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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Mobile

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Mobile in 2025: Is It Worth Considering an Outdated Legend?

Introduction

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Mobile is the mobile version of the famous card from the Pascal architecture era, released in 2016. Despite its age, it can still be found in used laptops and select new budget models (if any remain on the market). In this article, we will explore what this graphics card is capable of in 2025, who it is suitable for, and what drawbacks should be considered.

1. Architecture and Key Features

Pascal Architecture: The Foundation of Stability

The GTX 1070 Mobile is built on the Pascal architecture (GP104), manufactured using TSMC's 16nm process. This has provided it with high energy efficiency for its time. The card includes 2048 CUDA cores, 128 texture units, and 64 rasterization units.

Lack of RTX and DLSS: The Main Drawback in 2025

The GTX 1070 Mobile does not support ray tracing (RTX) or DLSS—key NVIDIA technologies from recent years. However, it does offer other features:

- Ansel for creating 360-degree screenshots;

- G-SYNC for monitor synchronization;

- ShadowPlay for gameplay recording.

Why Is This Important?

In 2025, most games utilize DLSS 3.5 or FidelityFX Super Resolution to boost FPS, but the GTX 1070 Mobile misses out on these optimizations.

2. Memory: Speed vs. Modern Standards

GDDR5: Tried and True, But Outdated

The card is equipped with 8 GB of GDDR5 memory with a 256-bit bus. The bandwidth is 256 GB/s. In comparison, modern mobile GPUs (like the RTX 4060 Mobile) use GDDR6 with bandwidth of up to 360 GB/s.

Impact on Performance

- In games from 2016 to 2020, the memory is sufficient for 1440p;

- In modern projects (2023–2025), FPS drops are possible due to memory speed limitations, especially at Ultra texture settings.

3. Gaming Performance: The Realities of 2025

1080p: Comfortable Level

- The Witcher 3 (Ultra): 70–80 FPS;

- Cyberpunk 2077 (Medium): 40–45 FPS (without RT);

- Hogwarts Legacy (Low-Medium): 35–40 FPS.

1440p: Needs Reduced Settings

- Red Dead Redemption 2 (High): 45–50 FPS;

- Call of Duty: Warzone (Medium): 60–65 FPS.

4K: Not Recommended

Even in lighter projects (like CS2), the card barely achieves stable 60 FPS at medium settings.

Ray Tracing: Not Available

The absence of RT cores makes it impossible to use RTX even in hybrid mode (via FSR/CAS).

4. Professional Tasks: Limited Capabilities

Video Editing and Rendering

- Premiere Pro: CUDA acceleration helps with rendering, but in 2025 it lags behind even budget RTX 3050 Mobile by 30–40%;

- Blender: OptiX support is absent—rendering is only through CUDA, which increases task completion time.

3D Modeling

- Autodesk Maya: Works reliably on simple scenes, but complex projects cause lag.

Scientific Calculations

- CUDA/OpenCL: Suitable for entry-level neural network training, but the small memory size (8 GB) limits model sizes.

5. Power Consumption and Heat Output

TDP: 120–150 Watts

The mobile GTX 1070 is demanding in terms of cooling. In thin laptops (up to 20mm thick), overheating may occur, reaching 85–90°C under load.

Cooling Recommendations

- Regularly clean the fans of dust;

- Use cooling pads;

- Replace thermal paste every 1–2 years.

Cases

An ideal choice would be bulky gaming laptops with ventilation grilles (such as older ASUS ROG Strix or MSI GT Series models).

6. Comparison with Competitors

NVIDIA RTX 3050 Mobile

- Pros: Supports DLSS, RTX, lower power consumption (80 W);

- Cons: 4 GB GDDR6 (in the base version)—less memory for textures.

AMD Radeon RX 6600M

- Pros: 8 GB GDDR6, FSR 3.0;

- Cons: Poor optimization for professional software.

Conclusion

The GTX 1070 Mobile falls short against modern competitors in terms of technology but excels with higher memory capacity compared to some budget newcomers.

7. Practical Tips

Power Supply

- At least 180 W for a laptop with GTX 1070 Mobile;

- Use only original adapters.

Compatibility

- Processors: Best paired with Intel Core i7 7th/8th generation or AMD Ryzen 5 2600;

- Platforms: Supports PCIe 3.0—compatible with most motherboards.

Drivers

- NVIDIA ceased official support in 2024;

- For working with new games, use modified drivers (for example, from the NVCleanstall community).

8. Pros and Cons

Pros

- Reliability and proven design;

- 8 GB of memory—sufficient for many games at Medium-High settings;

- Low price on the secondary market ($150–250).

Cons

- No support for RTX/DLSS;

- High power consumption;

- Lack of up-to-date drivers.

9. Final Verdict: Who Is the GTX 1070 Mobile Suitable For?

This graphics card is a choice for:

1. Gamers on a budget, willing to play at medium settings in Full HD;

2. Owners of older laptops who do not want to overpay for modern models;

3. Retro upgraders assembling PCs based on outdated but functional components.

Why Not?

If you need ray tracing, rendering in Blender, or stable performance in new games—consider the RTX 4050 Mobile or AMD RX 7600M.

Conclusion

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Mobile in 2025 is a "workhorse" for undemanding tasks. It won’t impress in modern AAA titles but can serve as a budget solution for those who value the balance of price and performance. Just keep its limitations in mind and don’t expect miracles from a 9-year-old architecture.

Basic

Label Name

NVIDIA

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

August 2016

Model Name

GeForce GTX 1070 Mobile

Generation

GeForce 10 Mobile

Base Clock

1442MHz

Boost Clock

1645MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

7,200 million

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

128

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

16 nm

Architecture

Pascal

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

8GB

Memory Type

GDDR5

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

256bit

Memory Clock

2002MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

256.3 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

105.3 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

210.6 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.

105.3 GFLOPS

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

210.6 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

6.873 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

SM Count

Multiple Streaming Processors (SPs), along with other resources, form a Streaming Multiprocessor (SM), which is also referred to as a GPU's major core. These additional resources include components such as warp schedulers, registers, and shared memory. The SM can be considered the heart of the GPU, similar to a CPU core, with registers and shared memory being scarce resources within the SM.

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

2048

L1 Cache

48 KB (per SM)

L2 Cache

2MB

TDP

120W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.3

OpenCL Version

3.0

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_1)

CUDA

6.1

Power Connectors

None

Shader Model

6.4

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

6.873 TFLOPS

3DMark Time Spy

Score

5650

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile Refresh 6 GB

7.486 +8.9%

Quadro RTX 4000

7.261 +5.6%

GeForce GTX 1070 Mobile

6.873

GeForce RTX 2070 Mobile Refresh

6.571 -4.4%

GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile Refresh 4 GB

6.304 -8.3%

3DMark Time Spy

Radeon RX 6600 XT

9840 +74.2%

Radeon RX 6600 LE

7770 +37.5%

GeForce GTX 1070 Mobile

5650

Radeon RX 6500M

4147 -26.6%

GeForce GTX 980M

2888 -48.9%