NVIDIA blocks the frequencies of the NVIDIA GTX 1070 Ti for all manufacturers that work with the company, so they all work at the same frequency and only the heatsink will change.
We already know that the forecast is that the NVIDIA GTX 1070 Ti will be launched on October 26, the model that will compete more directly with the AMD RX Vega 56 and quite possibly with the AMD RX Vega 64. Well, information has appeared on the part from eTeknix and Expreview, saying that there will not be a reference model of this graphics card, something that we had already intuited as we were not aware of it and only mentioned custom models by different manufacturers, although they will have something in common: THEY WILL HAVE THE FREQUENCIES BLOCKED.
The models will have custom heatsinks and perhaps custom PCBs, but all these graphics cards will have the same GPU clock speed: 1607MHz base clock and up to 1683MHz boost clock. The information indicates that manufacturers are not authorized by NVIDIA to modify the graphics card clock speeds. eTeknix states: "An industry insider told eTeknix that the GTX 1070 Ti cannot be overclocked. Furthermore, we have been informed that NVIDIA will not be releasing any reference cards, and all cards will be from AIB partners, locked to the same clock speed. However, pricing and aesthetics are expected to vary between partners."
Expreview reports the following: 'NVIDIA has standardized the market frequency of the GTX 1070 Ti, meaning that regardless of the manufacturer you buy a GTX 1070 Ti from, its frequency will be fixed at 1607/1683MHz. If you want to improve performance, you can manually overclock it.'
These curious graphics cards are not really necessary and possibly, reducing the price of graphics cards, NVIDIA would have more than enough to compete with the AMD RX Vega. Everything points to the fact that the frequency blocking of these graphics cards is due to the fact that with a slight overclocking by the assemblers or a few modifications, the NVIDIA GTX 1080 could be improved in performance.