2016 seems to be the year of graphics cards hitting the market in force and the GTX 1070 stands out to be the clear winner in thus far for performance per dollar. The MSI GTX 1070 Gaming X comes in at a very affordable $525 while offering excellent cooling and a strong potential for overclocking.
The stock MSI Gaming X cards are packaged with MSI Afterburner and MSI Gaming App. These two pieces of software are critical for getting the most out of your MSI graphics card. In the enthusiast circle MSI Afterburner is known for being the go-to overclocking tool but if you’re worried about frying your card the Gaming App has three safe clock speeds available.
When staying at the standard clock speeds you’re looking at roughly 20% increase in framerates over last generation’s top tier cards which can still be had for nearly double the price of the MSI GTX 1070 Gaming X. While those speeds are a great bonus these speeds come at a cost, and that cost is size. The GTX 1070 comes in at around 13.5”x10.5”x3.5”. This card likely won’t fit in smaller cases, if it does though it might suffer from restricted airflow.
We also ran into the issue of the MSI Gaming App not being compatible with our system (specs below), while this is disappointing we were easily able to overclock far past MSI’s OC mode yielding an extra 5% performance over their clock speed.
If you’re into the black and red theme the GTX 1070 offers up RGB support though the red “fins” are stuck to red and the MSI logo is stuck to white. These can be changed to a variety of patterns but that seems to be the limit thus far.
Pros:
- Bang for buck
- Great looking (black and red)
- Easily Overclockable
Cons
- Packaged Software can be picky
- Large card
Overall this card is an excellent option for gaming enthusiasts, especially for the price point. When paired with my current system we’re yielding very strong framerates when compared to the AMD R9 390X which this card was built to take out.
Specs:
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro
CPU: AMD FX-6200 @ 4.7GHz
GPU: MSI GTX 1070 Gaming X
Ram: G.Skill DDR3 – 32GB
Motherboard: ASUS 970 Pro Gaming Aura
| Max Screen Resolution | 7680 x 4320 |
|---|---|
| Memory Speed | 8192 MHz |
| Graphics Coprocessor | Nvidia GeForce |
| Chipset Brand | NVIDIA |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 8 GB |
