Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070 G1 Gaming Video Card Review

By Nathan Kirsch July 21, 2016

Temperature & Noise Testing

The gaming performance on a graphics card is the most important factor in buying a card, but you also need to be concerned about the noise, temperature and power consumption numbers.

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070 G1 Gaming Idle and Load Temps:

When it comes to temperatures the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070 G1 Gaming ran at 46C at idle on our our open air test bench as the semi-passive cooling fans weren’t spinning. The good news is that with no spinning fans it means the GTX 1070 G1 Gaming makes no noise at idle. At full load while gaming we topped out at 65C, which is pretty decent and no where near hot enough to be of concern. GPU-Z v1.9.0 showed the GTX 1070 G1 gaming used 0.6250V at idle and 1.0500V while at full load.

Here is a chart that shows the temperatures of the GeForce GTX 1070 G1 Gaming versus some other high-end desktop cards and you can see the GTX 1070 G1 Gaming is 17C cooler than the GeForce GTX 1070Founders Edition card!

Sound Testing

We test noise levels with an Extech sound level meter that has 1.5dB accuracy that meets Type 2 standards. This meter ranges from 35dB to 90dB on the low measurement range, which is perfect for us as our test room usually averages around 36dB. We measure the sound level two inches above the corner of the motherboard with ‘A’ frequency weighting. The microphone wind cover is used to make sure no wind is blowing across the microphone, which would seriously throw off the data.

The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070 G1 Gaming is silent at idle, so it ties all the other 0dB video card models as the loudest thing in the room is our water cooler on the test system as that is the only fan we have running non-stop. The GTX 1070 G1 Gaming topped out at 45dB, which is just barely quieter than the GeForce GTX 1070 reference card. It’s not super loud, but you’ll be able to hear it in your system humming along during long gaming sessions.

** The AMD Radeon R9 Fury X reference card that we are using was the original model with a loud water pump that whines. AMD changed the pump design before the cards hit the retail market, but wasn’t willing to replace ours. We expect retail cards to perform quieter for this and hopefully AMD will send us a replacement card for proper noise testing. **