MSI has unveiled their new GTX 1070 GAMING X 8G version several hours before the official launch of NVIDIA's Founders Edition cards of the GPU to tease customers into waiting for their release.
The GTX 1070 FE will be the first cards out of the door for customers who do not mind spending the extra bucks for the premium or what most users on Reddit call the "early adopters' tax." The MSI GTX 1070 GAMING X 8G is one of the many custom AIB cards that will be shipping several weeks later after today's launch.
What makes the powered down GTX 1080 card a hot item for most of the PC gamers today is its price and power efficiency. It has fewer CUDA cores and just GDDR5 memory instead of the 1080's GDDR5X but the overall performance reduction from its bigger brother is just roughly at 25 percent with several hundred dollars off on the pricing.
More users, however, are waiting for the custom cards because of their better cooling solutions and factory overclocked base frequencies. The GTX 1070 GAMING X 8G from MSI makes use of the Twin Frozr VI cooling solution with its two huge fans, Lazygamer has learned.
While the AIB cards are better for probably most of the gaming rigs today, there are still certain scenarios in which a blower card might be better. Smaller cases with bad airflow inside will benefit from the Founders Edition because the heat would be dissipated towards outside the case and not inside it, which could cause the RAM, processor and hard drives to heat up even faster.
NVIDIA's release of the 368.39 driver for the GTX 1070 on launch day will certainly improve the performance of both the FE and the custom cards from MSI, Gigabyte, EVGA and more, Neowin reported.
One of the highlights of the new driver is improved framerates for Mirror's Edge Catalyst to allow players to freerun better on the game's virtual rooftops. They can get the newest WHQL Game Ready driver at the GeForce website.
As for the GTX 1070, the MSI GAMING X 8G edition has no price or release date yet. It is expected that the Founders Edition of the card would be the first to be sold for several more weeks.