Unboxing & Review: Palit GeForce GTX 1070 GameRock Premium Edition

While most of are used to its JetStream and Super JetStream cards with the all familiar red-black, silver-black and gold-black accents, Palit announces the GameRock as its new gaming brand with a new white-blue accent cooler, specially designed for enthusiast gamers who desire to have the ultimate gaming experience.

Coming in at a much cheaper price of RM2099 for the GTX 1070 GameRock Standard Edition and RM3280 for the GTX 1070 GameRock Premium Edition, Palit GameRock series graphics cards comes with 8-phase power design, better cooling performance, better out of the box performance, and of course, a new look after all these years.

Specifications

Graphics Processing	GeForce GTX 1070
Core Clock	Boost: 1873 MHz / Base: 1670 MHz ( with 1920 CUDA Cores)
Memory Clock	8500 MHz
Process Technology	16 nm
Memory Size	8 GB
Memory Bus	256 bit
Card Bus	PCI-E 3.0 x 16
Memory Type	GDDR5X
DirectX	12
OpenGL	4.5
PCB Form	ATX
Digital max resolution	7680x4320 (requires 2*DP1.3 connectors)
Analog max resolution	4096x2160
Multi-view	4
Output	Dual-link DVI-D 1 HDMI-2.0b1 (Max Resolution: 4096x2160 @60 Hz) Display Port-1.4 *3 (Max Resolution: 7680x4320 @60 Hz)
Recommended PSU	500W
Power Connectors	8 pin*1
Card size	H=58 L=285 W=133 mm

Unboxing

At first glance, the font immediately reminded us of the popular music rhythm game Guitar Hero.

Brief details on the features can be found on the back of the box.

Inside the box, you'll find the Palit GeForce GTX 1070 GameRock graphics card, a 2 x 6-pin PCIe to 8-pin PCIe adapter, drivers CD and a Quick Installation Guide.

The Palit GeForce GTX 1070 GameRock Premium Edition

The GTX 1070 GameRock comes available in standard and premium editions. While there's no difference in terms of its appearance, the premium edition does come with a higher Base Clock, Boost Clock, and Memory Clock.

While all NVIDIA partner's cards are known to have higher GPU Clock and Memory Clock, the standard edition comes with a lower Base Clock of 1556MHz, Boost Clock of 1746MHz and Memory Clock of 8000MHz. Those who prefers higher GPU Clock and Memory Clock can opt for the premium edition with some top-up for Base Clock of 1670MHz, Boost Clock of 1873MHz and Memory Clock of 8500MHz.

The cooling fans used is the TurboFan Blade which Palit claims to generate powerful air streams and pressure to improve cooling performance compared to NVIDIA's reference design. However, the cooling fans don't light up like any of Palit's previous graphics cards.

The GameRock series graphics card is given an ultra-thick heatsink with a copper base to handle the heat from the GPU, mainly for its GTX 1080. The cooler itself is more than enough to tame this heat from the GTX 1070 which has a slightly higher TDP of 170W compared to the GTX 1070 Founders Edition with a TDP of 150W.

The shroud has a built-in RGB LED that changes color according to the GPU temperature on default and may be customized with the ThunderMaster software with up to a total of 16.8 million colors that suits your rig and its theme.

Unlike all previous high-end graphics cards, both the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 now runs only on a single 8-pin PCIe power and PSU requirement as low as 500W. The GTX 1070 GameRock Premium Edition appears to be a more powerful one with 8-power phase compared to the 5-power phase observed on the Founders Edition, but the power requirement is kept low with a single 8-pin PCIe power connector.

The GTX 1070 GameRock Premium Edition comes with a fancy looking metal backplate that does the same job as any other metal backplate would do, enhance the overall rigidity of the card to prevent PCB sagging that usually occurs on graphic cards with a large heatsink.

There are also features that support the overclocking elites, where extra modification can be done to achieve better results in benchmark scores.

The dip switch located at the back of the graphics card is Palit's playing safe feature which allows you to toggle between the 2 BIOS available. BIOS 1 is Palit's overclocked version for higher GPU Clock and Memory Clock while BIOS 2 is what appears to be the BIOS for the Founders Edition card as the GPU Clock and Memory Clock observed is identical to the GTX 1070 Founders Edition.

You can backup the BIOS via Palit ThunderMaster software too, in case if you plan to flash the GPU with a much powerful BIOS in the near future without losing the original BIOS that comes with the card.

SLI fingers are still available on the card, but as NVIDIA discourages any setup beyond 2-way SLI. NVIDIA and its partners have released a new SLI bridge that is supposed to support only 2-way SLI and improved performance compared to the older version of SLI bridge that used to come along as an accessory with motherboards.

The display output option is pretty common nowadays, 1 x DVI-I connector, 3 x DisplayPort and 1 x HDMI port.

Performance Test

Test Rig Configuration
CPU Cooler	Raijintek Triton 240
CPU	Intel Core i7 4790K @4.6GHz
Motherboard	ASUS Maximus Hero VII
Memory	G.Skill TridentX 2400MHz
Primary Hard Drive	Crucial M500 120GB
Power Supply	Be Quiet! Straight Power 10 600W
Chassis	Vector Bench case

We mounted the GeForce GTX 1070 GameRock Premium Edition on our test bench as above and each and every benchmark is conducted in a room of about 30C° ambient temperature.

Performance
We ran a few graphically demanding games and synthetic benchmarks in our possession on a selected settings at 1080p, which is considered as high for much of our test as usual.The final result of each benchmark is presented in the form of the graph below:

Performance Comparison With NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition
We've done a performance comparison with a Founders Edition of the GeForce GTX 1070 and the result of the clash between the two beast of a card is as following:

Overclocking

We ran the same graphically demanding games and synthetic benchmark on 1080p with the highest achievable clock speed for both its memory and GPU that is stable enough to be able to complete each benchmark with the following values:

70MHz raise on the GPU core clock
601MHz raise on the memory clock
Extra 14% gain on the power

That isn't much due to the card has been highly overclocked by Palit, but we managed to hit a beefy 2123MHz GPU clock speed on boost during our benchmark session.

Performance Comparison With NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition
We've done a performance comparison with a Founders Edition of the GeForce GTX 1070, both overclocked and we're seeing a quite near results as following:

Temperature

Temperature wise, the GameRock cooler is doing its job very well as we've observed a very decent temperature record of 35°C during idle and 68°C on load while running on default clock speed when the card is stressed with the FurMark burn-in test for an hour. Bumping up the GPU core clock with an extra 248MHz results in a higher but comfortable temperature of 72°C for the FurMark burn-in test.

Verdict
With the GTX 1070 Founders Edition already owning both the GTX Titan X and GTX 980Ti in terms of performance, the Palit GeForce GTX 1070 GameRock is what we will describe as the GTX 1070 on steroid. While BIOS 1 is already strong enough to deliver a beefy 2026MHz boost clock, it's overclocking capability is pretty much at its limit as we're only able to give it a very limited 70MHz boost on the GPU clock. A slightly higher performance can be achieved with BIOS 2, to a whopping 2123MHz with minimal effort. As the long going Green Light program that puts a limit on the overvoltage is limiting us to go any further on the GPU clock, a custom BIOS from the enthusiasts community that is capable of further unlocking the capability of the GTX 1070 is something that we would love to see in the coming future.

The cooling performance is just perfect as overheating is something that you would never experience with the cooler for GameRock series graphics card, not in a million years. Leaving the fans to run on auto is never an issue as the highest recorded temperature on load is 68°C on default and 72°C after overclocked. It can do even better with the fans running at 100% without sacrificing too much on the acoustics, all thanks to the TurboFan design and the ultra-thick heatsink.

The Palit GeForce GTX 1070 GameRock Standard Edition and Premium Editon comes at the price of RM2099 and RM3280 respectively, still pricey to most but definitely a very good deal that's worth going for - it performs better than the GTX 1070 Founders Edition by default, comes with a way much better cooling performance, and a lot more features that a Founders Edition card couldn't offer.

Pros

Combination of both aesthetics and solid build quality

Goes on par or better than both GTX 980Ti and GTX Titan X with ease

Dual BIOS feature allows user to play safe with custom BIOS

Good overclocking headroom on BIOS 2

Low power requirement

Reasonable price for the build quality and performance that it can deliver

Cons

BIOS 1 has limited overclocking headroom due to its already high GPU Clock and Memory Clock

Not easy to match with themed build that is not white and blue

It takes up to 2.5 slot, which is not an ideal choice for SLI if you're using a mATX form factor motherboard

ThunderMaster software GUI needs some improvement - the blue is overwhelming