Exotic with display: Colorful iGame GTX 1070 Ti VulkanX Top in review

Although Colorful has not owned a German distribution for years, you can still buy these cards as long as you are willing to get involved in Chinese online shops and also take import duties into account. However, one also somehow orders the cat in the bag: a return is either difficult or it is (almost) impossible. Guarantee services are regulated by the dear God and by atheists the garbage can.

For the very brave, however, there is at least the chance to stand out visually and technically from the crowd with the usual suspects. In our case, was this a good idea? We shall see, because that is what we are testing for.

Delivery

The scope of delivery is correct, because there are various gimmicks and giveaways in the form of a multifunctional tool (even usable), a bit set (unhardened and therefore rather questionable) and a few gloves, which was rather proportioned for Asian hands. A good Central European man’s hand becomes an unwanted rip-off, but that was it with the white splendor. These gloves are therefore like the snow this winter: looking at it is allowed, but for more it is not. So we used our own again.

Important preliminary remarks

Since the actual performance of all board partner cards of the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti ex works has to be very similar due to the fixed base and boost offset for all manufacturers, the real achieved results depend more on the actual achieved in practice. Boost cycle, and thus indirectly from the cooling and primarily also the quality of the respective chip.

Each test based on benchmark bars is therefore only a random snapshot of a single specimen. This is precisely why we have focused on the actual technical implementation of each model and have been able to document this very well with our equipment.

Within the necessary tolerance ranges, it is definitely NOT possible that the performance of a particular card could be preceded by all others. We have therefore no longer used a manufacturer’s name for the benchmarks, because according to chip quality, any card from any manufacturer can tend to the lower or upper performance limit.

Software

The manufacturer offers a one-click OC via software (iGameZone) to circumvent these restrictions imposed by Nvidia, but we would rely on a real, manual OC. However, this is also associated with annoying noises, as we will see in a while.

This software is also used to configure the display with different output values and display modes. In addition, various full RGB light effects can be adapted to the LED installed almost everywhere (e.g. fan recesses or the back at the end of the card)

Unboxing, dimensions and connections

We will discuss the exact board and cooling design separately later. The most important features are first summarized in a table:

Exterior views

The radiator cover is made of painted light metal, although it can be seen at first glance that the whole story, however visually striking it may be, is aerodynamically and thermodynamically a low flight against the evening sun in Witcher 3.

The following tests will show once again how pointless it is to test cards only in the open bench table. Depending on the design, possible vulnerabilities and weaknesses of the radiator design only appear in the built-in state. Therefore, it is imperative to test and contrast both in the end.

After all, whocovers the two 9 cm and the middle 8 cm fans so tamely, creates counterproductive vortices and audible air breaks of the next generation, unfortunately. Form follows function? Probably not, at least not in the built-in state.

The card with its 1327 grams is already a small heavyweight. The height of 12.5 cm is average, but the installation depth of 4.8 cm is quite baroque, as you block almost three slots.

The back of the board is covered by a one-piece, blackened aluminium backplate with various painted color applications, which has various ventilation slots and openings. For this backplate, you have to plan for at least another five millimeters depth on the back, which could be important for multi-GPU systems.

The top of the card has a printed “GeForce GTX” lettering, as well as a full-color LCD display, which can display various status information and whose output can also be controlled via the supplied software (see above). In addition, we find two 180° rotated, 8-pin external PCIe power supply connections at the end of the graphics card.

The end of the map shows, like its underside, that the slats are vertically aligned and thus no air flow towards the end of the map or Slot aperture goes. Almost half are pressed towards the motherboard, which is not really the evolutionary crown. However, one can now argue about what is counterproductive in the end, because multiple curved heatpipes for a horizontal design do not make the transport of waste heat exactly more efficient.

The slot aperture offers a total of five outputs, of which a maximum of four can be operated together (multi-monitor setup). In addition to the dual-link DVI-D (no analog signal looped through!), there are two HDMI 2.0 outputs and two DisplayPort 1.4 ports on the back. The rest of the slot aperture is provided with some openings for the air outlet, which hardly fulfils a real function.

The switch is used to switch to a second BIOS. Due to Nvidia’s restrictions, this BIOS only includes a higher Power Target, which is good for a few MHz more out-of-the-box, but then also causes higher noise levels.

Specifications

Since the ex-factory specifications must be the same for all GeForce GTX 1070 Ti, the following table applies equally to all cards:

Test system and measurement methods

The new test system and the methodology have already been described in great detail in the basic article “How We Test Graphics Cards” (English: “How We Test Graphics Cards”) and therefore, for the sake of simplicity, we now only refer to this detailed Description. So if you want to read everything again, you are welcome to do so. However, we have improved CPU and cooling once again in order to largely exclude possible CPU bottle necks for this fast card.

If you are interested, the summary in table form quickly provides a brief overview: