For the GeForce GTX 10-series GPUs, MSI has adopted a new naming scheme for its Gaming-series video cards that correlates with the last few letters of the alphabet; the nearer the "Z," the better the card. Now, it would be funny if MSI actually had "A" through "Z" variants, but it actually has just "X" and "Z" cards...so far, at least. We've already sampled the X versions of its GTX 1080 (the GeForce GTX 1080 Gaming X 8G) and GTX 1060 (the GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming X 6G), so we were excited to check out the flagship card in the GTX 1070 line, the MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Gaming Z 8G ($469), dubbed "Gaming Z." (There's also an X variant in the GTX 1070 line.) Since we already had a solid grasp on what the Gaming X package entailed, we were curious to see how MSI raised the bar for the Gaming Z.
Comparing the GTX 1070 Gaming X to the GTX 1070 Gaming Z, we noted a few big differences. First, the Gaming Z has higher overall maximum "boost" clock speeds, so in the card's "OC mode," the Z goes up to 1,860MHz, while the X goes to, ahem, just 1,797MHz. In the card's one-step-down "Gaming mode," the Z card spins at up to 1,835MHz, while the X runs at 1,771MHz. These modes are switchable using a piece of software that MSI uses across all of these new cards, an easy utility called MSI Gaming App.
In either mode in the MSI Gaming App, the Z manages a decent overclock, but the software is aimed mainly at those who don't like to overclock manually, since in our experience with the GTX 1080 and GTX 1060, the X and Z cards can reach speeds well beyond the default overclocks granted by the MSI Gaming App. To do that, you have to tweak the values yourself using an overclocking utility with granular settings, such as MSI's stalwart Afterburner software.
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Incidentally, also in the MSI Gaming App is a "Silent mode" setting, and under that, both the GTX 1070 Gaming Z and X cards dial to the same clock speeds as a reference-version or Founders Edition GTX 1070: a 1,506MHz base clock, and a 1,683MHz boost clock.
So much for the clock details. Aside from higher clock speeds, the GTX 1070 Gaming Z model also has three RGB LEDs on the card chassis, compared to the Gaming X cards' two LEDs. The main difference is that on the X card, you can only change the colors of one of those LEDs, while the Z card has a third LED, an MSI badge on the backplate that has RGB lighting under it. Unlike on the Gaming X card, the placement of this LED on the part of the card that faces up shines some light up inside the chassis. In a windowed case, it looks seriously cool.
Apart from that, the visual differences between the X and Z versions of the 1070 are minimal. And the X and Z cards feature the same excellent software package, and 8GB of GDDR5 memory.
So how much do the extra bling and clock cycles cost? According to our searches of Newegg and several other e-tailers, about $20 separates the X and Z cards. That's a pretty sweet deal, if you ask us, though you might not be able to buy a GTX 1070 Gaming Z card for a while, as stock was spotty when we wrote this. (No big surprise, given what we have seen with the GTX 1070 and 1080 so far in general.)
This card is also the same physical size as the GTX 1080 Gaming X card....
In contrast, compared to the Nvidia Founders Edition of the GTX 1070 ($399.00 at NVIDIA) , which is essentially the "base model" of the GTX 1070 line, the MSI GTX 1070 Gaming Z has much higher clock speeds out of the box if you install the MSI Gaming App and click a few buttons. It also has more and cooler visual flair if PC lighting is your thing, runs literally cooler as it has two fans instead of just one (as long as you don't mind them blowing inside the case, versus the Founders Edition's blow-through design), and good dedicated software. Overall, that's quite a different package than the one put together by Nvidia. The Founders Edition is mostly plug-it-and-forget-it, with overclocking possible, but up to you; the GTX 1070 Gaming Z is a tweakers' and modders' delight, but also good for those that want easy, one-click overclocking.
Of course the million-dollar, or at least hundred-dollar, question is, what kind of overall price difference are we talking about here versus other, non-MSI GTX 1070 cards? Is the Gaming Z exorbitantly priced compared to the Founders Edition? Because of Nvidia's unusual pricing structure for its 10-series cards, the good news is that the GTX 1070 Gaming Z is priced just about the same as the Founders Edition, which may not be great news for Nvidia's direct sales of the FE card but is good stuff for gamers. Nvidia has priced the GTX 1070 Founders Edition at $449, while the MSRP for basic GTX 1070 partner boards starts at $379 and goes up from there, depending on features. Of course, because many of the partner boards are souped-up cards, most cost more than $379, and therefore have ended up in the same ballpark as the Founders Edition.
For the Gaming Z, at this writing it was priced at $469, a $20 premium over MSI's Gaming X version of the GTX 1070 (and the Nvidia Founders Edition GTX 1070) and a $30 premium over the company's vanilla "GTX 1070 Gaming" model, with no letter after it. Looking at pricing online, in early August 2016, $469 was the upper range of the market for air-cooled GTX 1070 cards; for example, we saw the GTX 1070 version of Zotac's Amp Extreme card also at that price. (The Amp Extremes are usually among the biggest and baddest overclocked partner boards; see, for example, our review of the Zotac GeForce GTX 1080 Amp Extreme ($8,196.91 at Amazon) .)
Therefore, for the price this card ought to be as good as it gets—or close to it—for GTX 1070 boards in terms of features, specifications, software, and pricing. Let's see how this beastie runs!
Software
Since we've already reviewed the MSI Gaming App on previous occasions, and nothing has changed for the Z variant, we won't go into extreme detail on it once again. See our review of the MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Gaming X 8G ($598.00 at Amazon) for all the dirt. For a quick overview, though, the package includes a host of features of mixed utility, outlined below.
OSD. This is an onscreen display function that works as an overlay and shows you GPU temperatures, GPU-utilization levels, voltages, clock speeds, and more. It's extremely handy and only appears when you're running 3D games. We love this.
Eye Rest. This changes the color of the display to be more suitable for gaming, movie watching, and other scenarios. We wouldn't use it much ourselves, but it's easier than fiddling with the presets accessible through most monitor OSDs, for certain.
LEDs. You can change the color of the LEDs on this card within the app. One oddity is that you can't change the color of the "stripes" around the card's fans; you can only change the other lights to match the stripes.
Mode Screen. This lets you overclock (or downclock) the card with one click, selecting OC, Gaming, or Silent mode.
One oddity in the software is you can "pin" five apps to the control center, but there are six total.
Fan Boost. This simply spins up the fans temporarily to high speed in a big burst for maximum cooling. We couldn't figure out a proper application for this, even when overclocking.
Zero Frozr. This lets you toggle a "silent-fan" function, which means the fans don't spin when the GPU is below 60 degrees C. When you're not gaming, that's ideal. It's a handy feature, and we'd suggest having it enabled all the time.
Dragon Eye. This lets you watch videos on YouTube or Twitch while gaming, if you're able to multitask in that way. (Kids today...)
Dragon Eye lets you watch YouTube or Twitch while gaming.
Overall, the MSI software package is one of the best we've tested among AIB makers' cards. It's useful, it's easy to use, and it increases the value of MSI's offering in tangible ways.
A Word About Performance Testing
Things are in some flux these days when it comes to testing video cards, as there are two emerging technologies that this and other new-generation cards were built for that are difficult to test.
The first is DirectX 12 (DX12), which is just now gaining momentum. There are relatively few real-world benchmarks for it. Still, DX12 will likely be the standard graphics API in the future, and this card, given its price, was designed to last for at least a few years. So it's important to know if a card can handle DX12 well before buying.
We tested the GTX 1070 with several recent DX12-capable games we had on hand, including Hitman (the 2016 edition), Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Ashes of the Singularity. We tested a load of games using DirectX 11, too, because that API will still be in wide use for at least another year, and probably much longer.
The second technology that's difficult to test at present is virtual reality, or VR for short. The GeForce GTX 1070 was built to run VR twice as fast as its predecessor, and in all the launch presentation documents, Nvidia specifically emphasized the card's VR performance. However, there are two major competing VR headsets for PC-based VR, in the form of the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive, with more coming to market soon, and it's been difficult—so far—to establish a lone test that is applicable to all VR scenarios.
Steam has its own VR benchmark, but at the time of this writing, it didn't output anything beyond a "Fidelity Score" and a vague "Not Ready," "Capable," or "Ready" indication. In that test, the GTX 1070 Gaming Z reported back that it was "Ready," and a VR Fidelity Score of 11. That said, since the baseline recommendation for both the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift is a Core i5 processor and a GeForce GTX 970 graphics card, the GTX 1070 and the Core i7 CPU in our test bed should easily pass muster for VR.
Benchmarking specialist Futuremark is also working on a VRMark test, but it was only in beta when we wrote this. We'll have to wait for future, finalized VR benchmarks. But if you're considering buying a GTX 1070 primarily for VR, you can rest assured that current VR-ready games and those launching in the near future will run on this card just fine. It well exceeds the minimum recommendations.
Finally, since we've already reviewed the Founders Edition of the GTX 1070, the most interesting aspect of its performance is whether or not this MSI card is any faster. Note that we tested this card in OC mode, the top preset as indicated in the MSI Gaming App. MSI shipped this review card preset to OC mode, but it's important to realize that MSI's retail cards come preset to Gaming mode, with slightly lower clock speeds, as we detailed in the introduction to this review. Retail buyers have to install the Gaming App and click the OC mode button to activate it.
We opted to test in OC mode and not downclock the card, as engaging this overclocked mode is as simple as clicking one button, and it ran stable in our tests. We also suspect it's the big reason a buyer hunts out a premium card like this from an AIB maker like MSI in the first place, rather than opting for a reference/Founders Edition card. We should note that the Founders Edition can be manually overclocked, too, just like the Gaming Z, but you have to know what you're doing and use a third-party utility to do it. With the Gaming Z, anyone can just install the MSI Gaming App software and click once to overclock.
Performance
We started off our testing with Futuremark's 2013 version of 3DMark, specifically the suite's Fire Strike subtest. Fire Strike is a synthetic test designed to measure overall gaming performance, and Futuremark has expanded Fire Strike nowadays into three subtests. In the past, we used the basic test (known simply as "Fire Strike"), as well as the more demanding Fire Strike Extreme test. But GPUs like the GTX 1070 are so powerful that we had to move up to the most punishing test, Fire Strike Ultra, which is geared toward simulating the stresses of gaming at 4K.
Right out of the gate, the Gaming Z board soared to the top of the benchmark chart, hitting an impressive 4,480 in 3DMark compared to 4,055 for the Founders Edition. That's quite a boost (around 10 percent), thanks to the overclocked nature of the GTX 1070 Gaming Z card. Keep that 10 percent number in mind.
Sleeping Dogs
Next, we rolled out the very demanding real-world gaming benchmark test built into the title Sleeping Dogs.
This test is hard on video cards, that's for sure, but we still see the Gaming Z pull out a roughly 10 percent lead over the Founders Edition, which in this case allows it to be playable at 4K. The Founders Edition at stock settings was just borderline at 29fps. (Of course, dialing back the game's detail settings would help the FE card rise above 30fps.)
Tomb Raider (2013)
Here, we fired up the 2013 reboot of the classic title Tomb Raider, testing at Ultimate detail and three resolutions.
Again, we see the Gaming Z card throwing down a healthy margin over the Founders Edition card—it's trying hard to earn that extra $20 price premium. Not surprisingly, the only card that was able to best the GTX 1070 Gaming Z was the much more potent GTX 1080. Otherwise, the MSI GTX 1070 Gaming Z rules the roost.
Bioshock Infinite
The popular title Bioshock Infinite isn't overly demanding, as recent games go, but it's a popular one with stellar good looks. In its built-in benchmark program, we set the graphics level to the highest preset (Ultra+DDOF).
On this particular title the Founders Edition ran closer to the Gaming Z at all resolutions. The Z's advantage was whittled down to around 5 percent, so it's possible the test was limited by the CPU, here, rather than the graphics.
Hitman: Absolution
Next up was Hitman: Absolution, which is an aging game but still pretty hard on a video card. (Coming up, we also have testing in the 2016 reboot of Hitman.)
Finally, some interesting results. In this test, the Founders Edition and the Gaming Z actually tied at both 4K and 1440p (give or take a frame per second), which is a first in this round of testing. The Founders Edition was actually faster than the Gaming Z card at 1080p, though only by about 5 percent. That was surprising, since the Gaming Z is generally clocked higher than the FE card. But in this test it had no impact, possibly (again) due to CPU limitations. Then again, playing older games at 1080p is a waste of this card's potential!
Far Cry Primal
Ubisoft's latest open-world first-person hunting game, new for 2016, is one of the most demanding titles we use, thanks to its lush foliage, detailed shadows, and otherwise incredible environments.
At this point in the testing, things are slowly beginning to equalize between the Nvidia GTX 1070 FE card and MSI's golden child. In this test, we saw the Z board outperform the FE card by small margins, less than 5 percent at 4K and 1440p resolutions. Also, once again, the FE card was faster at 1080p resolution.
Ashes of the Singularity
Oxide's Ashes of the Singularity is a bit of a departure as a benchmark, as it's a real-time strategy title, rather than a first-person shooter or a third-person action title. Due to the planet-scale nature of its battle scenes, with hundreds of onscreen tanks, ships, and other implements of future warfare, it can be extremely demanding at high settings. And because of the plethora of rendered units, this game is also more CPU-bound—especially at high settings and resolutions—than most other recent games.
This test saw our results return to the status quo, with the Gaming Z card returning to form with a roughly 10 percent lead over the FE card. What's interesting is the gap between the two cards is very consistent at all three resolutions we use for testing.
Grand Theft Auto V
As one of the most popular game franchises on the planet, Grand Theft Auto really needs no introduction. The fifth "V" installment took a lot longer than many expected to land on the PC. But when it finally did, in early 2015, it brought with it a number of graphical improvements and tweakable visual settings that pushed the game far beyond its console roots.
This test's results were, bluntly, a bit confusing. The FE card was the clear winner at 1080p resolution, where it held about a 6 percent advantage over the Gaming Z. At 1440p, however, the two cards were essentially tied, then at 4K the Gaming Z pulled into the lead. It's hard to say what was the determining factor in one card versus the other being dominant, but it's interesting that they swapped leads at different resolutions.
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Lara Croft rises once again in the early-2016 iteration of Square Enix's long-running action franchise. As our hero works to unfold an ancient mystery (and reveal the secret to immortality) ahead of the ancient and deadly Order of Trinity, she traipses through a slew of complex atmospheric environments, from arid tombs to the frigid Siberian wilderness. A dynamic weather system, and the complexities of Lara's wind-tousled hair, add to the game's visual complexity.
In this grueling game, the Gaming Z is the alpha dog to the FE once again. It's notable that in certain games the Gaming Z has a very predictable 10 percent advantage over the Founders Edition, and that advantage is locked down and repeated at every resolution, while in others, the Gaming Z only outperforms the FE at the high resolutions. We are certain both behaviors are due to the Gaming Z's clock-speed advantage, as all other aspects of the two cards are much alike, as well as the vagaries of the different games. The only X-factor is the very different cooling hardware on the two cards, which might allow one or the other to run at a higher or lower boost clock depending on the situation.
DirectX 12 Tests
It's tough to get any real sense of DirectX 12 performance at this point. When we wrote this in early August 2016, only a few titles were available with DX12 support. And running these games, anecdotally, we saw no graphical differences between the titles running at DX11 versus DX12 settings. In some instances, titles running under DX12 offered performance gains, but elsewhere we saw lesser performance.
In other words, any general conclusions you might draw about DX12 from the below results should be taken with a hunk of salt. DirectX 12 is still in its early stages, and those developers who have implemented it have yet to throw on the spackle and smooth over the cracks. We'll have to wait at least a few more months to say for sure how much of an advantage DX12 offers, and whether it sways things in favor of AMD or Nvidia in any substantive way. Still, because this is a cutting-edge card and DX12 is cutting-edge tech, it's worth taking a look at what it and its competition can do with Microsoft's latest gaming API today. On to the DX12 tests.
Rise of the Tomb Raider (Under DX12)
This sequel to 2013's Tomb Raider is one of the first AAA titles to offer DirectX 12 support. We used the preset labeled Very High for testing.
The Gaming Z started out strong, hitting 75fps at 1440p, which is great for a demanding game at high resolution with everything set so high. We again saw the same roughly 10 percent performance gap between the FE card and the Gaming Z, at least at higher resolutions. At the lower resolution of 1080p, the margin was smaller. The Gaming Z is even nipping at the heels of the much more expensive GTX 1080 on this test, which is nice.
It's also interesting that MSI's GeForce GTX 960 Maxwell card was only able to achieve 4.9fps at 4K in this title—that card debuted at around $250—whereas here we are a year later and a $470 GPU is capable of almost 10 times that level of performance. The GTX 960's 2GB of video memory is almost certainly its primary limiter at those high resolutions.
Hitman (2016, Under DX12)
The newest Hitman title also offers up a DX12 graphics option in its benchmark utility that, like Rise of the Tomb Raider, looked identical to our eyes to the DX11 version.
At lower resolutions, the two GTX 1070 cards were weren't drastically disparate. At higher resolutions, however, that $20 premium pays for itself in street cred as we again see a goodly boost from the Z card.
Ashes of the Singularity (Under DX12)
The strategy title Ashes of the Singularity was among the first to offer DirectX 12 support, even when it was still in beta. (Note: We ran into a glitch with this game in DX12 when testing the GTX 1060 Founders Edition, thus the blank field there.)
This test scaled perfectly, and we saw the Gaming Z outpace its FE brother/rival by the usual increment. It was faster at every resolution, and the scores mimicked what we saw in other tests.
Overclocking
As we mentioned before, with a Founders Edition card, out of the box it runs at the stock speeds dictated by Nvidia, which in the case of the GTX 1070 is 1,506MHz base and 1,683MHz boost. With that in mind, it's worth pointing out that any Nvidia GPU will go above these speeds via GPU Boost, an auto-regulating technology that allows the card to boost as high as it can go according to how much voltage it has to play with, as well as how hot or cool the card is running.
However, GPU Boost is still pretty conservative and will never hit the absolute maximum level the card can theoretically handle. To go beyond what GPU Boost is capable of, you need to manually overclock a Founders Edition card, which isn't difficult once you know how. But not everyone wants to do that, nor see a new card crash a few dozen times in the process of figuring out optimum OC settings. MSI requires extra money for its GPU because it takes much of the guesswork out of this process, and gives you two easy-out buttons for OC and Gaming modes. Clicking either one will overclock the card by about 200MHz automatically.
We found the card running at 2GHz right out of the box in OC mode without touching anything, so GPU Boost was truly going above and beyond on this card. As mentioned, that is how MSI ships review cards; retail cards come in Gaming mode. Either way, though, that is a big jump over what the Founders Edition is capable of out of the box.
However, in pursuit of the ultimate overclock on air cooling, we used MSI's excellent Afterburner utility to juice it a bit further. In the end, we achieved a decent 2,062MHz. That's a tiny bit higher than we saw with the company's Gaming X derivative of the GTX 1080, which only made it to 2,025MHz. Anything approaching 2.1GHz is super, though; if you recall, the "stock" boost clock on this card is 1,683MHz. So our final number is 379MHz beyond that.
An Almost Perfect Variant for High-end Gaming
Overall, the MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Gaming Z is one of those "What's not to love?" graphics cards. The GTX 1070 is already a very powerful GPU in stock trim, and MSI has been able to improve upon it in almost every way possible. First, it cranked up the clocks to levels high enough for the card to be deserving of flagship status. Then, it added plenty of cooling, with a design that's aggressive without being cheesy. And served it up with a helping of excellent software.
We still take issue with MSI putting three LEDs on this card, labeling the product itself as featuring "RGB lighting," and then allowing tweaks only to two of the three LED sets. That somewhat ruins the aesthetic point for lighting/modding aficionados. Disregarding that detail, though, this card is worth the small price premium over the Founders Edition. In fact, the main reason we can see to buy the Founders Edition over this GPU is if you're running your system in a small form factor chassis, and you need the FE card's blower cooler to push heat out of the chassis through the back. Also, if you don't care about LEDs, you can consider the GTX 1070 Gaming X card, which is the same price as the Founders Edition and should deliver much the same performance as the Z model.
The GTX 1070 Gaming Z is an almost perfect GTX 1070 variant for high-end gaming: fast, cool, and quiet, plus tweakable with clean, easy software. LED dressing seals the deal.
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