MSI GTX 1070 Quick Silver 8G Video Card Review

Today we get a chance to look at one of MSI‘s newest cards in their Pascal lineup in the GTX 1070 Quick Silver 8G video card. This GPU isn’t different at all under the hood when comparing it to the MSI GTX 1070 Gaming X 8G we reviewed as far as the upgraded PCB, power phases, and Twin Frozr VI cooler. It’s more of an aesthetic change and to add another option to their Gaming lineup that isn’t in their established red and black color scheme. The Quick Silver version, as you may have guessed, comes in with a black and silver look which matches their latest MPower and XPower Titanium boards really well. Being it is silver and has LEDs, it can fit in with a lot more themes than the regular Gaming X would. We know the looks are different, so let’s get to looking at what else is may be different and see how it passed our testing!

Specifications

Looking at the table below you are seeing the full compliment of GTX 1070 specifications, with its 8GB of GDDR5 memory at 2002 MHz, 1920 shaders, 64 ROPs, and 120 TMUs making up this power sipping and great performing card. Clocks on the core come in at 1582 MHz, lower than the Gaming X (1607 MHz) by 25 MHz. We will see where the boost clocks land. I would guess it to be less aggressive on this card by just a bit.

The card supports four displays with a maximum resolution of 7680×4330 (8K) through its three DisplayPorts (v1.4), one HDMI (v2.0), and a single DL-DVI-D port.

MSI recommends a 500W PSU for the 150W card which gives you plenty of headroom for overclocking. To that end, it requires a single 8-Pin PCIe connector for its power, giving you around 225W of power (within spec). If you choose to SLI, you are looking at a quality 650W unit or greater depending on your CPU and overclocking goals.

Features

Below is a look at several features from the MSI website. They have updated the TwinFrozr cooler to the TwinFrozr VI with this release. This includes the TORX 2.0 fan which is said to add 22% more air pressure to help get that air through the heatsink and off the card. The two fans now are of the double ball bearing variety to help keep noise down and provide longer life. Another feature that helps fan life is the Zero Frozr mode; the fans stay OFF until temperatures reach 60 °C! This means for browsing the web, multimedia, and even light gaming the card will not make a sound!

Speaking of the heatsink, MSI has engineered it to move more air to/through where the heatpipes are located to help with improved efficiency. The baseplate on the heatsink is made of nickel-plated copper to move the heat to the smoothed and flattened heatpipes, up to 8mm in size, which will maximize heat transfer from the baseplate. MSI also uses a premium thermal paste. That should keep the Military Class 4 components running plenty cool I would imagine! One cannot forget the addition of the LEDs that were put on the TwinFrozr VI cooler. They can be controlled through the MSI Gaming App with a few preset functions.

See these features and more at the MSI GTX 1070 Quick Silver 8G website.

	TORX 2.0 FAN TEAMWORK FOR GREATER STRENGTH Just like in games, the exclusive MSI TORX 2.0 Fan technology uses the power of teamwork to allow the TWIN FROZR VI to achieve new levels of cool.TORX 2.0 Fan design generates 22% more air pressure for supremely silent performance in the heat of battle.
	DOUBLE BALL BEARINGS Double Ball Bearings give the unique MSI TORX 2.0 Fans a strong and lasting core for years of smooth gaming. They also remain virtually silent while spinning under load, keeping your graphics card cool during intense and lengthy gaming sessions.
	ZERO FROZR-STAY UNDETECTED First introduced in 2008 by MSI, ZeroFrozr technology has made its mark and is now the industry standard among graphics cards. It eliminates fan noise by stopping the fans in low-load situations. This means you can focus on gaming without the noise of spinning fans.Under 60C, fans stop, completely silent (mulitmedia or light gaming). Above 60C the fan starts.
	CATCH THE VIBE WITH COOL LED EFFECTS Each LED can be controlled individually by choosing any of the animation effects availiable in the MSI Gaming App, ranging from responding to your game sounds or music to steady light, breathing and flashing. Of course, you can also turn them off.
	HEATSINK Lurking under the cover of the GAMING graphics card is an engineering masterpiece designed to keep the graphics card cool. Every tiny detail of the intricate heatsink plays an essential part in providing a cool & quiet gaming experience.AIRFLOW CONTROL TECHNOLOGY Using advanced aerodynamics, Airflow Control Technology directs more air directly onto the TWIN FROZR VI heat pipes. The special deflectors on the heat sink enlarge the surface area, which means lower temperatures and better gaming.
	SMOOTH HEAT PIPES Up to 8mm thick copper heat pipes with a smooth squared shape at the bottom maximize heat transfer from the surface of the copper base plate.SOLID BASEPLATE To temper the heat generated by a powerful GPU, MSI GAMING series graphics cards use a solid nickel-plated copper base plate. The base plate catches the heat from the GPU and transfers it to the heat pipes for dissipation so you can keep cool.PREMIUM THERMAL COMPOUND Every detail counts when it comes to creating the ultimate thermal design, which is why TWIN FROZR VI uses a premium thermal compound to make sure it outlives the competition.

GPU-Z

GPU is showing exactly what was mentioned in the specifications above, and maybe shows a little bit more. One difference is the use of the Micron GDDR5 instead of the Samsung we typically see. Prior to recent BIOS updates across all partners, the Micron chips didn’t seem to overclock quite as high as the Samsungs. There were even reports of issues at stock speeds with stability and graphical anomalies. Since that time, BIOS releases from all partners are available to correct the issue that some were having with the Micron-based memory.

The last item to note for our astute readers, the driver pictured in this screenshot is not the one used in testing, note. Please see the Test Setup for details.

Retail Packaging and Accessories

Below is our first look at the retail packaging for the MSI GTX 1080 Quick Silver 8G. We can see a bit of a difference from the traditional MSI Gaming packaging for this card in that we don’t see the red and black theme, but a simple black background, and the Quick Silver nomenclature across the front along with other identifying details. The back of the box shows some specifications and other details. Outside of aesthetics, the retail packaging is no different than the rest with its “box in box” setup with the accessories in the top box, and the card sitting below it in form fitting foam.

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Meet the MSI GTX 1070 Quick Silver

In our first glimpse of the 1070 Quick Silver, it appears they just took the red gaming card and mono-chromed it. And frankly, that isn’t far off. MSI still has its Twin Frozr VI cooler on it, but where it was red, it is now silver! The LEDs that were red, are now white. The backplate, instead of being black, is also silver matching this unique aesthetic. There are vents cut out of the backplate to allow some kind of airflow through there. Also visible here is the, LED lit, MSI Gaming badge.

As I said earlier, this look matches their MPower Titanium and XPower Titanium lines very well and will do much better in other themes compared to the static MSI Gaming red. You are able to get a “Gaming” caliber card with more theme agnostic aesthetics… I think this is a big win for MSI on that front.

A Closer Look

Taking a closer look at the card, we see it is equipped with five total display outputs: 3x DisplayPorts (v1.4), 1x HDMI (v2.0), and a DL-DVI-D. This combination supports up to 8K resolution and a total of four monitors.

Power requirements haven’t changed with the 1070 Quick Silver requiring both a 6-Pin and 8-PIn PCIe power lead for it to work. Being a 150W card, if you combine all inputs, you are looking at 300W able to be delivered in spec. You aren’t going to come close to that without some modifications, but it is always good to have for clean and stable power.

I took apart the card per usual to show the base of the Twin Frozr VI heatsink as well as how the PCB itself is cooled. In the wake of the EVGA concerns with some of their 1070’s, it behooves us to double check. MSI has heatsinks on both the memory and the VRM section sans its chokes. To that end, MSI used a thick thermal pad on the chokes which makes contact with the heatsink to help cool those down as well.

I didn’t take any shots of the PCB and core on this as it the same as found on the Gaming X. The only difference in this versus the Gaming is this Quick Silver is using the Micron memory IC instead of Samsung.

Monitoring/Overclocking Software – MSI Afterburner, MSI Gaming App

Below is MSI AB using the old skin and how it looks when using this card.

The MSI Gaming app, as we may already know, is a small footprint application which can help control your fan, LED’s, and one button overclocking with three built in modes (Gaming – Default, OC Mode, and Silent).

Test System

Benchmarking Method/Settings

Note all testing below uses 1920×1080 screen resolution (settings also carry over to 2560 x 1440 and Surround/Eyefinity testing if applicable).

All Synthetic benchmarks were at their default settings, with game benchmarks at noted settings:

• 3DMark Fire Strike – Extreme, default setting.
• 3DMark Time Spy – Default
• Unigine Valley Benchmark v1.0 – 1080p, DX11, Ultra Quality, 8x AA, Full Screen
• Unigine Heaven (HWbot) – Extreme setting
• Crysis 3 – Very High settings with 8xMSAA/16xAF (2nd level when you procure and use the Crossbow to get across the level and kill the Helicopter)
• Metro:LL – DX11, Very High, 16xAF, Motion Blur – Normal, SSAA Enabled, DX11 Tessellation – Very High, Advanced PhysX – Disabled, Scene D6
• Dirt: Rally – 1080p, 8x MSAA, everything on Ultra that can be, enable Advanced Blending
• Grand Theft Auto V – 1080p, high settings (see article below for details).
• Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor – 1080p, everything Ultra that can be (Lighting quality High), FXAA and Camera + Object Blur, DOF/OIT/Tessellation enabled.
• Rise of the Tomb Raider – 1080p, SSAA 4X, VSync Off, DirectX 12 On, Very High Preset
• The Division – 1080p, Ultra Preset, VSync Off
• Far Cry: Primal – 1080p, Ultra Preset, VSync Off
• Ashes of the Singularity – 1080p, DX12, Crazy Preset

More details found in our article: Overclockers.com GPU Testing Procedures

GPU’s Used for Comparion:

• MSI GTX 1070 Gaming X 8G
• MSI RX 480 Gaming X 8G
• MSI GTX 1060 Gaming X 6G

Synthetic Benchmarks

The results below turned out to be interesting to show more than just raw performance. There was a driver change between the time the 1070 Gaming X 8G was tested to now with the Quick Silver. Even though the Quick Silver had around 60MHz less clocks on the core and 25 MHz on the memory, the card managed to score slightly higher (1.5%) than the Gaming X reaching a 5,982 score. It was still behind by about that same margin in Fire Strike, scoring 8,261 here.

Here we see the same sort of result as above with the Quick Silver scoring 3,969 in Fire Strike, while it managed 4,947 points in Heaven.

Gaming Benchmarks

When we move on to games, we can see that slight clock deficit a bit more clearly here. Even with driver improvements, the 1070 Quick Silver was slightly behind the Gaming X. Still, all these titles are plenty playable with the meager FPS differences between the cards with the driver difference.

In these new(er) titles, we are seeing some good driver improvements across these titles as the again the slightly lower clocked Quick Silver is faster than the Gaming X.

Last up, the Quick Silver shows expected performance falling in line with the Gaming X. Even with our ultra settings, all the games are averaging over 54 FPS (86 in the case of The Division).

2560×1440 Results

The GTX 1070, especially a factory overclocked model, has no problems driving most of these titles at 2560×1440 resolution hitting well over 60 FPS. About the only titles it some may want to adjust from our settings is in Crysis 3 and Rise of the Tomb Raider. They both sport playable FPS averaging 39.7 and 34 FPS respectively. Ashes of the Singularity, and most RTS games in general, can get away with a much fewer than 60 FPS and get away it. Here the 1070 Quick Silver manages 36.4 FPS… again, still playable. See all the results below:

Pushing the Limits

For a refreshing change of events, there was some meat left on the bone for this card to push on the overclocks a bit from where we left it in our testing! I was able to hit stable peak clocks of 2076 MHz on the core and 2306 MHz (9224 MHz effective) on the memory. If I raised the voltage more than what you see in MSI AB (+17mv), it really would’t do anything for the clocks so it was left here. I poured on a little CPU and memory, ran Time Spy again and managed to score 6,521 versus 5,982. A difference in this test of over 8% from stock to a fully overclocked system.

Temperatures and Power Consumption

Temperatures on the Quick Silver were right in line with the Gaming X version of this card. Peak temperatures during our testing hit 67 °C. When running at that temperature, I had to look to confirm the fans were on. Considering its the same cooler, different color, I would not have expected anything different!

Power consumption was right in the same ballpark with the Gaming X again, this time it was slightly lower across the board, peaking at a system load of 290W while overclocked.

Conclusion

If you liked the MSI GTX 1070 Gaming X or Gaming Z 8G — and you should, they are solid cards — you are going to like the MSI GTX 1080 Quick Silver 8G. Hardware-wise, they are identical. Same PCB, same 10-Phase Military Class IV power. A good thing! Outside of the color scheme and LED differences, the backplate, specifically the MSI Gaming Dragon badge on it, glows with a nice white LED behind it… a feature from the Gaming Z lineup of cards. So what you have is a mixture of some great features on both cards shuffled up and dealt out to give you the Quick Silver!

The only real difference here compared to the Gaming is the look of the card. Most of MSI’s lineup is either Gaming red, or black and white, outside of the Titanium Series of motherboards. So though it stands out a in silver, and would match those boards splendidly, it will fit in better than the red on the Gaming series.

Pricing on the GTX 1070 Quick Silver 8G rings up at $449.99 at newegg.com. Compare that to the Gaming Z and Gigabyte Xtreme Gaming both at $459.99. The Gaming X is normally $449, while the EVGA FTW hovers around $439.99. It is on the higher end of the GTX 1070 spectrum (cheapest is under $400), but you are getting that much better than reference board and PWM area as well as the TwinFrozr VI cooler and the unique color scheme of the Quick Silver. Pricing is overall competitive. If you are looking for a more robust than reference… gah, “FE” edition, and would like a unique theme with the silver heatsink shroud, and white LED to fit in your build along with great performance and a quiet cooler, you can add the MSI GTX 1070 Quick Silver 8G to that list.

– Joe Shields (Earthdog).