When comparing AMD Radeon RX 470 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070, the Slant community recommends NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 for most people. In the question“What are the best value GPUs for VR gaming?” NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 is ranked 3rd while AMD Radeon RX 470 is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 is:
NVIDIA properly optimized the GTX 1070 for DirectX. This means that games supporting DirectX 11 will see a slight performance boost, but more-so for the upcoming games using DX12. At 1440p resolution (1440 x 2560) with the highest available settings the GTX 1070 [achieves an average fps of](http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1731) 98.4 for Dirt Rally, 74.2 for Rise of The Tomb Raider, 84.4 for Battlefield 4 and 62 for GTA V. This makes the 1070 ideal for 1440p gaming and the card can often provide very high framerates of more than 120 fps when playing in 1080p. Gaming in 4K is also an option with the GTX 1070, where stable and fluent framerates of more than 30 fps can be achieved on ultra settings. In 4K Ultra HD and maximum settings, [average framerates with the GTX 1070](http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1731) are 39 for Rise of The Tomb Raider, 53.2 for Dirt Dally, 60.3 for Battlefield 4 and 29.7 for Grand Theft Auto V. Performance can be further improved by using less intensive graphical settings.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Ideal for 1080p gaming
The RX 470 performs extremely well in recent games when played in Full HD resolution and with the highest possible graphical settings. For example, the RX 470 is able to achieve an average framerate of 117 fps in DOOM. The card also manages to get a very fluid 68 fps in Fallout 4 and even more intensive games such as Hitman perform well with the RX 470, averaging at 67 frames per second. In short, the RX 470 is ideal for playing games with a fluent framerate in 1080p.
When gaming on a higher resolution of 1440p (2560 x 1440 pixels), performance on the RX 470 is often a hit or miss. Some more optimized games such as Dirt Rally (52 fps) or DOOM (77 fps). However, some other games will struggle to deliver a fluent gameplay experience. The average 1440p framerate in both The Division and Rise of The Tomb Raider for example hovers around the 45 fps mark, although a higher framerate can be achieved if graphical settings are toned down.
Pro Great performance improvements in Vulkan-compatible games
When using Vulkan, a graphical API that allows developers to better communicate with the GPU, the RX 470 can achieve great performance improvements compared to the more standard DirectX 12 or OpenGL API's. Some recent games offer support for Vulkan, such as Doom, Dota 2 and Ashes of The Singularity. When playing Doom under the standard OpenGL in Ultra Settings and 1080p resolution, the RX470 is able to achieve an average framerate of 84.2 FPS. When using Vulkan however, the same RX 470 performs significantly better with an average result of 101.5 frames per second, a 20.5% performance increase.
While NVIDIA's new Pascal architecture is also compatible with the Vulkan API, the AMD RX series benefit more greatly from it. In the same benchmarks, results for the competing GTX 1060 were also provided, where the performance improvement under Vulkan was only 6%.
Pro Asynchronous shaders improve performance in recent games
The RX 470 offers concurrent/parallel CPU to GPU communication in DirectX 12, Mantle and Vulkan with asynchronous shaders for the stream processors. Asynchronous shaders allow the developers of games to maximize the potential of AMD's new Polaris architecture and this technology is used to optimize DX12, Mantle and Vulkan performance in recently released compatible games. In short, developers can now use multiple task queues and split up GPU power across multiple tasks at the same time.
This also works well in virtual reality situations, where head tracking is required. Latency (delay between the images that appear on the display) and stuttering can be reduced by using asynchronous shading. Although the RX 470 lacks the overall computing power to render VR games comfortably, the card has been given the 'VR Capable' rating by SteamVR, which implies a stable framerate of over 90 frames per second but not at the level that's recommended for smooth VR experiences.
Pro Great performance for its price
NVIDIA properly optimized the GTX 1070 for DirectX. This means that games supporting DirectX 11 will see a slight performance boost, but more-so for the upcoming games using DX12.
At 1440p resolution (1440 x 2560) with the highest available settings the GTX 1070 achieves an average fps of 98.4 for Dirt Rally, 74.2 for Rise of The Tomb Raider, 84.4 for Battlefield 4 and 62 for GTA V. This makes the 1070 ideal for 1440p gaming and the card can often provide very high framerates of more than 120 fps when playing in 1080p. Gaming in 4K is also an option with the GTX 1070, where stable and fluent framerates of more than 30 fps can be achieved on ultra settings. In 4K Ultra HD and maximum settings, average framerates with the GTX 1070 are 39 for Rise of The Tomb Raider, 53.2 for Dirt Dally, 60.3 for Battlefield 4 and 29.7 for Grand Theft Auto V. Performance can be further improved by using less intensive graphical settings.
Pro Doesn't consume much power
Power consumption of NVIDIA's new Pascal GPU's has been greatly improved compared to the previous generation graphics cards, and the GTX 1070 is no exception. In an idle situation (normal desktop usage), the GTX 1070 consumes very little power compared to similar performing alternatives. It even consumes six watts less than AMD's less powerful RX 480 card. Under gaming load, power consumption is also impressive. A testing system equipped with the GTX 1070 consumes 307 watts of power, while the RX 480 used in that identical system uses 301 watts. A power consumption marginal difference for a card that performs significantly better proves that the GTX 1070 architecture is more power efficient than AMD's latest Polaris GPU's such as the RX 480.
The GTX 1070 only requires a single 8-pin PCIe power connector with a maximum rated Thermal Design Point of 150 watts. This is great for systems with a less powerful power supply unit or if you don't have many cables available.
Pro Offers exclusive features such as Ansel and Simultaneous multi-projection
The GTX 1070 and other Pascal-based GPU's from NVIDIA offer a couple of exclusive features that aren't available on previous-generation graphics cards or current GPU's made by AMD.
Taking advantage of the new GPU architecture, NVIDIA has introduced a feature called simultaneous multi-projection. It allows developers of games and applications to improve performance when rendering multiple viewports of the same image. This is particularly useful when using a multi-monitor setup or in virtual reality where two images are required, one for each eye. Simultaneous multi-projection allows up to 16 different viewpoints and only requires calculating the geometry of a scene once. In compatible games, users of multi-screen setups can calibrate this experience so that distortion no longer occurs. Virtual reality games can use SMP to improve performance, although developers will specifically need to implement this feature in their games.
Ansel is another feature that is exclusive to NVIDIA's Pascal-based graphics cards. Ansel can be described as a very extensive 'photomode', where you can capture massive in-game screenshots of several gigapixels or capture images in 360 degrees. The player is also able to use filters, adjust camera positions, take HDR-images and share them via the built-in software.
Pro Can handle overclocks well
By overclocking your graphics card, you increase the clock speeds of the chip and memory to gain even more performance. The GTX 1070 can handle overclocks well, as relatively high boosts of over 200 MHz for both the core and memory clock aren't uncommon, without using special cooling solutions. In this case, an overclock of 220 MHz for the GPU and 260 MHz for the memory resulted in an average performance increase of 6 frames per second in 1440p gaming. Enthusiast overclockers have been able to achieve much higher stable clock speeds, some even breaking the 2000 MHz limit, which is a 25% improvement over the reference clock speeds.
Cons
Con Very minimal price difference with RX 480
The RX 470 is positioned slightly under the RX 480 by AMD, but the price difference between these two GPU's is very minimal. Both GPU's hover slightly above the $200 mark, which gives users little reason to purchase a RX 470 instead of a faster RX 480.
Con Limited overclocking potential
The RX 470 has limited overclocking potential as AMD has decided to cap the maximum memory bandwidth at 1850 MHz. Although GPU clockspeed increases of 10 - 15% aren't uncommon up to 1355 MHz, differences in games are less noticeable because the card tends to struggle with this maximum speed. If AMD had allowed further clockspeed increases of the memory, the RX 470 would be better suited for overclocking.
Con Mediocre performance-per-watt ratio
The RX 470 uses AMD's new Polaris 10 architecture and is more efficient than previous-generation GPU's, but the performance-per-watt ratio remains somewhat mediocre. The TDP (thermal design point and maximum power consumption) of the RX 470 chip is measured at 125W. The more expensive GTX 1060 by NVIDIA heavily outperforms the RX 470 but still manages to achieve the same levels of power consumption. Efficiency-wise, the Radeon RX 470 doesn't impress.
Con Disappointing performance improvements when using Vulkan
Vulkan is a graphical API that allows developers to communicate better with the GPU, which in theory should result to performance improvements compared to the more standard DirectX 12 or OpenGL API's. The GTX 1070 doesn't particularly better in Vulkan however, and the difference with the standard OpenGL is very minimal and the GTX 1070 even performs worse under Vulkan in some cases.
Doom is one of the first (and only) titles with support for Vulkan and serves as a good benchmark for OpenGL vs Vulkan performance. At 1080p resolution, the GTX 1070 manages to achieve an average framerate of 150 FPS for both OpenGL and Vulkan, which means there's no performance improvement at all. Unfortunately, similar results can be seen in 1440p, where a GTX 1070 with OpenGL averages at 99 FPS in the standard OpenGL and 96 FPS when using Vulkan. Same situation for 4K resolution: 50 frames per second for OpenGL and 48 FPS when using Vulkan. Instead of a performance improvement, the GTX 1070 actually performs worse. AMD's new Polaris-architecture graphics cards are significantly better optimized for Vulkan compared to the GTX 1070 and other NVIDIA Pascal-based GPU's. For example, the AMD Radeon RX 480 performs significantly better in Vulkan, with 1080p results of 94 FPS for OpenGL and 116 FPS in Vulkan, a 23% increase.
Con No native support for 3- and 4-way SLI
SLI - short for Scalable Link Interface - is NVIDIA's technology of combining the power of two or more identical GPU's in order to reach a better performance. In other words, you can use multiple videocards to further increase performance. Although the GTX 1070 supports 2-way SLI without a problem, NVIDIA does not offer support for 3- and 4-way SLI. The included SLI-bridge which serves as a connector between the two cards, is only compatible in a 2-way configuration. 3-way and 4-way SLI are possible, but aren't supported. You'll have to use an older SLI-bridge found on older GeForce models and you'll need to generate an 'Enthusiast Key' on NVIDIA's website. However, NVIDIA does not guarantee a 3- or 4-way configuration will provide any noticeable benefits.