Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Gaming 8G Review

Unlike the companies that used GeForce GTX 1080 PCBs and coolers for their 1070 Ti cards, Gigabyte pulled parts from the other side of its portfolio. It instead revised the design of its GeForce GTX 1070 G1 Gaming to accommodate Nvidia’s higher-end solution. Naturally, the board itself is more than ample. It’s the heat sink and fan that we need to look at more closely.

Of course, we’ve seen the competition name their cards as if 1070 Tis were differentiated by their out-of-box performance, garnishing them with software overclocking options as a consolation prize. Gigabyte scraps the Aorus label altogether for this one, though. If it can’t apply factory overclocking, it’s not a flagship. Period. Seems like sound logic to us.

Since the performance of all third-party GeForce GTX 1070 Ti cards is similar, given fixed clock rates mandated by Nvidia, actual benchmark results depend on the GPU Boost frequencies each vendor can sustain. As you might imagine, then, cooling and chip quality play the most important roles. That’s why we’re putting our emphasis on the actual implementation of each model. To that end, a lot of equipment goes into thoroughly documenting a graphics card’s behaviors.

At this point, it’s not possible to reach a meaningful conclusion by comparing the performance of one card over another. The differences are too small. Therefore, we’re not going to label manufacturers in our benchmarks, particularly since one of those two variables (chip quality) cannot be held constant, even between retail samples off the shelf. Just know that every GeForce GTX 1070 Ti fares similarly out of the box.

Specifications

Prior to launch, Gigabyte had an overclocked BIOS ready to go. It was initially even approved by Nvidia. As a result, around 25,000 cards shipped out from the factory with matching labels (the following two labels show the difference between our first sample and the model that eventually hit retail). If you were lucky enough to receive one of the first cards, you’re probably seeing much higher frequencies than everyone else with a 1070 Ti.

However, since Nvidia banned this first edition of the card and refused to allow the overclocked BIOS’ use, we’re honoring Gigabyte’s request to only use the updated version of its card for our review.

Gigabyte’s bundle is limited to a software DVD and manual.

Exterior

The fan shroud is made of anthracite-colored matte plastic with eye-catching orange highlights. A weight of just 757g makes this one of the lighter cards we’ve reviewed, and that helps simplify installation in compact cases.

A total of three 80mm fans are meant to ensure sufficient airflow. It’s hard to tell that those fans are on the small side just by looking at pictures of the 1070 Ti Gaming 8G, since the cooler is long and narrow.

Around back, the PCB is covered with a single-piece, blackened aluminum plate with a white Gigabyte logo in the middle.

Plan for an additional 5mm of clearance for the backplate. This extra requirement means the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Gaming 8G isn’t particularly well-suited for multi-GPU configurations. Stability suffers without the backplate installed, so you don’t want to try removing it.

Up top, that Gigabyte logo sports LED back-lighting. There’s also a fan-stop indicator and an eight-pin auxiliary power connector toward the end.

From the back, this card is completely closed off. That makes sense, as the cooling fins are oriented vertically, blocking air from moving side to side and instead guiding it up (out the top) and down (towards your motherboard). But the design certainly won’t help temperatures inside your case, since exhaust is recirculated.

The I/O bracket features five familiar outputs, four of which can be used simultaneously in multi-monitor configurations. In addition to the single DVI connector, you get one HDMI 2.0 port (particularly useful for VR HMDs) and three DisplayPort 1.4-ready interfaces. Ventilation holes cut into the plate suggest help with exhaust, but they really serve no purpose since the fins direct air vertically.

Specifications

Since the technical specifications are required to be the same for all GeForce GTX 1070 Ti, the following table applies to all cards collectively:

GPU
GeForce GTX 1080 (GP104)
GeForce GTX 1070 Ti (GP104) GeForce GTX 1070 (GP104)
SMs
20 19
15
CUDA Cores
2560 2432
1920
Base Clock
1607 MHz
1607 MHz
1506 MHz
GPU Boost Clock
1733 MHz 1683 MHz
1683 MHz
GFLOPs (Base Clock)
8228 7816
5783
Texture Units
160 152
120
Texel Fill Rate
277.3 GT/s 244.3 GT/s
201.9 GT/s
Memory Data Rate
10 Gb/s 8 Gb/s
8 Gb/s
Memory Bandwidth
320 GB/s 256 GB/s
256 GB/s
ROPs
64 64
64
L2 Cache
2MB 2MB
2MB
TDP
180W
180W
150W
Transistors
7.2 billion 7.2 billion
7.2 billion
Die Size
314 mm² 314 mm² 314 mm²
Process Node
16nm 16nm 16nm

Test System & Measurement Methods

We introduced our new test system and methodology in How We Test Graphics Cards. If you’d like more detail about our general approach, check that piece out. In this case, only the CPU, RAM, motherboard, and cooling system are different.

Test System
Hardware Intel Core i7-6900K @ 4.3 GHz
MSI X99S XPower Gaming Titanium
Corsair Vengeance DDR3-3200
1x 1TB Toshiba OCZ RD400 (M.2, System)
2x 960GB Toshiba OCZ TR150 (Storage, Images)
be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11, 850W Power Supply
Windows 10 Pro (Creators Update)
Cooling
Alphacool Eisblock XPX
Alphacool Eiszeit 2000 Chiller
2x be quiet! Silent Wings 3 PWM
Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut
Case
Lian Li PC-T70 with Extension Kit and Mods
Configurations: Open Benchtable, Closed Case
Monitor Eizo EV3237-BK
Power Consumption Measurement
Contact-free DC Measurement at PCIe Slot (Using a Riser Card)
Contact-free DC Measurement at External Auxiliary Power Supply Cable
Direct Voltage Measurement at Power Supply
2x Rohde & Schwarz HMO 3054, 500MHz Digital Multi-Channel Oscilloscope with Storage Function
4x Rohde & Schwarz HZO50 Current Probe (1mA – 30A, 100kHz, DC)
4x Rohde & Schwarz HZ355 (10:1 Probes, 500MHz)
1x Rohde & Schwarz HMC 8012 Digital Multimeter with Storage Function
Thermal Measurement
1x Optris PI640 80Hz Infrared Camera + PI Connect
Real-Time Infrared Monitoring and Recording
Acoustic Measurement
NTI Audio M2211 (with Calibration File, Low Cut at 50Hz)
Steinberg UR12 (with Phantom Power for Microphones)
Creative X7, Smaart v.7
Custom-Made Proprietary Measurement Chamber, 3.5 x 1.8 x 2.2m (L x D x H)
Perpendicular to Center of Noise Source(s), Measurement Distance of 50cm
Noise Level in dB(A) (Slow), Real-time Frequency Analyzer (RTA)
Graphical Frequency Spectrum of Noise

MORE: Best Graphics Cards

MORE: Desktop GPU Performance Hierarchy Table

MORE: All Graphics Content

Go to Source

12 great Boxing Day sales deals you can still buy

Boxing Day is over. You’re either back at work, or dreading the thought of having to return. But that doesn’t mean you’ve missed your chance for a bargain – as you’ve seen on our main Best Boxing Day Deals page we’ve spent days scouring the retailers for the best deals around.

That page is still chock-full of live deals, but we’ve decided to help those in a rush. This simple top 12 list is the cream of the crop in our eyes, the deals that we’ve had to either stop ourselves buying (for fear of having no food in January) or have caved and treated ourselves with.

Sony Bravia KD65XE8596 65-inch Smart 4K Ultra HD HDR LED TV | £1299 | Currys
Time to upgrade yourself to a 4K TV? This may be the best deal for you with its huge 65-inch screen, HDR support and all for only £1299. That’s £300 off the normal price and while it may be expensive, it’s one of our favorite TVs you can buy right now.View Deal

Get 3 Google Home Minis for £99 @ Currys
‘Who needs 3 Google Home Minis?’ we hear you cry. Well, this way you can either give them as gifts or you can use them all over your house to control your smart home and play your music in every room. You’ll need to scroll down the page when you press the link to find the deal, but it’s a steal considering these are usually £49 each.View Deal

Google Pixel 2 (was £629) now £529 @ Carphone Warehouse
Google’s latest phone has had some fantastic reviews and is a fine alternative to anything Apple or Samsung can offer. Photo fans should take note of the excellent camera and infinite cloud storage. Google Assistant is an excellent service too. This is a fantastic offer and £100 cheaper than the regular price when bought on on its own (SIM-free) without a contract – you could add your own cheap SIM only deal if you need one.View Deal

Samsung Galaxy Book 10.6-inch – reduced to £349 @ John Lewis
Samsung’s Galaxy Book is not usually this cheap, and you won’t be able to find a deal this good for the two-in-one laptop this sales period. It has 4GB RAM and 64GB storage. It boasts an incredible screen and great battery life, making it extremely versatile, plus you’ll get £150 off today.View Deal

HP 14-inch Intel Pentium £319.99 @ Argos
This is one of the best-selling laptop deals on Argos’ site right now. The price has been cut right down to £319.99 for a very
decent machine with an Intel Pentium processor, 4GB RAM and a 128GB SSD, plus you also get a subscription to McAfee Internet Security and a carry case to make sure you start 2018 off the right way.View Deal

More deals still available

There are many more deals still to be had out there. Actually most of the ones we found yesterday are still going strong. That’s fantastic news if you didn’t have time to get online yesterday. So why not take that much deserved rest and take a look at our full roundup all the best Boxing Day sales and deals.

Go to Source

Tesla's Elon Musk promises pick-up truck and new features

Tesla’s chief has pledged to make a pick-up truck as part of future plans for the electric vehicle-maker.

Elon Musk made the promise on Twitter after asking his followers for suggestions about how the firm could improve.

He said the open-backed truck would follow the Model Y – a yet-to-be detailed car, which is expected to be based on its Model 3 sedan.

But experts note Tesla has suffered repeated delivery delays.

That has led some to question whether the loss-making company can meet its existing commitments – which also include a forthcoming articulated lorry and sports car.

Mr Musk also made several promises about new features Tesla intends to add to its existing vehicles, including intelligent windscreen wipers.

Pick-up trucks are particularly popular in the US, with sales by the three leading manufacturers currently totalling about $90bn (£67bn) a year, according to data from Morningstar Equity Research.

Demand for the trucks has also risen over the past 12 months, despite a drop for other types of “light vehicle”.

Mr Musk had previously hinted at his plans when an image showing an obscured pick-up was briefly shown being carried on the back of its Semi lorry at a press conference in November.

In his tweets, Mr Musk said the vehicle would likely be “slightly bigger” than Ford’s bestselling F-150 pick-up to allow it to contain an unspecified “game-changing” feature.

“[I] have had the core design/engineering elements in my mind for almost five years,” he added.

In addition, the entrepreneur also appeared to make several commitments to requested updates for its current vehicle range via a series of brief replies, including:

  • windscreen wipers that automatically change speed based on how much rain there is – a facility already offered by Volkswagen, Volvo and Mazda, among others
  • “vastly better” maps and sat-nav software
  • a revamped web browser for its cars’ touchscreens – experts have described the existing version as being “almost unusable”
  • a “disco mode” for its vehicles’ interior lights, timing them to the beat of music

Mr Musk’s ambitions contrast with Tesla’s recent performance.

In November, the firm declared its biggest quarterly loss to date – $619m – and admitted that it was months behind schedule with Model 3 deliveries.

It said that problems with battery assembly and steel welding were among reasons for production bottlenecks.

News agency Bloomberg subsequently warned that if the firm did not slow down its losses it would exhaust its cash reserves in 2018 unless it raised fresh funds.

“There are a growing number of people who are looking to Tesla to fulfil on its existing promises rather than make more ones,” Paul Newton, an analyst at the IHS Automotive consultancy, told the BBC.

“It has a large number of back orders for the Model 3, and only a handful of painstakingly hand-built cars have been delivered.

“There’s bound to be growing scepticism if waiting lists and waiting times grow longer while yet another new model is unveiled.”

Go to Source

Q Acoustics M2 Soundbase review: This no-frills speaker delivers

England is known for many things. Big Ben, red buses, tea, the Beatles, and of course high-end audio. Q Acoustics is following that rich tradition by delivering great-sounding, high-value speakers. Q Acoustics is well known in the U.K.,but  the company is a new player in the U.S. market. The M2 Soundbase is my introduction to its product line, and I am impressed.

The M2 Soundbase seeks to solve the glaring problem of modern TV’s: horrible built-in sound. The M2’s primary function is to make dialog intelligible, give movie and TV programming dynamics and impact, and provide basic audio streaming. This is a product whose focus is delivering sound quality over bells and whistles, and it delivers.

The M2 has a downward-firing subwoofer and two Balanced Mode Radiators along the front. Off axis performance is exceptionally good. If your favorite chair is off center or you have people visiting, everyone will feel like they are sitting in the room’s sweet spot.

The difference between a sound base and a soundbar

The M2 is a sound base, which differs slightly from a soundbar. While a soundbar can be hung on a wall, a sound base is intended to be put directly under a TV and (as its name implies) act as a base or support. You can’t hang a sound base on a wall, but you can put it on top of or inside a cabinet.

m2 lifestyle tv screen ghost in a shell Q Acoustics

Q Acoustics M2 sound base will support most modern TVs.

Accessories and setup

Setting up the M2 is very straightforward. I had it connected and ready to go in a matter of minutes. I connected my Oppo UDP-203 UltraHD Blu-ray player via Toslink optical and connected the M2 via HDMI to my TV. The M2 supports HDMI’s audio return channel (ARC), so that it can send audio over the same HDMI cable back to the speaker. Your TV must support ARC and you typically need to enable HDMI CEC on your TV for this feature to work.

I connected the M2 via Bluetooth to my iPhone 7 instantly, but I had problems using NFC Bluetooth pairing with my Sony NWZ-A17 high-res audio player. When you have devices that support NFC pairing, all you need to do is tap the two devices together and they pair instantly. In this particular case, the Sony kept telling me that it was incompatible with the M2. I never resolved this NFC issue, so I can’t opine if the problem lay with the Sony or the M2.

qm2 nfc not supported Theo Nicolakis

NFC pairing didn’t work with my Sony high-res audio player.

I should note that the M2 comes with an HDMI cable and a power cord, but no optical cable. To reinforce how new Q Acoustics is to the U.S., my review unit was shipped directly from England and came only with European power cords. I had to use a European-to-U.S. adapter to get the sound base powered up. I don’t expect that to be the case for U.S. consumer purchases.

If you plan to use the M2 as a TV base, it can support most modern TVs of reasonable size. If, however, the TV has outer legs as a stand, the 21.6-inch-wide speaker might be too narrow.

6 quick ways to declutter your Mac

This article is brought to you by Mac Life magazine. If you’d like to read more articles like this then subscribe to Mac Life magazine, and save an extra 10% off a subscription – it’s also the perfect gift for any Apple fan. Simply add code ML10 at checkout.

Subscribe to MacLife with an extra 10% off

1. Trash massive apps
Never use iMovie? That’s over 2GB of space you can get back. Open Applications in List view and sort by size to see what you can remove.

2. Delve into Downloads
If you download lots of things in Safari, the files initially get saved in Downloads. If you don’t clean that folder out it’ll be full of junk like app installers. Delete any you don’t need.

3. Prune device backups
We recommend backing up your iOS devices to iCloud and also manually to iTunes, but the latter takes up space on your Mac. You can use the Devices tab in iTunes’ preferences to remove backups.

4. Remove legacy photos
When Apple replaced iPhoto with Photos, all your pictures and videos were migrated to the latter, meaning you no longer need your original iPhoto library. Back it up to an external drive, then delete it.

5. Delete macOS installers
Apple’s installers are well behaved: after you’ve installed a macOS update, they vanish. That is unless you’ve made a manual copy. You can offload these to an external storage drive and then delete them.

6. Don’t forget the trash
The Trash isn’t things you’ve wiped from your Mac, but items that are awaiting deletion. Until you empty the Trash (Ctrl-click it and choose Empty Trash), anything inside it still takes up space on your Mac.

Go to Source

Obama warns against 'irresponsible' social media use

Media playback is unsupported on your device

Former US President Barack Obama has warned against the irresponsible use of social media, in a rare interview since stepping down in January.

He warned that such actions were distorting people’s understanding of complex issues, and spreading misinformation.

His successor Donald Trump is a prolific user of Twitter, but Mr Obama did not mention him by name.

Mr Obama was quizzed by Prince Harry on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Prince Harry, fifth in line to the throne, is one of several prominent figures who are guest-editing the programme over the Christmas period.

The ex-president said those in positions of power should be careful when posting messages, warning that social media is distorting civil discourse.

He expressed concern about a future where facts are discarded and people only read and listen to things that reinforce their own views.

“One of the dangers of the internet is that people can have entirely different realities. They can be cocooned in information that reinforces their current biases.

“The question has to do with how do we harness this technology in a way that allows a multiplicity of voices, allows a diversity of views, but doesn’t lead to a Balkanisation of society and allows ways of finding common ground,” he said.

Mr Trump has been accused of overusing Twitter, though he maintains it allows him to connect directly with the American people.

Media playback is unsupported on your device

On handing power to Mr Trump, Mr Obama described mixed feelings, given “all the work that was still undone”.

“Concerns about how the country moves forward but, you know, overall there was serenity there,” he adds.

As well as editing, Prince Harry is himself interviewed on Today.

“I haven’t done that many interviews but it was quite fun, especially interviewing president Obama despite the fact he wanted to interview me.

“It’s been a big learning curve but also these are incredibly important topics we all need to think about and need to be discussed.”

The prince’s programme focused on issues such as the armed forces, mental health, youth crime and climate change.

Go to Source