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Asus Republic Of Gamers Strix GTX 1070 Aura RGB OC

Rating: 9.0.

Today we take a look at the new Asus Republic Of Gamers Strix GTX 1070 – a custom, overclocked card featuring a triple fan cooling system and dedicated RGB lighting system. We tested its bigger brother – the ROG Strix GTX 1080 early June, so we have high hopes that the card on test today is able to deliver plenty of performance while maintaining a tight thermal curve.

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The ASUS Republic Of Gamers Strix GTX 1070 incorporates the latest DirectCU III triple fan cooler with patented ‘wing blade' fans. There are also GPU controlled fan headers on the PCB of the graphics card to support additional cooling, if desired.

The card adopts a full RGB ‘AURA' lighting system, which was also incorporated into the larger ROG GTX1080 Strix from ASUS.

GPU Geforce GTX970 GeForce GTX980
Geforce GTX 980 Ti Geforce GTX Titan X Geforce GTX 1080 Geforce GTX 1070
Streaming Multiprocessors 13 16 22 24 20 15
CUDA Cores 1664 2048 2816 3072 2560 1920
Base Clock 1050 mhz 1126 mhz 1000 mhz 1000 mhz 1607 mhz 1506 mhz
GPU Boost Clock 1178 mhz 1216 mhz 1075 mhz 1076 mhz 1733 mhz 1683 mhz
Total Video memory 4GB 4GB 6GB 12GB 8GB 8GB
Texture Units 104 128 176 192 160 120
Texture fill-rate 109.2 Gigatexels/Sec 144.1 Gigatexels/Sec 176 Gigatexels/Sec 192 Gigatexels/Sec 257.1 Gigatexels/Sec 180.7 GigaTexels/sec
Memory Clock 7000 mhz 7000 mhz 7000 mhz 7000 mhz 1250mhz 2002mhz
Memory Bandwidth 224 GB/s 224 GB/sec 336.5 GB/sec 336.5 GB/sec 320GB/s 256GB/s
Bus Width 256bit 256bit 384bit 384bit 256bit 256 bit
ROPs 56 64 96 96 64 64
Manufacturing Process 28nm 28nm 28nm 28nm 16nm 16nm
TDP 145 watts 165 watts 250 watts 250 watts 180 watts 150 watts

The Nvidia GTX 1070 ships with 1920 CUDA cores and 15 Streaming Multiprocessors  – reduced from 2560 and 20 on the GTX 1080 respectively.  While the GTX 1080 is equipped with 160 Texture Units, the GTX 1070 has to make do with 120. The 8GB of GDDR5 memory runs at a data rate of 8Gbps.

Based on the same GP104 GPU used in the GTX 1080, the GTX 1070 has all of the key features that NVIDIA’s Pascal architecture enables, including Simultaneous Multi-Projection. Nvidia claim the GTX 1070 has a 70% performance lead over the last generation GTX 970. While the GTX 1080 used GDDR5x memory, the GTX 1070 is shipped with fast GDDR5.

If you want to read more on the Pascal architecture, head to our page, over HERE.

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The ASUS Republic Of Gamers Strix GTX 1070 Aura RGB is clocked higher than the Founders Edition card, and there are two modes that it can run at. In Gaming Mode the graphics card runs at 1632mhz core, with a boost speed of 1835mhz. In the faster OC Mode the card operates at 1657mhz with a boost speed of 1860mhz. I am testing at the higher OC profile speeds today (see GPUz image above).

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The Asus Republic Of Gamers Strix GTX 1070 ships in a colourful box with an image of the card visible on the front.

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The rear of the box highlights various technologies incorporated into the build such as the Wing Blade fans, Aura RGB lighting and the Fan connect headers.

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The card itself is protected between slabs of thick Styrofoam and along the top is another box contains the accessories, including software discs, cable ties and literature.

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The Asus ROG Strix GTX1070 is substantial in hand and it is fitted with a backplate, which features the RGB lighting. When the card is running under idle or a low load state the three fans do not spin.

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I like the look of the ASUS Strix cards – they are understated and well built. the custom backplate looks great on show when the card is installed in the system.

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The SLI connectors are shown in the image above. If you haven’t already, then I recommend you head to THIS PAGE to get detailed information on the new SLI configuration introduced in May with Pascal hardware.

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The card takes all the power it needs from the slot, and a single 8 Pin power PCIe connector, shown above.

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The Geforce GTX 1070 is DisplayPort 1.2 certified, DisplayPort 1.3 and 1.4 ready enabling support for 4K display at 120hz, 5K displays at 60hz and 8k Displays at 60hz (with two cables). The GTX 1070 Founders Edition includes three DisplayPort Connectors, one HDMI 2.0b connector and one dual link DVI connector. Up to four displayheads can be driven simultaneously from a single card.

Asus have cleverly ditched one of the DisplayPort connectors, opting for another HDMI port. They say this is to help with VR compatibility, offering a port to connect the VR device and another to the display, at the same time.

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The backplate is beautifully engineered with the logo cut out, and fully able to glow in RGB during operation. The lighting is controlled by the software that is supplied with the card – called ‘AURA’. You are able to change lighting from static, to ‘breathing’, as well as ‘strobing’ and ‘colour cycle’ modes. A slider is positioned on the right of the interface which lets you select a colour from millions available.

The ‘music’ option allows the card to pulse along with music you are playing at the time. the ‘GPU temperature’ option controls lighting based on the temperature of the card. so it changes from green when colder to red, when hot. I can’t see anyone feeling that ASUS cut corners here.

The quality of the lighting is first class, the colours you choose are all very accurately represented on the card itself. The short video clip below shows the ‘colour cycle’ mode.

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(the pictures above show the GTX 1080 version of the ROG STRIX card, but the AURA RGB lighting is the same).

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The Direct CU III cooler is massive, comprising 5 thick direct contact nickel plated copper heatpipes which run into a base. There are several racks of densely populated aluminum fins and four of the five heatpipes run into one, and two lengths into another. Asus are using high grade SAP II Capacitors wihch are said to give 2.5x lifespan, which translates into 90,000 more hours of use when compared against traditional capacitors. They are using SAP II Chokes to reduce buzzing noise under load.

I have spent the last couple of weeks benchmarking a selection of AMD and NVIDIA cards with the latest drivers on one of our new 6700k test beds. We are using the AMD Crimson Edition Display Driver, Version 16.15.2211 and Nvidia ForceWare 368.39 driver. Due to public demand we also add in a range of tests at 1080p to supplement the results at 1440p and Ultra HD 4K resolutions.

We list each resolution test for every game on its own page – meaning if you are just interested in 4K resolutions for instance, you can skip the other resolutions without effort. If you want to read the whole review and find all the page changes annoying – click on our menu system top right of these pages, and head to ’32. view all pages’.

We are using a custom Titan Bayonet system supplied by Overclockers UK as the basis of our test system today. Read more on this system over HERE.

Case: Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ATX Mid Tower
Processor: Intel 6700K @ 4.4ghz
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) @ 3000mhz
Motherboard: ASUS Z170-E DDR4 ATX Motherboard
Power Supply: Super Flower Leadex 850W Gold Certified
Software: Microsoft Windows 10 64 Bit
SSD: Samsung 250GB 850 EVO
HDD: Seagate 1TB 7,200 rpm 64MB Cache.

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If you want to purchase this system yourself head to THIS page on OCUK.

Graphics cards:

Asus Republic Of Gamers Strix GTX 1070 (1658 mhz core / 1860 mhz boost / 2002 mhz (8Gbps effective) memory)

Comparison Cards on test:

Gigabyte GTX 1080 G1 Gaming RGB (1721 mhz core / 1860 mhz boost / 5005 mhz memory)
Nvidia GTX 1080 Founders Edition (1607mhz core/ 1733mhz boost / 5005 mhz memory)
Nvidia GTX 1070 Founders Edition (1506mhz core/ 1683mhz boost / 4006 mhz memory)
Sapphire R9 390 Nitro 8GB (Rev 2 w/ backplate). (1040mhz core / 1500 mhz memory)
Sapphire R9 295X2 (1,018 mhz core / 1,250mhz memory)
AMD R9 Fury X
(1,050 mhz core / 500 mhz memory)
AMD R9 Nano (1000mhz core / 500 mhz memory)
Gigabyte GTX980 Ti XTREME Gaming (1216 mhz core / 1800mhz memory)
Nvidia GTX Titan Z
(706 mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)
Nvidia GTX Titan X (1,000 mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)
Asus GTX980 Strix (1,178 mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)
Nvidia GTX980 Ti (1000 mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)
Sapphire R9 390X Tri-X 8GB (1,055 mhz core / 1,500 mhz memory)
Sapphire R9 390 Nitro 8GB (1,010 mhz core / 1,500 mhz memory)

Software:
Windows 10 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
3DMark 11
3DMark
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark

Games:
Ashes Of the Singularity
Dirt Rally
Hitman 2016
Middle Earth: Shadow Of Mordor
Rise Of the Tomb Raider
Grand Theft Auto 5
Metro Last Light Redux

We perform under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.

Game descriptions edited with courtesy from Wikipedia.
3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista. The benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

3dmark11

3dmark11

3dmark 11 extreme

3dmarkx

The Asus Republic Of Gamers Strix GTX 1070 shows substantial performance gains over the Founders Edition card. In fact, performance is very closely matched against the reference clocked Titan Z.

3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance.

Futuremark say “Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system. Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good.

To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC.”

3dmark

3dmark

3dmark ultra

3dmark bultra

The Asus Republic Of Gamers Strix GTX 1070 scores well in the newer Direct X 11 benchmark from Futuremark. The 4K score of 4,435 points is very closely behind the Gigabyte GTX980 Ti XTREME gaming card (4512).

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk. Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

  • Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
  • Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
  • Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
  • Multicore CPU support
  • Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
  • Powerful C++ API
  • Comprehensive performance profiling system
  • Flexible XML-based data structures

unigine heaven setts
We test at 2560×1440 with quality setting at ULTRA, Tessellation at NORMAL, and Anti-Aliasing at x2.

unigine heaven

heaven 2016-06-22 09-29-17-74

This tessellation heavy benchmark verifies the early synthetic benchmark findings – that the Asus Republic Of Gamers Strix GTX 1070 is very closely matched against the Gigabyte GTX980 Ti XTREME Gaming card.

Ashes of the Singularity is a real-time strategy game set in the future where descendants of humans (called Post- Humans) and a powerful artificial intelligence (called the Substrate) fight a war for control of a resource known as Turinium.

Players will engage in massive-scale land/air battles by commanding entire armies of their own design. Each game takes place on one area of a planet, with each player starting with a home base (known as a Nexus) and a single construction unit.

ashes extreme

We test the final retail game at 1080p resolution and with EXTREME image quality settings, shown above.

ashes 1080p

ashes 1080p

Performance in this Direct X 12 game is strong, averaging 66.4 frames per second. This is around 9 frames behind the GTX1080 Founders Edition, and slightly ahead of the reference clocked R9 Fury X.

Ashes of the Singularity is a real-time strategy game set in the future where descendants of humans (called Post- Humans) and a powerful artificial intelligence (called the Substrate) fight a war for control of a resource known as Turinium.

Players will engage in massive-scale land/air battles by commanding entire armies of their own design. Each game takes place on one area of a planet, with each player starting with a home base (known as a Nexus) and a single construction unit.

ashes extreme

We test the final retail game at 1440p resolution and with EXTREME image quality settings, shown above.

ashes 1440p

ashes 1440p

At 1440p the Asus Republic Of Gamers Strix GTX 1070 falls behind the AMD R9 Fury X, but it is only 0.2 frames slower.

Ashes of the Singularity is a real-time strategy game set in the future where descendants of humans (called Post- Humans) and a powerful artificial intelligence (called the Substrate) fight a war for control of a resource known as Turinium.

Players will engage in massive-scale land/air battles by commanding entire armies of their own design. Each game takes place on one area of a planet, with each player starting with a home base (known as a Nexus) and a single construction unit.

ashes extreme

We test the final retail game at 4k resolution and with EXTREME image quality settings, shown above.

ashes 4k

ashes 4k

At Ultra HD 4K the Asus Republic Of Gamers Strix GTX 1070 falls around a frame per second behind the AMD R9 Fury X at reference clock speeds. This overclocked card averages around 3 frames faster than the GTX1070 Founders Edition.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is a third-person open world video game, where the player controls a ranger by the name of Talion who seeks revenge on the forces of Sauron after his family, including his wife, are killed. Players can travel across locations in the game through parkour, riding monsters, or accessing Forge Towers, which serve as fast travel points.

mordor 1440pmordor ultra

We test at 1440p with the image quality settings at Ultra.

mordor 1440p

Stellar performance at 1440p, averaging 93 frames per second.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is a third-person open world video game, where the player controls a ranger by the name of Talion who seeks revenge on the forces of Sauron after his family, including his wife, are killed. Players can travel across locations in the game through parkour, riding monsters, or accessing Forge Towers, which serve as fast travel points.

mordor 4kmordor ultra

With test at Ultra HD 4k resolution with Ultra image settings enabled.

mordor 4k

Excellent performance levels, averaging 51 frames per second, just ahead of the GTX1070 Founders Edition.

Dirt Rally is developed by British video game developer Codemasters using the in house Ego engine. Development began with a small team of individuals following the release of their 2012 video game Dirt: Showdown. Codemasters have emphasised a desire to create a simulation with Dirt Rally. They started by prototyping a handling model and creating tracks based on map data. The game employs a different physics model from previous titles, rebuilt from the ground up.

dirt 1080pdirt ultra setts

We test at 1080p with 8x MSAA and the ultra image quality setting enabled.

dirt 1080p

At 1080p the Asus Republic Of Gamers Strix GTX 1070 averages 115 frames per second, just behind the Gigabyte GTX980ti XTREME Gaming card from the previous generation.

Dirt Rally is developed by British video game developer Codemasters using the in house Ego engine. Development began with a small team of individuals following the release of their 2012 video game Dirt: Showdown. Codemasters have emphasised a desire to create a simulation with Dirt Rally. They started by prototyping a handling model and creating tracks based on map data. The game employs a different physics model from previous titles, rebuilt from the ground up.

dirt 1440pdirt ultra setts

We test at 1440 with 8x MSAA and the ultra image quality setting enabled.

dirt 1440p

Great performance at 1440p, holding a frame rate above the 60 sweet spot at all times. Gamers who like 120hz+ gaming will need to reduce image quality settings to increase the minimum frame rate.

Dirt Rally is developed by British video game developer Codemasters using the in house Ego engine. Development began with a small team of individuals following the release of their 2012 video game Dirt: Showdown. Codemasters have emphasised a desire to create a simulation with Dirt Rally. They started by prototyping a handling model and creating tracks based on map data. The game employs a different physics model from previous titles, rebuilt from the ground up.

dirt 4kdirt ultra setts

We test at Ultra HD 4k with 8x MSAA and the ultra image quality setting enabled.

dirt 4k

This is a demanding engine at Ultra HD 4k, and the Asus Republic Of Gamers Strix GTX 1070 holds frame rates between 35 and 50 most of the time. If you want your racing games to run at a solid 60 frames per second then some reduction to image quality would be required.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is a third-person action-adventure game that features similar gameplay found in 2013's Tomb Raider. Players control Lara Croft through various environments, battling enemies, and completing puzzle platforming sections, while using improvised weapons and gadgets in order to progress through the story. It uses a Direct X 12 capable engine.

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We enable Direct X 12, Vsync is off and graphics are set to the ‘very high' profile, shown above. We test the Nvidia Titan Z with the SLi optimisation both disabled, then enabled. This is clearly marked in the graph. See more HERE.

rise tomb raider 1080p

If you own a 120hz+ gaming screen then the results above are positive. The Asus Republic Of Gamers Strix GTX 1070 holds an average of 120fps, dropping to above 80 in the most intensive sections of the environment.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is a third-person action-adventure game that features similar gameplay found in 2013's Tomb Raider. Players control Lara Croft through various environments, battling enemies, and completing puzzle platforming sections, while using improvised weapons and gadgets in order to progress through the story. It uses a Direct X 12 capable engine.

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We enable Direct X 12, Vsync is off and graphics are set to the ‘very high' profile, shown above. We test the Nvidia Titan Z with the SLi optimisation both disabled, then enabled. This is clearly marked in the graph. See more HERE.

rise tomb raider 1440p

Frame rates are maintained above 60 at all times, averaging almost 80 throughout.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is a third-person action-adventure game that features similar gameplay found in 2013's Tomb Raider. Players control Lara Croft through various environments, battling enemies, and completing puzzle platforming sections, while using improvised weapons and gadgets in order to progress through the story. It uses a Direct X 12 capable engine.

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We enable Direct X 12, Vsync is off and graphics are set to the ‘very high' profile, shown above. We test the Nvidia Titan Z with the SLi optimisation both disabled, then enabled. This is clearly marked in the graph. See more HERE.

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At demanding engine at 4k, especially at these maximised settings. If you want frame rates closer to a constant 60 then some image quality reductions would need to be made, or perhaps an upgrade to the GTX1080.

Grand Theft Auto V is an action-adventure game played from either a first-person or third-person view. Players complete missions—linear scenarios with set objectives—to progress through the story. Outside of missions, players may freely roam the open world. Composed of the San Andreas open countryside area and the fictional city of Los Santos, the world is much larger in area than earlier entries in the series. It may be fully explored after the game's beginning without restriction, although story progress unlocks more gameplay content.

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We maximise all the image quality settings, but leave anti aliasing turned off, as it dramatically impacts performance.

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No problems powering this engine at 1080p, even at these high image quality settings.

Grand Theft Auto V is an action-adventure game played from either a first-person or third-person view. Players complete missions—linear scenarios with set objectives—to progress through the story. Outside of missions, players may freely roam the open world. Composed of the San Andreas open countryside area and the fictional city of Los Santos, the world is much larger in area than earlier entries in the series. It may be fully explored after the game's beginning without restriction, although story progress unlocks more gameplay content.

GTA5-1440p

GTA5-2GTAv-3GTZ5-4

We maximise all the image quality settings, but leave anti aliasing turned off, as it dramatically impacts performance.

GTA5 1440p

At 1440p the Asus Republic Of Gamers Strix GTX 1070 is almost able to hold a frame rate close to 60 at all times – important for a third person action title like this.

Grand Theft Auto V is an action-adventure game played from either a first-person or third-person view. Players complete missions—linear scenarios with set objectives—to progress through the story. Outside of missions, players may freely roam the open world. Composed of the San Andreas open countryside area and the fictional city of Los Santos, the world is much larger in area than earlier entries in the series. It may be fully explored after the game's beginning without restriction, although story progress unlocks more gameplay content.

GTA5-4k

GTA5-2GTAv-3GTZ5-4

We maximise all the image quality settings, but leave anti aliasing turned off, as it dramatically impacts performance.

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If you want to game at 4K then we do recommend you opt for the fastest GTX1080 you can afford.

Just like the original game Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light is played from the perspective of Artyom, the player-character. The story takes place in post-apocalyptic Moscow, mostly inside the metro system, but occasionally missions bring the player above ground. Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, following the canonical ending in which Artyom chose to proceed with the missile strike against the Dark Ones (this happens regardless of your actions in the first game). Redux adds all the DLC and graphical improvements.

Quality-Very High, SSAA-on, Texture Filtering-16x, Motion Blur-Normal, Tessellation-Normal, Advanced Physx-off.

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The Asus Republic Of Gamers Strix GTX 1070 pulls ahead of the Founders Edition GTX1070 by 4 frames per second.Just like the original game Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light is played from the perspective of Artyom, the player-character. The story takes place in post-apocalyptic Moscow, mostly inside the metro system, but occasionally missions bring the player above ground. Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, following the canonical ending in which Artyom chose to proceed with the missile strike against the Dark Ones (this happens regardless of your actions in the first game). Redux adds all the DLC and graphical improvements.

Quality-Very High, SSAA-on, Texture Filtering-16x, Motion Blur-Normal, Tessellation-Normal, Advanced Physx-off.

metro 1440p

At 1440p this engine places a high demand on the partnering hardware. Frame rates are not close to 60, but they don't drop below 30, holding at a minimum of 34, and averaging 46.

Just like the original game Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light is played from the perspective of Artyom, the player-character. The story takes place in post-apocalyptic Moscow, mostly inside the metro system, but occasionally missions bring the player above ground. Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, following the canonical ending in which Artyom chose to proceed with the missile strike against the Dark Ones (this happens regardless of your actions in the first game). Redux adds all the DLC and graphical improvements.

Quality-High, SSAA-off, Texture Filtering-16x, Motion Blur-Normal, Tessellation-Normal, Advanced Physx-off.

metro 4k

We have to drop image quality settings to get this engine running better at Ultra HD 4K. By doing so, the Asus Republic Of Gamers Strix GTX 1070 hits an average frame rate close to 60.

Hitman (2016) is a third-person stealth video game in which players take control of Agent 47, a genetically enhanced, superhuman assassin, travelling to international locations and eliminating contracted targets. As in other games in the Hitman series, players are given a large amount of room for creativity in approaching their assassinations. The game is being released in stages, which hasn't proved too popular with a large audience.

hitman settings

We test with many of the settings maximised, SSAO is disabled however as I found it causes some crashing. I have to say that Hitman is a little unstable at times under the best of situations, but we managed to get it running well enough to benchmark. The built in benchmark is very flaky indeed however, so real world runs had to be used.

hitman 1080p

No problems for any hardware on test today powering this game at 1080p with all the eye candy maxed.  In an ideal world however you want to aim a little higher than the 380X and GTX970.

Hitman (2016) is a third-person stealth video game in which players take control of Agent 47, a genetically enhanced, superhuman assassin, travelling to international locations and eliminating contracted targets. As in other games in the Hitman series, players are given a large amount of room for creativity in approaching their assassinations. The game is being released in stages, which hasn't proved too popular with a large audience.

hitman settings

We test with many of the settings maximised, SSAO is disabled however as I found it causes some crashing. I have to say that Hitman is a little unstable at times under the best of situations, but we managed to get it running well enough to benchmark. The built in benchmark is very flaky indeed however, so real world runs had to be used.

hitman 1440p

With the Asus Republic Of Gamers Strix GTX 1070 we are holding a frame rate in excess of 60 at all times. Averaging close to 90.

Hitman (2016) is a third-person stealth video game in which players take control of Agent 47, a genetically enhanced, superhuman assassin, travelling to international locations and eliminating contracted targets. As in other games in the Hitman series, players are given a large amount of room for creativity in approaching their assassinations. The game is being released in stages, which hasn't proved too popular with a large audience.

hitman settings

We test with many of the settings maximised, SSAO is disabled however as I found it causes some crashing. I have to say that Hitman is a little unstable at times under the best of situations, but we managed to get it running well enough to benchmark. The built in benchmark is very flaky indeed however, so real world runs had to be used.

hitman 4k

This engine is smoother at 4k when powered by the GTX1080, although if you are happy with frame rates between 35 and 60, then the Asus Republic Of Gamers Strix GTX 1070 delivers the goods.

We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with almost completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests.

We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation. Ambient noise in the room measures close to the limits of our sound meter at 28dBa. Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

noise

The triple fan cooler is silent when idle, or under low load conditions – the fans disable.

idle

At higher demand settings around 58c) the fans start to spin up to maintain the thermal curve. The card however is extremely quiet and I was hard pressed to hear it above other fans in my system. An excellent result and a card you should consider if maintaining low noise levels are a primary concern.

Coil Whine is not an issue, which is important to note.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 21c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this. Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Rise Of The Tomb Raider for 90 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 10 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.

temps

temps load

The three fans only start to spin up when theAsus Republic Of Gamers Strix GTX 1070 is placed under moderate or heavy load. When the temperatures rise to 58c then the fans spin up quickly. When gaming, the Asus Republic Of Gamers Strix GTX 1070 runs 16c cooler than the reference Nvidia GTX1070 Founders Edition card.

We install the graphics card into the system and measure temperatures on the back of the PCB with our Fluke Visual IR Thermometer/Infrared Thermal Camera. This is a real world running environment playing Rise Of The Tomb Raider for extended periods of time.

thermals

The cooling system is fantastic and the Asus Republic Of Gamers Strix GTX 1070 runs both cool and quiet under load. We recorded ‘hot spots' around the 55c mark after extending gaming sessions.

We measure power consumption from the whole system when idle and when gaming, excluding the monitor.

power consumption

The Asus Republic Of Gamers Strix GTX 1070 demands 256 watts under load which is around 14 watts more than the Founder Edition GTX1070.

Nvidia have enhanced their GPU Boost System with their latest iteration – V3.0. The new version features custom ‘per voltage' point frequency offsets.

GPU Boost 3.0 offers the ability to set frequency offsets for individual voltage points. Older versions could only hold a fixed frequency offset, essentially shifting the existing V/F curve upward by the defined offset amount.

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Above, is a theoretical custom V/F curve set in GPU Boost 3.0. The offset is set just below the upper limits of the theoretical maximum clock making full use of all the available headroom – ensuring performance is fully utilised for the GPU in question.

We tested the card with both ASUS GPU Tweak II software and the latest version of MSI Afterburner.

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We managed to increase core speeds by +122 and Memory clock speeds by +204. Most times the card was running around the 2ghz core clock mark.

The Asus Republic Of Gamers Strix GTX 1070 is a noticeable improvement over the Nvidia GTX1070 Founders Edition card which we tested way back on launch day on June 3rd HERE.

After testing the excellent ROG Strix GTX1080 last week I can't say that this has been much of a shock to me. Asus are simply producing some of the finest graphics cards available on the market this year.

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Asus have nailed their cooling solution on the Nvidia Pascal graphics cards. The Direct CU III cooler on the ROG Strix GTX 1070 holds temperatures between 55c and 60c under load and noise levels are some of the lowest we have recorded to date. In reality the Asus card runs around 16c cooler than the reference Nvidia Founders Edition GTX1070 solution. The Zero fan profile under idle or lower power demands is a welcome addition.

This Asus Republic Of Gamers Strix GTX 1070 would actually be one of our first choices for a 1080p/1440p gaming system if running with the lowest possible noise emissions is a primary requisite. The adoption of concrete concrete alloy chokes means that ASUS have negated any coil whine, even under extreme load situations.

I am not a big believer in having a plethora of flashing lights inside a system, but for those users who wish to colour coordinate their system, then the AURA RGB lighting system should prove popular. The fact you can turn it off completely will also important for some people.

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The Asus Republic Of Gamers Strix GTX 1070 Aura RGB OC is currently on pre order with Overclockers UK for £469.99 inc vat. You can buy it HERE.

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Pros:

  • excellent performance out of the box.
  • silent (zero fan mode) when idling or under low load.
  • good overclocking headroom.
  • 16c cooler than Founders Edition GTX1070 when gaming.
  • controllable RGB lighting system.
  • high grade components used across the board.
  • no coil whine.

Cons:

  • expensive.

Kitguru says: The Asus Republic Of Gamers GTX 1070 Aura RGB is the best GTX1070 we have tested to date. Noise levels are minimal, the RGB lighting system will be welcomed and frame rate performance is stellar. The Asus card also runs 15-20c cooler than the reference Nvidia Founders Edition card.

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