected.

Overview

The release of this card has left many consumers a little bit confused and some are even disgruntled, as we’ve certainly seen in the comments of our social media. Some have called it a cash grab from Nvidia. However, I’m a little confused with that one given that buying one is completely optional for any consumer. What NVIDIA has done is create a card that sits in the middle of their two most popular cards, and has priced it to be a somewhat average cost between the GTX 1070 and the GTX 1080. To me, this seems like a pretty neat and tidy economics, much in the same way the prices of a car will scale up based on the engine size.

VEGA or 1070 Ti?

The battle over this graphics cards existence does go a little bit deeper, as it was clearly created to take on the AMD Vega 64. In all fairness, it didn’t need to exist to do this, as the current offerings were already pretty damn competitive. AMD still seems to take the lead in DirectX 12 tasks, but this has been true for some time now. For everything else, the MSI card had a small lead over the AMD VEGA. However, knock for knock, I think the cards are pretty closely matched. Of course, this is where Nvidia’s secret Weapon lays.

The Vega 64 card we benchmark was one of the high-end ASUS overclocked models. The reference cards which are priced around the same as the new GTX 1070ti are usually just humble blower cards. Custom cooled models are more expensive. The stock of the good AMD cards is typically more expensive and incredibly hard to get hold of due to ongoing stock problems. Albeit, most of those due to the mining craze rather than AMD being unable to manufacture a good amount.

Right now it doesn’t look like NVIDIA have any issues with manufacturing enough cards for the market, and that’s going to be a big win for their partners such as MSI.

Design

I’d like to say this is one of the best-looking graphics cards on the market, and it kind of is, albeit it’s a design that I’ve seen quite a few times before. It’s not ugly, far from it, but I would have liked to have seen a more neutral design with less red. Of course, that’s very subjective and I’m sure loads of people will love the black and red design.

Should I Buy One?

The inclusion of a full-size backplate, a very competent zero RPM fan mode, high-quality power delivery hardware, good connectivity, LED lighting, and incredible overclocking, certainly add up to a sweet package. Despite how some may feel about the GTX 1070 Ti range, I’m finding it hard to find fault with it given its respective price, performance, and availability. As a consumer, it never hurts to have more choice. it’ll be interesting to see what this release does for the prices of the whole 10xx series of Nvidia graphics cards over the coming weeks and months.

Pros

• Great for high-resolution gaming
• Ideal for high framerate gaming
• Cool and quiet performance
• Zero RPM fan mode to 60c
• Overclocking monster
• LED/RGB lighting

Cons

• None

Neutral

• DX12 still a struggle for Nvidia, but that’s hardly a deal breaker right now
• RGB lighting on logo, but fixed red LED lighting in fins limits customisation