NVIDIA rumors: leaks of GTX 1070 Ti benchmarks ahead of release

Promotional photo for "Ashes of the Singularity," one of the best known RTS games for benchmarking.Ashes of the Singularity official website

NVIDIA is taking the fight to Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), as the "Ashes of the Singularity" benchmark for its upcoming GTX 1070 Ti graphics processing unit (GPU) gets leaked online.

The leaked benchmark shows that the 1070 Ti scored an overall 6200 at the 2560 x 1440 or 1440p resolution using the "Extreme" graphics preset of the real-time strategy (RTS) game "Ashes of the Singularity." The actual frame rates of the benchmark show that the average overall frame rate that the 1070 Ti can handle on the said resolution and preset it to 65.5 frames per second (FPS). However, there were three batches of varying unit numbers clashing on-screen, normal, medium, and heavy, where the 1070 Ti scored 87, 65.8, and 52.4 FPS respectively.

The benchmark, however, was only conducted for the DirectX 11 application program interface (API); DirectX 12 benchmarks for the game may have different results. WCCF Tech was also surprised that the benchmarks for the 1070 Ti on the normal batch for the game were at an all-time high, besting even the GTX 1080, which is NVIDIA's flagship GPU.

This could mean trouble for the AMD Rx Vega line of GPU since both the Vega 56 and the Vega 64 struggle to beat the GTX 1070 and the GTX 1080 respectively. Still, AMD may have a slight edge when it comes to DirectX 12 performance.

One thing to note about the GTX 1070 Ti is that there are rumors floating about that it will not be overclock-able; speculations are that the GPU will only run at a base clock speed of 1607 megahertz (MHz) and a boost clock of only up to 1683 MHz. This might be problematic with some consumers as the NVIDIA Pascal architecture is known for its wide overclock margins. The 1070 Ti not being able to utilize one of the redeeming qualities its architecture may turn down some enthusiasts.

Overclocking is the act of increasing the voltage and frequency of the GPU in order to squeeze more performance and FPS. Doing this, however, requires advanced knowledge, as well as adequate hardware.

The GTX 1070 Ti is set to be launched on Oct. 26 and will be sold for a retail price of $429.