According to reviews, Nvidia's Pascal-based GTX 1070 provides a nice balance between price and performance for VR gamers.
Gizmag reports that Nvidia's updated new line of graphics cards is tempting Oculus Rift and HTC Vive owners with much better VR horsepower. Among the Pascal-based Geforce GTX models, the GTX 1070 is the current-gen sweet spot GPU.
By using the $449 GTX 1070 Founders Edition (EVGA variant), most of the virtual reality games look, more or less, exactly the same as on the $699 GTX 1080 Founders Edition card . The GTX 1070 provide a slight increase in performance compared to the older GTX 970 entry-level VR gaming card.
Trusted Reviews reports that the new GTX 1070 overtakes in performance last year's affordable GTX 970, deploying the new Pascal architecture. This new architecture improves efficiency and performance.
One of the key changes implemented in Nvidia's Pascal architecture involves the manufacturing process that has moved from 28 nm to 16 nm. The new scale of miniaturisation allows Nvidia to pack more transistors into the same amount of space. The smaller transistors also need less electricity.
While the GTX 970 and its 28 nm process used a 398 mm2 die that packs 5.2 billion transistors, the GTX 1070 uses a 312 mm2 die that fits 7.2 billion transistors. The new scale of miniaturization also allows the GTX 1070 to come a peak power requirement of 150W. Even with all those transistors, this is just five Watts more than the GTX 970.
For those virtual reality gaming enthusiasts who also care about saving money, they can do just fine with the 1070. In their aim to make as much money as possible, most developers and publishers will optimize their games for entry-level VR capable cards.
Tech experts expect that even the best VR gamers will continue to run well on Nvidia's Geforce GTX 1070 during the entire GPU generation. For most VR headset owners and especially for those gamers who are most interested to find the sweet spot between pricing and performance, the GTX 1070 is a good recommendation.
