Is a 1070 enough for a 1440p G-sync monitor?

Hi people, need some thoughts on this. My current monitor is an ASUS 24 in 1920x1200 that’s probably over 5 years old. I want to upgrade to G-sync one (probably the Dell one that’s gotten a lot of good buzz, despite being a TN panel and not an IPS one: https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Gaming-S2716DG-LED-Lit-Monitor/dp/B0149QBOF0 ).

So given that rather modest ambition, should I go for a 1070, a 1070 Ti or a 1080? The price of a 1070 vs a 1080 MSI Gaming X is right around 100 bucks (435 vs 535 after a $25 MIR this month). I’m a little leery of going for the 1070 Ti, given how new it is.

Datapoints: my mobo is an ASUS Z170-A and the CPU is an i7-6700. 16 GB of 3000 MHz DDR4 RAM. The games I’d be playing would be stuff like the current big AAA games (AC Origins, Wolfenstein II, etc. but also older ones, at native resolution or at the highest one supported). And my current card is a 970 (also a twin-fan MSI).

Thanks for any advice.

José aka Papageno

Any of the three will provide a fine 1440p gaming experience, but given that the 1070ti is only a $30 premium over the 1070 right now, it seems like an obvious value choice to me.

If the 1070 was selling anywhere close to its MSRP of $380 it would be a much more attractive proposition.

I’ll concur with the 1070 Ti as the price/performance sweetspot. 1440p @144Hz can happily take all the processing power you throw at it, depending on how you adjust the quality settings.

I have a 1070 with a 3440x1440 100hz monitor, and it’s a great experience. I’m sure you’d be fine with a 1070, but the price difference is low enough that you might as well get the extra perf.

I just got my 27" 1440p ASUS g-sync display (it’s freaking dreamy) and I have a 1080 GTX. I like playing everyhing as maxed out as the options will let me, and usually I get around 50-80 fps depending on the game, some games (like Bioshock Infinite) the max fps during a benchmark will be in the 100s but in the real world I get around 60fps @1440p.

With that in mind, now that my display can achieve much higher refresh rates, I just ordered a 1080ti FTW3. I want to raise that 50-80 up to 70-100 average for any given game, and this seems like the card that gets that done at 1440p. The 1080 gtx is a fine, fine card, I’m really just doing this because the funds fell into my lap this year, otherwise I’d have been totally content with 50-80fps and g-sync.

Though seeing some games, like The Witcher 3, run at 90fps or higher decided me - the more fps the better. 60 is great, but 90 feels substantially better, more so than I’d have believed.

Yeah, it’s subtle but I do find 90 noticeably better than 60. I really can’t tell the difference between 90 and 120 or 144 though.

Ditto. I wouldn’t want to go back to a 60 fps limit, but diminishing returns kick in fast for me above 80 or so.

High frame and refreshrates are cool and all, but what really matters is frametime consistency and minimum framerates. A locked 30fps feels OK. Worse than 60, but not terrible. Thing is, if it sometimes even rarely dips to 25, that’s jarring as hell and feels like garbage. That’s why I have a high-end GPU and adaptive sync monitor, to prop up games in times of high stress.

The cheapest 1070 Ti I’m seeing that’s not a Zotac is around 470, say for this one at Newegg (priced the same at Amazon, I think): EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti DirectX 12 08G-P4-5671-KR

What monitor is it and what did it set you back, BTW? TN or IPS? Someone over at ArsTechnica’s forums suggested an Acer IPS panel that goes for almost 800 bucks, which feels pretty extravagant to me vs. the Dell TN panel that goes for a bit over 500 bucks.

Remember 1070ti cards cannot be factory overclocked or binned in any way. So if you pay more than the minimum it’s only for the cooling. If you don’t overclock that doesn’t matter; if you do probably blow an extra $20 for the EVGA SC3 cooler.

Cheapest 1070ti, $450:

Cheapest 1070, $415:

Yeah, I got the ASUS version of the ACER you are probably referring to, IPS 1440p 165hz for $750 on Amazon ($799 MSRP). It’s a beast, but I was NOT giving up my IPS colors and viewing angles. I know the Dell you are looking at because I looked at it, but no IPS no sale for me. Once you go IPS it’s hard to go back to it, especially since it would be sitting side by side with my previous IPS display, so it would be even more noticeably washed out by comparison.

To me a good display is one of the best investments you can make - video cards, even CPU’s and motherboards, come and go but a good display can last for so much longer, even if it just becomes a secondary display (like my beloved 27" Dell Ultrasharp IPS display just did).

(off camera pic)

Thanks for the links, @stusser . I’ve never bought one of those blower-type cards before but I guess it couldn’t hurt to try one. My only concern would be that it would get warmer than an open card with two fans, and that when it did the single fan would get loud.

Those are some pretty pictures. Dammit, why don’t I have infinite money? ;-) Ah, what the hell, maybe I’ll go for the 470 Ti to save some scratch and spring for the fancy monitor. As you say it would last longer.

Ditto

It will absolutely get warmer and the fan will be louder, but all the hot air will be exhausted out of your case. That will only happen while gaming of course, so not sure why you’d care. At idle it should be silent.

If you do plan to overclock-- for a substantial performance gain-- I wouldn’t get a blower fan.

But if I go for the 1070 Ti, overclocking is off the table anyway, so problem solved! :-)

No, you can overclock it yourself. They just can’t factory overclock it, because Nvidia was concerned that it would be just as fast as a stock 1080.

Oh, OK-- which is the EVGA card with the “SC3 cooler” you mentioned? I looked at the 1070 TI’s on Newegg and all I could find was ACX 3.0 cooling. It has SC earlier in the name on Amazon – it’s the same one I linked to above from Newegg, I think: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B076S4RH6K/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1510195349&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=1070+ti&dpPl=1&dpID=51PLpT-02fL&ref=plSrch

Yeah, that’s the one. ACX not SC. All the various arbitrary gamey acronyms sound the same.

I bought the MSI 1070. It’s REALLY QUIET.

The fan doesn’t even turn on till you hit 70 Celcius. I thought mine was defective, but I turned the temperature monitor on and I almost don’t hear it even playing games.

It’s actually pretty low power (For a video card. quick check, 150 W. For comparison, the thunderbirds and P4 spaceheaters were around ~120 W. But we use big fat fans now instead of shitty ones.)

edit:

to be exact, I got the “GTX 1070 Gaming X 8G”. The product line is confusing, I don’t know if the other ones are as quiet.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01GXOX3SW/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&th=1

I have an FE 1070 (so, as bog standard as it gets with the impeller fan). All of my system components are quiet and I run the case fans on low (audible but not loud). I don’t ever hear the fan on the 1070. So assuming the heat generated by the Ti is similar, I’m not surprised.