MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Ti 8G Comparison Help - Armor vs Gaming vs Duke vs Aero vs Titanium

[southofpegasus]

Glancing across the specs on these cards, they all seem to be pretty much identical aside from some variance is dimensions and the fan type/configuration and heatsinks. And the Aero only has one 8 pin power connector while the others have the 8 and a 6 pin. Aside from those, I'm not seeing anything that would suggested any differences in performance other than in cooling perhaps. Unless I'm missing something which is the purpose behind this post, to find out.

Among them, the Armor is the cheapest followed by the Gaming, Duke, Aero, and finally Titanium. Deciding between them I think it's pretty easy to toss the Aero out as it doesn't have a heatsink or fans like the others but beyond that, I'm wondering what makes one better than the other regarding the Armor, Gaming, Duke, and Titanium. Considering there's roughly $100 in price difference between the four (the Armor comes in around $450 while the Titanium is closer to $550 with the other two falling in the middle), I'm thinking it would be wise to take a closer look here when considering my upcoming build. Any thoughts on this that might help me would be appreciated.

[Snapjak]

Which one looks the prettiest to you? I'd chose the titanium because of the white. The 3 fan would be a close second.

[Monk]

I'm not 100% certain, but I am pretty sure the gaming X and titanium share the same custom PCB and fan and mainly differ on colour and base clock which is meaningless, the armor for all other variants is also the same custom PCB as the gaming, however the cooler is really weak and it's real use is as a cheap cooler to be removed and water cooled,the Duke, I believe is a reference PCB with a 3 fan cooler bolted on.
If I am correct,the gaming and titanium will be the best cards, the armor the best choice to fit a waterblock to, but the worst if left stock, and the Duke is just a custom cooled reference board.

Edit.
Apparantly the titanium has an extra heat pipe over the gaming, so will be a tiny bit better.

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

When it comes to build quality and quality of coolers then Gaming X and Titanium > Duke > Armor.

[Monk]

Unless your watercooling, then the armor is best as it's stock cooler is cheap so doesn't drive the cards price up and you still get a custom PCB :)

[Revelene]

Armor, Gaming X/Z, and Titanium all have the same custom PCB, which is top notch. Aero and Duke have stock PCB, but that doesn't mean much to the average consumer.

Titanium has the best cooling, with Gaming X/Z just under it. Duke is basically a 3 fan variant of the 2 fan Armor. And Aero comes in either a single fan open air or blower.

I'd recommend Gaming X/Z, if going with air cooling. If wanting to go with custom cooling, then go for the Armor and slap on a good liquid cooler.

[southofpegasus]

Първоначално публикувано от Monk:

I'm not 100% certain, but I am pretty sure the gaming X and titanium share the same custom PCB and fan and mainly differ on colour and base clock which is meaningless, the armor for all other variants is also the same custom PCB as the gaming, however the cooler is really weak and it's real use is as a cheap cooler to be removed and water cooled,the Duke, I believe is a reference PCB with a 3 fan cooler bolted on.
If I am correct,the gaming and titanium will be the best cards, the armor the best choice to fit a waterblock to, but the worst if left stock, and the Duke is just a custom cooled reference board.

Edit.
Apparantly the titanium has an extra heat pipe over the gaming, so will be a tiny bit better.

I think you're pretty much spot on there. Looking closely on the MSI site, the Titanium and Gaming are identical in every aspect as far as I can tell except color. The heat sinks look to be identical to me but I could be wrong. With the Titanium you get black and white over the black and red of the Gaming. So I guess you pay $50 more for grayscale.

The Armor obviously has a different heat sink, the heat pipes aren't smooth like the heat pipes on the Titanium and Gaming heat sink. The PCB looks to be the same but it doesn't specifically mentioned a tailored PCB like the Titanium and Gaming and doesn't offer the same exploded view to get a good look. And the fans may or may not be the same. The Armor has the MSI TORX fans but the Titanium and Gaming specifically mention TORX 2.0. So perhaps the Armor fans are one step down but I'm not certain. It could be that the only difference here is in the efficiency of the heat sink.

The Duke also doesn't mention a tailored PCB or an exploded view but the PCB does look the same from what's visible. The heat sink is obviously different. The fins run in the short direction whereas the others run in the long. And it has the three fans with no mention of TORX fans and they're definitely of a different blade design.

As far as the base clock, according to the specs they are all the same across the board.

So from where I'm standing it seems the Titanium and Gaming are superior for out of the box cooling and differ only in color. Then the Armor would come next followed by the Duke.

Първоначално публикувано от Revelene:

Armor, Gaming X/Z, and Titanium all have the same custom PCB, which is top notch. Aero and Duke have stock PCB, but that doesn't mean much to the average consumer.

Titanium has the best cooling, with Gaming X/Z just under it. Duke is basically a 3 fan variant of the 2 fan Armor. And Aero comes in either a single fan open air or blower.

I'd recommend Gaming X/Z, if going with air cooling. If wanting to go with custom cooling, then go for the Armor and slap on a good liquid cooler.

Considering I'll be using the Thermaltake Core X71 case where the PSU and HDD cages will be below in the pedestal and SSD location in the space behind the motherboard which will pretty much leave the case wide open with nothing to impede airflow across the GPU do you think the Armor would cool sufficiently out of the box? I wouldn't be able to go liquid right away but probably within a year.

[Big Boom Boom]

There's no gaming z for anything below GTX 1080 Ti. It's the best model for MSI and also most expensive.

[Revelene]

Първоначално публикувано от Big Boom Boom:

There's no gaming z for anything below GTX 1080 Ti. It's the best model for MSI and also most expensive.

Yes, there is. I have a Gaming Z 1080... Lol

They just don't seem to have made one for the 1070 Ti, but there is also one for the 1070.

The only real differences between the X and Z are a slightly better binning and a RGB backplate.

[Big Boom Boom]

Nvm I was confused with lightning Z.

[Revelene]

Първоначално публикувано от Big Boom Boom:

Nvm I was confused with lightning Z.

Easy to do with these strange modeling schemes.

[Big Boom Boom]

Well consider Ti means titanium it's MSI GTX 1070 Titanium Titanium.

Lol.

[Monk]

The armor is the same cooler as the 1060, and on that it's weak, in every test I've seen cards with the armor cooler will get very hot, it's a really good PCB, but the cooler really should be thrown away, should also be noted that to water cool it would be expensive as most of the bolt on kits, along with ek's fluid line only fit reference boards as far as I am aware, so you would be !poking at a custom loop to cool it, which, well, for just the GPU you won't get much change out of £300-400, in short, I'd go for the gaming or titanium (Titanium's extra heat pipe is apparantly visible from the pcie side according to pics n Reddit about the 2 cards.

[southofpegasus]

Първоначално публикувано от Monk:

The armor is the same cooler as the 1060, and on that it's weak, in every test I've seen cards with the armor cooler will get very hot, it's a really good PCB, but the cooler really should be thrown away, should also be noted that to water cool it would be expensive as most of the bolt on kits, along with ek's fluid line only fit reference boards as far as I am aware, so you would be !poking at a custom loop to cool it, which, well, for just the GPU you won't get much change out of £300-400, in short, I'd go for the gaming or titanium (Titanium's extra heat pipe is apparantly visible from the pcie side according to pics n Reddit about the 2 cards.

After looking closer I see the extra heat pipe now so it's sure to cool a bit better. I came across a youtube video comparison between the Gaming and Titanium and it shows the Titanium edging the Gaming by 1 FPS on several games and being identical on others while operating 1 degree Celsius cooler.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7GBnl13_YU

Expanding on this conversation a bit... Opinions on the MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Ti 8G Titanium vs the Asus GeForce GTX 1070 Ti 8GB ROG STRIX? It seems in comparing the two the Strix would outperform the Titanium when it comes to cooling so my question would be about the overall performance and reliability of the Asus as compared to the MSI.

[John Doe]

Both those GPUs will last for ages easily. They're both very well built.

[Dica78]

MSI GTX 1070ti Duke 8gb would it be worth it for $150 Canadian today? I've got limited funds, I'm gonna try get the price down