GTX 1170 is more powerful than GTX 1080 Ti, leak suggests

“Hello darkness my old friend,” hums AMD.

If the photo above (showcasing a 3DMark test result) is legit, GTX 1170 will be the most powerful enthusiast GPU the world has seen, period. At 16 GB of GDDR6 memory (clocked at 10.2GHz), the chip clocked at 2.512 MHz, and the 3DMark score of 22,989, it outscores GTX 1080 Ti with ease, leaving Radeon Vega 64 so far behind it shouldn’t even be mentioned. It appears so effective it’s hard to believe – and there are a few good reasons not to.

First – the specs

Should GTX 1170 (if that's its name) be this fast, it probably won’t be consumer-friendly. 16 GB of VRAM is still uncommon even for top-shelf gaming GPUs. Also, the price tag of such a beast would fit somewhere between “over the top” and “insane.” If at all, such amount of memory will be representative of the upcoming 1180 Ti series.

“Hello darkness my old friend,” hum GTX 1070 owners.

And thus the performance of the alleged benchmark becomes questionable as well. The alleged GTX 1170 seems faster than a GTX 1080 Ti. That would be conceivable, but actually Nvidia has no reason to bring its new ultra-fast GPU generation onto the market with the level of performance displayed by the supposed 1170. AMD hasn’t been able to step up their GPU game for some time now, so if GTX 1170 specs turned out true, Nvidia would dominate and quite frankly monopolize the high-end GPU segment. Which is not good for business – let alone consumers – in the long run.

Then – the photo

There are also a few issues with the legitimacy of the photo:

• The benchmark result hasn’t appeared on 3DMark servers. That’s in opposition to every other test.
• It mentions a GTX 1170. A GPU that is yet to be released (i.e. remains “driverless”) is simply called a “generic VGA.”
• Print Screen seems to have broken. As with every fake leaked photo of, frankly, anything.

Can Nvidia’s Turing architecture really allow for such a powerful kickoff?

Bottom line: Hold your horses and wait until Nvidia issues an official statement regarding the matter. If they do, at least you’ll know it’s legit straight away.