GeForce RTX 4070 Ti on the way and funny memories: The BIOS tragedy comedy of the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti | Retro

What do you do if a competitive athlete is too good? You tip him a little bit into the tea or steal his laces. For graphics cards such as the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti, the manufacturer still has the BIOS to prevent unwanted results. But the plan doesn’t quite work out this time, because somehow pretty much everything that could have gone wrong went wrong.

But let’s just get back to the graphics chip, which is just too good to squeeze into the narrow gap between the GeForce GTX 1070 and 1080 without any consequences. With 2432 shaders, the GeForce GTX 170 Ti is far above the 1920 shaders of the GeForce GTX 1070 and just below the GeForce GTX 1080 with the 2560 shaders. Since only 8 TMUs are missing, you have to watch how you artificially brake the newcomer. Let’s first take a look at the package and the chip, where we would also like to briefly explain the label:

So much for the chip. Equipped with this basic knowledge, we can now go on a search for traces.

BIOS, BIOS here

In the BIOS, Nvidia stores in the firmware the final clock rates for the base and boost clocks for each of the nine individual steps, the latter being based on an offset. No editor can overwrite this part of the specifications at the moment, because the so-called source BIOS has been protected since Pascal like Fort Knox. If you want to change the clock specifications (and thus also the final performance), Nvidia has to start right here.

EEPROM of a GeForce GTX 1070 Ti with Single BIOS

We suspect that the very first source BIOS that Nvidia has distributed to the board partners has been internally touted with the in-house Founders Edition. But the GeForce GTX 1080 FE was already in the thermal limit, so that it could never play out its full performance if you didn’t let the fans start fully manually. Since the same behavior could be observed with the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti FE, this could also be the reason for the following tragic comedy of the BIOS exchange actions.

In order to be able to use a BIOS as a board partner, it must first pass Nvidia’s so-called “Green Light” examination, based, of course, on the immutable source BIOS. Depending on the chip type, the power consumption, temperature and noise generation, as well as the power limit and the resulting performance are measured standardized and evaluated with the Nvidia software. Only then can Nvidia release such a BIOS for production.

First BIOS

Since you have to prepare and start an industrial production according to a well-defined plan, the first official confirmations of the firmware for many board partners were just right. But: with their original 1620 MHz base and 1709 MHz boost clock, the significantly better cooled board partner cards were suddenly in absolute strike distance to the GeForce GTX 1080 FE and manually overclocked even in places significantly faster!

Only with memory, the GeForce GTX 1080 has a certain advantage due to the GDDRX5, which then saves it from the blaze with the 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme.

Reason enough for Nvidia’s PR department to pull the strings right away. Unfavorable: some manufacturers had not only already developed their OC variants and had suitable packaging manufactured, but tens of thousands of produced cards have already been delivered – it should be noted across manufacturers. It is also thanks to this circumstance that we were able to compare the hardware from different sources as well as the firmware. Because even if the manufacturers had adapted everything afterwards, there were still some old firmware versions in some dual BIOSen or one caught a card from the first week of production.

But the way to the final BIOS led through different stages and about the hustle and bustle in many R&D departments we want to remain politely silent. In fact, Nvidia not only set a lower clock, but also reduced the Power Target from 180 watts (manually expandable by 20% to 216 watts respectively). 133% and 240 watts) to the 150 watts of the GeForce GTX 1070 (150 to 180 watts). Only that it turned out to be too little, since many board partner cards of the GTX 1070 have much higher values and thus there was a risk of cannibalization from below. You can turn and turn it as you like – there’s actually not enough space for a well-placed model.

In the end, Nvidia decided to return to the original 180 watts and instead reduce the ratio between base and boost clock, thus reducing the offset and also reducing the base clock somewhat. Out-of-the-box, this is about the same, but leaves plenty of room for manual overclocking.

Latest BIOS

What none of the entire BIOS versions ever released, however, was the small voltage peak that could be administered with suitable tools besides the greatly increased Power Target. This was deliberately lacking from the outset.

This results in the following boost steps for the current table:

It affects the board partners, not the customers

In the end, the situation was more than annoying for the board partners, because this shaky balance only works if you no longer allow any factory overclocking. And that’s exactly how it happened. However, as a board partner, you can no longer sell completely what you are used to. Without factory overclocking, however, certain OC models or entire product lines, such as Gigabytes Aorus cards or Palits GameRock Premium Edition, no longer meaning at all.

Then you downgrade the GeForce GTC 1070 Ti from an Aorus to a G1 Gaming and squeeze the long cooler of the G1 Gaming with far too long backplate onto the much shorter Aorus board. Looks weird, but it has to work like this. The newly developed board, along with the 90° chip, is full of interesting ideas. Or at Gainward you can turn a GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Phoenix Golden Sample (GS) into a simple Phoenix without GS. The first boxes are also available with GS-Signet, box and seals and the buyer is delighted by the free optical pep. As a manufacturer, you cannot throw everything away just because the chip provider’s specifications mutate into a ball flash in the coordinate system.

Others grab the OC abbreviation in their name and replace it on the homepage and the box with creative fantasy names such as xxx Top instead of xxx OC. This series could, by the way, be continued at will throughout the manufacturer.

Annoying for the board partners is this artificial brake, for the customer it only plays a minor role if he uses suitable tools to put clock and Power Target back to where the card works fastest. We will show you in a while why this whole hickhack of absurdity can hardly be surpassed.

The customer is pleased

The buyer is the laughing third party at the end, because the card runs with air cooling anyway into some limits anyway, be it tension or power. The basic or boost clock ex works are uninteresting like a newspaper from last week. We have tested the first and current BIOS for maximum limits and found exactly the same upper limit for all tested maps, which are available at approx. 2038 to 2063 MHz to keep Witcher 3 stable for a long time.

To the delight of interested parties, we can state that it simply does not matter for a manual overclocking at the customer, whether you use the first BIOS or the now published one – the result will be identical. Instead of 100 to 150 more basic clocks, in tools such as the afterburner, you simply use 150 to 200 MHz and increase the power target to the maximum of 120% or more. 133%, depending on the card. Nvidia has drawn the upper limit at 240 watts and thus also used a value that can almost never be reached anyway.

The new “7900 GTO” is practically ready, which was not allowed to be a real GTX at the time. With the manually overclocked GeForce GTX 1070 Ti, however, the performance of a non-female only slightly overclocked GeForce GTX 1080. In the end, however, the price of the road will have to decide on the potential bargain factor.

Let’s just be surprised, because the price of 469 euros, which is set as an EIA, is at the level of the cheapest Geforce GTX 1080 and therefore actually far too high. At 430 Euros and below, we see a real alternative to the GeForce GTX 1080. For the GeForce GTX 1070 you will probably have to put up an extra program in the end, because their current prices will be unsustainable in this form.