Tag: gtx

ASUS ROG Zephyrus review: Gaming laptops will never be the same again

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus is an entirely new breed of gaming notebook. It packs in the most powerful laptop graphics hardware on the market, NVIDIA’s GTX 1080 , in a frame that’s almost half the size of similar machines. Mostly, that’s due to being one of the first notebooks to feature NVIDIA’s Max-Q design standard, which is laser-focused on slimming down gaming laptops with beefy GPUs. That does lead to some compromises, especially around battery life, but the Zephyrus is still a wonder to behold. Hardware The Zephyrus, which is part of ASUS’s Republic of Gamers brand, is surprisingly thin at 17.9 mm thick. You won’t mistake it for an ultraportable like the MacBook or ASUS’s Zenbook , but it also doesn’t betray itself as a completely decked out gaming laptop, like Dell’s Alienware lineup. It clocks in at 4.93-pounds, 3 pounds lighter than the Razer Blade Pro , which was considered lightweight for a gaming machine when it came out last year. When it’s closed, the Zephyrus features one of the most subtle and attractive designs we’ve seen from an ASUS gaming laptop. The only elements that really stand out are its polished metal lid and copper vents, but otherwise it doesn’t call attention to itself. It’s slim and unassuming enough to fade into the background, but it packs in a ton of power. Open it up, and the laptop’s gaming DNA becomes clear. The bottom rear of the Zephyrus expands as you lift up the lid, creating a noticeable gap that pushes the screen up at an angle, and allows for better air intake. That open portion of the laptop also rocks red LED lights when you plug it in. (The mantra for most gaming machines: Got some empty space? Put an LED on it.) Cool air comes in from below, while hot air is exhausted through vents on the sides. ASUS also developed thinner and stronger fan blades made out of a new polymer to push air throughout the system. The company worked together with NVIDIA to design its cooling technology, and it shows. There’s clearly more ingenuity involved with removing heat from the system than we’ve typically seen from ASUS. And you can expect future Max-Q laptops to be similarly inventive. The laptop feels sturdy, overall, though I could see potential problems with its expanding bottom half. All it takes is one fall from a desk, or one spilled drink, to throw a wrench into the meticulous cooling design. Thankfully, there’s none of the sloppy build quality we’ve seen from other ASUS laptops, like the Zenbook 3. Port-wise, the Zephyrus is a bounty. It includes four USB 3.1 connections, a USB-C Thunderbolt 3 port, a full-sized HDMI connection, and a headphone jack. And since the laptop is too thin for a full-sized Ethernet port (which is mind boggling, to be honest), ASUS includes a USB converter in the box. We don’t normally mention AC adapters in reviews, but in the Zephyrus’s case, it seems necessary: It’s huge! Honestly, it seems more reminiscent of a PC power supply than a laptop’s. That’s probably due to the massive amount of juice the laptop needs when you’re gaming. Keyboard and trackpad Chris Velazco/AOL Unlike most other laptops, ASUS pushed the Zephyrus’s keyboard and trackpad all the way to its front edge. That allowed the company to place all of its high-powered hardware towards the back of the case — in particularly, the CPU and GPU — so it could all be cooled at once. It took me a while to get used to the Zephyrus’s strange keyboard orientation, and even longer to adjust to its trackpad, which sits to the right of the keys instead of below it. The keyboard is comfortable to type on, even though the keys have a very short travel distance. Not surprisingly, it was better suited to gaming than typing. Moving around first person shooters using the WASD keys felt just as responsive as my desktop keyboard. There’s also an array of LEDs behind every key, which you can customize using an app. ASUS bundles a comfortable wrist-rest in the box, which is useful if you’re worried about repetitive stress injuries. While the trackpad placement is a bit strange, we’ve seen similar laptops like the Razer Blade Pro place it on the right side as well. When it comes to games, I actually found it more useful than a typical trackpad, since it almost mimics the feeling of using a mouse. It’s surprisingly smooth and responsive — in many ways it felt more accurate than a standard trackpad. Obviously, it’s not something you’d use for an FPS, but it gives you a way to play slower paced games in areas where you can’t fit a gaming mouse. You can also transform the trackpad into a virtual numberpad by hitting the key right above it, which some gamers might appreciate for hitting hotkeys. It wasn’t as accurate as having a physical numberpad, but it felt more convenient than just relying on the standard top number row. Display and sound The Zephryus’s 15.6-inch, 1080p screen doesn’t seem particularly impressive at first, especially when other gaming laptops include 4K displays these days. But its 120Hz refresh rate and support for NVIDIA’s G-Sync technology should be appealing to gamers, since it allows for smooth play no matter what framerate you’re getting. The screen shined when playing colorful, fast-paced games like Overwatch and Doom . There wasn’t any tearing at all — it’s an experience more reminiscent of a high-end gaming monitor, than a standard laptop screen. It’s clear that ASUS wanted to focus on speed instead of pixel count, but it would have been nice to see a slightly higher resolution to take advantage of the laptop’s bountiful horsepower. 4K would have been nice, especially since the Zephyrus can actually play games at such a high resolution, but even 1, 440p would have been a decent compromise. A 1080p screen feels dated, and it’ll seem even more limiting over the next few years. While the Zephyrus’s display was bright enough for indoor gameplay, it didn’t fair as well outdoors. I appreciated its matte finish, which minimized reflections, but just don’t expect to be fragging your friends while sitting in the park. The laptop’s speakers, which are towards the front near the keyboard, are loud, yet tinny. You wouldn’t want to use them for any serious music or movie sessions. That doesn’t matter much for games, since most people will just plug in an elaborate pair of headphones, but it’s a disappointment nonetheless. Performance and battery life PCMark 7 PCMark 8 (Creative Accelerated) 3DMark 11 3DMark (Sky Diver) ATTO (top reads/writes) ASUS ROG Zephyrus (2.8GHz Intel Core i7-7700HQ, NVIDIA GTX 1080) 6, 030 7, 137 E20, 000 / P17, 017 / X7, 793 31, 624 3.4 GB/s / 1.64 GB/s Alienware 15 (2.8GHz Intel Core i7-7700HQ, NVIDIA GTX 1070) 6, 847 7, 100 E17, 041 / P16, 365 20, 812 2.9 GB/s / 0.9 GB/s Alienware 13 (2.8GHz Intel Core i7-7700HQ, NVIDIA GTX 1060) 4, 692 4, 583 E16, 703 / P12, 776 24, 460 1.78 GB/s / 1.04 GB/s Razer Blade Pro 2016 (2.6GHz Intel Core i7-6700HQ, NVIDIA GTX 1080) 6, 884 6, 995 E18, 231 / P16, 346 27, 034 2.75 GB/s / 1.1 GB/s ASUS ROG Strix GL502VS (2.6GHz Intel Core i7-6700HQ , NVIDIA GTX 1070) 5, 132 6, 757 E15, 335 / P13, 985 25, 976 2.14 GB/s / 1.2 GB/s HP Spectre x360 (2016, 2.7GHz Core i7-7500U, Intel HD 620) 5, 515 4, 354 E2, 656 / P1, 720 / X444 3, 743 1.76 GB/s / 579 MB/s Lenovo Yoga 910 (2.7GHz Core i7-7500U, 8GB, Intel HD 620) 5, 822 4, 108 E2, 927 / P1, 651 / X438 3, 869 1.59 GB/s / 313 MB/s Razer Blade (Fall 2016) (2.7GHz Intel Core-i7-7500U, Intel HD 620) 5, 462 3, 889 E3, 022 / P1, 768 4, 008 1.05 GB/s / 281 MB/s Razer Blade (Fall 2016) + Razer Core (2.7GHz Intel Core-i7-7500U, NVIDIA GTX 1080) 5, 415 4, 335 E11, 513 / P11, 490 16, 763 1.05 GB/s / 281 MB/s ASUS ZenBook 3 (2.7GHz Intel Core-i7-7500U, Intel HD 620) 5, 448 3, 911 E2, 791 / P1, 560 3, 013 1.67 GB/s / 1.44 GB/s HP Spectre 13 (2.5GHz Intel Core i7-6500U, Intel HD 520) 5, 046 3, 747 E2, 790 / P1, 630 / X375 3, 810 1.61 GB/s / 307 MB/s Razer Blade Stealth (2.5GHz Intel Core i7-6500U, Intel HD 520) 5, 131 3, 445 E2, 788 / P1, 599 / X426 3, 442 1.5 GB/s / 307 MB/s Under the hood, our Zephyrus review unit featured an Intel Core i7-7700HQ processor running at 2.8GHz, along with 16GB of RAM. But of course, the star of the show is NVIDIA’s GTX 1080 GPU. Just a year ago, the idea of cramming that GPU into a laptop was impressive. Now, we can do it in gaming notebooks that are slimmer than we’ve ever seen before. This isn’t a stripped down version of the GTX 1080 either, it’s still clocked at 1.5-1.7GHz and packs in 8GB of GDDR5X RAM. But instead of focusing on getting as much performance from the video card as possible, NVIDIA’s Max-Q philosophy emphasizes peak efficiency — basically, the point where you can get the most bang for your GPU buck. Our unit also featured a 512GB M.2 SSD, which is significantly faster than the older SATA variety. Your first impressions of the Zephyrus will depend on the type of computer you’re most used to. If you mainly dabble in ultraportables, you’ll likely be intimidated by how large it seems. But if you’re familiar with gaming laptops, it’ll seem remarkably slim. As soon as I was done marveling at what an engineering feat it is, I installed several games to test out its capabilities — and the results were impressive. I saw around 100-110 frames per second in Overwatch with all of the graphics settings at maximum. That was particularly notable since I set the render scale to 140 percent, which made the computer process the game at a higher resolution than 1080p for a sharper image. Doom, meanwhile, hit its 200FPS cap with everything maxed at 1080p, and Hitman’s benchmark achieved a solid 100FPS. Christopher Velazco/AOL Clearly, the Zephyrus’s hardware is overkill for 1080p, but that also makes it ideal for playing games on external monitors and TVs. It hit around 45 FPS on average in Hitman while running on a 4K monitor in high settings. Hooking it up to my 4K TV and receiver over HDMI was also a cinch, and I was able to create a console-like experience with the Witcher 3 by plugging in an Xbox controller and booting up Steam’s big picture mode. And given just how powerful it is, the Zephyrus had no trouble handling VR with the Oculus Rift. Its specs are well above the minimum requirements, so that’s not a huge surprise. Just be prepared to use up almost all of its USB ports. As you can imagine, this laptop gets hot when you’re playing games — especially around where its powerful components sit. But ASUS’s cooling setup does a decent job of keeping things from getting out of hand. While playing Overwatch and Doom , the GPU temperature hovered between 75c and 80c, which is typical for a gaming PC. I never saw any issues due to overheating. You’ll certainly hear the system’s fans, once they get going, but they’re nowhere near as loud as what I’ve heard on other high-powered gaming laptops. ASUS ROG Zephyrus 1:50 Alienware 15 4:31 Surface Book with Performance Base (2016) 16:15 Apple MacBook Pro 2016 (13-inch, no Touch Bar) 11:42 HP Spectre x360 (13-inch, 2015) 11:34 Apple MacBook Pro with Retina display (13-inch, 2015) 11:23 Apple MacBook Pro 2016 (15-inch) 11:00 HP Spectre x360 15t 10:17 Apple MacBook Pro 2016 (13-inch, Touch Bar) 9:55 ASUS ZenBook 3 9:45 Apple MacBook (2016) 8:45 Samsung Notebook 9 8:16 Alienware 13 7:32 Microsoft Surface Pro 4 7:15 HP Spectre 13 7:07 Razer Blade Stealth (Spring 2016) 5:48 Razer Blade Stealth (Fall 2016) 5:36 Dell XPS 15 (2016) 5:25 (7:40 with the mobile charger) Razer Blade Pro (2016) 3:48 ASUS ROG Strix GL502VS 3:03 The Zephyrus fit well into my daily workflow — I was even able to get some work done while balancing it on my lap. Its biggest downside, unfortunately, is battery life. In our test, which involves looping an HD video, the Zephyrus lasted just 1 hour and 50 minutes. And while gaming, expect between an hour and 90 minutes of play. The terrible battery life is a shame, but it makes sense given how thin and powerful this computer is. You can’t do that without making tradeoffs. You’ll want to keep the Zephyrus plugged in for the best performance, anyway. On battery, Overwatch was locked at around 30 FPS. As soon as I plugged in power, it skyrocketed to 110 FPS. Configuration options and the competition The Zephyrus we tested starts at $2, 699, but there’s also a slightly cheaper model with a GTX 1070 and 256GB SSD for $2, 299. That’s a bit less than the $3000 Acer Predator 700, which also sports a Max Q design and features a GTX 1080. Basically, if you want this combination of portability and power, be prepared to pay dearly. Otherwise, you’ll have to make do with heavier gaming laptops like the Alienware 15 . Razer’s Blade Stealth is another option, since you can add the company’s Core dock to use an external GPU. And of course, if games are your main concern, you can also consider buying or building a small desktop. It won’t be as portable as the Zephyrus, but you’ll save a ton. Wrap-up No matter how you look at it, the ASUS ROG Zephyrus is remarkable. It marks a new era for gaming laptops, one where you can expect a thin, five-pound notebook to pack as much power as an eight-to-ten pound machine from a few years ago. It could conceivably be the answer to all of your gaming needs, even on your television, since it’s easy to move around your house. It’s a shame that the battery life stinks, but that’s a decent compromise for a laptop unlike any other.

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ASUS ROG Zephyrus review: Gaming laptops will never be the same again

NVIDIA brings desktop-class graphics to laptops

With the GeForce GTX 1080, NVIDIA pushed the boundaries of what a $600 graphics card can do . That flagship card was joined by the GTX 1070 and GTX 1060 , two lower-power cards based on the same 16nm Pascal architecture at a much more affordable price. Now, it’s bringing mobile versions of those cards that match their desktop counterparts in almost every area — including being VR ready. That’s not hyperbole. The top-of-the-line 1080M has 2, 560 CUDA cores and 8GB of 10Gbps GDDR5x memory. The desktop chip has the same. The only difference is clock speed: it’s set at 1, 556MHz, while the desktop version is 1, 607MHz. The two do share the same boost clock (1, 733MHz) though, and both have access to all the new technology introduced for the Pascal architecture . That means simultaneous multi-projection, VRWorks, Ansel and the rest. If you want an idea what those specs translate to in real-world performance, how’s this: when paired with an i7-6700HQ (a quad-core 2.6GHz chip with 3.5GHz turbo), Mirror’s Edge Catalyst , 126; Overwatch , 147; Doom , 145; Metro Last Light , 130; Rise of the Tomb Raider , 125. Those are the 1080M’s FPS figures when playing at 1080p with “ultra” settings at 120Hz. NVIDIA is really pushing 120Hz gaming, and many of the first crop of Pascal laptops will have 120Hz G-Sync displays. 4K gaming, too, is more than possible. At 4K with “high” settings the same setup can push 89FPS on Overwatch , 70FPS with Doom , and 62FPS with Metro Last Light ( according to NVIDIA). Only Mirror’s Edge Catalyst and Rise of the Tomb Raider fall short of 60FPS, both clocking in at a very playable 52FPS. At the chip’s UK unveil, NVIDIA showed the new Gears of War playing in 4K in real-time, and there were absolutely no visible frame drops. With figures like that, it goes without saying that VR will be no problem for the 1080M. The desktop GTX 980 is the benchmark for both the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, and the 1080M blows it away. If you’re looking for more performance, the 1080M supports overclocking of course — NVIDIA suggests as high as 300MHz — and you can expect laptops sporting two in an SLI configuration soon. The major drawback for the 1080M is power. We don’t know its exact TDP yet, but given the near-identical desktop version runs at 180W, you’d imagine it’s got to be at least 150W. NVIDIA has tech that counters that heavy power load when you’re not plugged in, of course. Chief among these is BatteryBoost, which allows you to set a framerate (i.e. 30FPS), and downclocks the GPU appropriately to save power — if your card is capable of pushing 147FPS plugged in, that’s going to be a fair amount of power saved. Whatever the battery savings possible, though, it won’t change the fact that the 1080M is only going to slide into big laptops. That’s fine for those already used to carrying around behemoths on the go, but plenty of gamers prefer something more portable. Enter the 1070M. NVIDIA says this chip will fit into any chassis that currently handles the 980M, which covers a lot of laptops. Just like the 1080M, the 1070M matches its desktop sibling in many ways. You’ve actually got slightly more in the way of CUDA cores — 2, 048 vs. the desktop’s 1, 920, but again they’re clocked slower (1, 442MHz vs. 1, 506MHz). Memory is the same — 8GB 8Gbps GDDR5 — and it too benefits from both the Pascal architecture itself and the new software features that come with it. GTX 1080 GTX 1080M GTX 1070 GTX 1070M CUDA cores 2, 560 2, 560 1, 920 2, 048 Base clock 1, 607MHz 1, 556MHz 1, 506MHz 1, 442MHz Boost clock 1, 733MHz 1, 733MHz 1, 683MHz 1, 645MHz Memory 8GB GDDR5X 8GB GDDR5X 8GB GDDR5 8GB GDDR5 Memory speed 10Gbps 10Gbps 8Gbps 8Gbps Memory Bandwidth 320GB/sec 320GB/sec 256GB/sec 256GB/sec When faced off against the desktop 1070, the 1070M holds its own. In nearly every test we saw, it got within a couple of percentiles of the desktop card. We’re talking 77FPS in The Witcher 3 (1080p maxed settings, no HairWorks) vs. 79.7FPS on the 1070; 76.2FPS in The Division (1080p ultra) vs. 76.6FPS; and 64.4FPS in Crysis 3 (1080p very high) vs. 66.4FPS. The one outlier was Grand Theft Auto V , which dropped down to 65.3FPS vs. 73.7FPS on the desktop 1070. 4K gaming is a stretch on the desktop 1070, and that carries over here, but this card is more-than VR ready. NVIDIA says that it’ll support factory overclocking on the 1070M soon, so you may see laptops offering a little more grunt “in a couple of months.” Rounding off the lineup is the 1060M, the mobile version of NVIDIA’s $249 “budget” VR-ready card. It’s something of the exception to the rule here. Yes, it offers 1, 280 CUDA cores and 6GB 8Gbps GDDR5 memory, which is equal to the desktop 1060. But at the lower end of the range the fact that they’re clocked lower (1, 404MHz vs. 1, 506MHz) hurts performance quite a bit more. In side-by-side comparisons, NVIDIA’s benchmarks suggest you’ll get within ten percent or so of the desktop card. That’s not to say that the 1060M is a slouch. For traditional gaming, you’re not going to hit 60FPS at 1080P in every game without thinking about settings, but if you can play it on a desktop GTX 980, it’s probably a safe bet that the 1060M can handle it. That’s insanely impressive when you consider that the 1060M will fit into the same chassis as the 970M — think “ultra portable” gaming laptops. GTX 1060M GTX 1060 GTX 980 CUDA cores 1, 280 1, 280 2, 048 Base clock 1, 404MHz 1, 506MHz 1, 126MHz Boost clock 1, 670MHz 1, 708MHz 1, 216MHz Memory 6GB GDDR5* 6GB GDDR5 4GB GDDR5 Memory speed 8Gbps 8Gbps 7Gbps Memory Bandwidth 192GB/sec 192GB/sec 224GB/sec *Up to In reality, the 10-percent gap between the 1060 and the 1060M probably makes it slightly slower than the GTX 980, but the difference is almost negligible. I wasn’t able to push the 1060M too hard on the “VR ready” promise — you can read about the demo and why the 1060M matters in a separate article — but the demo I had was solid. And really, being able to plug an Oculus into something as slim as a Razer Blade was unthinkable a few months ago, so it’s probably best not to complain. Acer, Alienware, Asus, Clevo, EVGA, HP, Gigabyte, Lenovo, MSI, Origin, Razer, Sager and XMG are just some of the OEMs signed up to make laptops with the new Pascal chips. Many will announce updated and all-new models today, while some might hold off a while. But expect lots of super-powerful, VR-ready gaming laptops very soon.

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NVIDIA brings desktop-class graphics to laptops

NVIDIA’s GTX 1070 is a mid-range GPU that feels high-end

As impressive as NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1080 GPU is, its high price of $599 is tough to stomach for even the most dedicated gamers. That’s where the mid-range GTX 1070 comes in: It’s almost as fast as its more powerful sibling, but it starts at a more reasonable $379. That’s still a hefty chunk of change, but for the money it can tackle pretty much every game today (and likely for the next year or two) without breaking much of a sweat. That’s not too shabby for a mid-range video card. Due to travel ( Computex was quite the trip) as well as limited supply from NVIDIA, it’s admittedly taken me a while to put the GTX 1070 through its paces. But now that I’ve had some time with it, I can say without a doubt that the 1070 is an intriguing GPU. Even NVIDIA admits that among this generation of cars, this is the one most consumers will likely end up going for. Rounding out the lineup, the company also announced the lower-end GTX 1060 this week, which is quite the bargain at $249. The GTX 1070 is NVIDIA’s second card based on its 16 nanometer Pascal architecture, and it packs in 8GB of GDDR5 RAM and clock speeds between 1.5GHz and 1.7GHz. The company claims it pumps out 6.5 teraflops worth of computing power, compared with the 1080’s nine teraflops. I tested the slightly pricier $449 Founders Edition of the card, which sports the same elaborate metallic heatsink design as the 1080 Founders version. It has three DisplayPort connections, one HDMI port, one DVI port and is powered by a single eight-pin connector. 3DMark 3DMark 11 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Standard 13, 918/ Extreme 7, 703/ Ultra 4, 110 X7, 778 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Standard 15, 859/ Extreme 9, 316/ Ultra 5, 021 X9, 423 AMD R9 Fury X Standard 13, 337/ Extreme 7, 249/ Ultra 3, 899 X, 6457 AMD Radeon RX 480 Standard 10, 279/ Extreme 5, 146/ Ultra 2, 688 X4, 588 Let’s get to what you’re really here for: benchmarks! Not surprisingly, the GTX 1070 sits right between AMD’s $240 Radeon RX480 8GB card and the GTX 1080 in terms of performance on my rig (a 4GHz Core i7-4790K CPU, 16GB of 2400Mz DDR3 RAM and a 512GB Crucial MX100 SSD on a ASUS Z97-A motherboard). But it also consistently bests the Radeon R9 Fury X, which was AMD’s flagship card from last year. (Unfortunately, I didn’t have a GTX 970 or 980 Ti to benchmark.) 4K benchmarks Witcher 3 Hitman Doom NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 38 35 48 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 43 48 N/A AMD R9 Fury X 35 38 N/A AMD Radeon RX 480 20 25 35 Average frames-per-second performance in 1440p with all graphics set to maximum and NVIDIA HairWorks turned off. On the 4K front, it performed around the same as the R9 Fury X. It was noticeably less capable than the 1080 — in Hitman I saw around a 13 frames-per-second performance drop — but it’s still playable if you’re just looking to reach 30 fps at the minimum. It also reached an impressive 48 to 55 fps in Doom , a game that scales pretty well across GPUs of all types. 1440p benchmarks Witcher 3 Hitman Doom Overwatch NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 60 60 55-65 60 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 N/A N/A N/A N/A AMD R9 Fury X N/A 70 N/A N/A AMD Radeon RX 480 43 45 58 60 Average frames-per-second performance in 1440p with all graphics set to maximum and NVIDIA HairWorks turned off. Rather than pining for 60 fps 4K performance, I’ve settled on 1440p (2, 560 by 1, 440 pixels) as my ideal gaming resolution. It’s noticeably sharper than 1080p, and it’s easy to get high frame rates even with every graphical nicety imaginable turned on. With the GTX 1070, I consistently reached 60 fps with ultra settings (which will still look pretty great on a 4K display). Of course, it also had no trouble scoring well in 1080p benchmarks, but that’s no surprise. If you’re getting a new GPU today, you’re better off aiming for 1, 440p performance. Given that AMD’s cheaper RX 480 had no trouble with VR, I didn’t expect any hiccups with the GTX 1070. Indeed, it didn’t disappoint. Dogfighting in Eve: Valkyrie was fast-paced and didn’t show any sign of slowdown, and exploring alien environments in Oculus’ Farlands felt as immersive as ever. In fact, I didn’t notice any performance difference from the GTX 1080 with VR. When the GTX 1070 was announced, it seemed like the ideal affordable choice for PC gaming. Since then, though, we’ve seen the $200 AMD RX 480 debut, and NVIDIA announced the GTX 1060 , a $249 option of its own. So where does that leave the 1070? Based on what I’ve seen so far, it’s still a better option than the RX 480 and 1060 if you want to play at 1440p, or simply want a GPU that can handle next year’s games. And, of course, you’ve also got the option of picking up another GTX 1070 to run in SLI mode in a year or so, as well as overclocking to get some extra performance free. It’s hard to call a $379 video card affordable, but when you’re comparing it to a $599-and-up card, it seems a lot more palatable. And when you put it in context, as a GPU that trounces the cream of the crop from last year, the GTX 1070 is undeniably a great value.

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NVIDIA’s GTX 1070 is a mid-range GPU that feels high-end