When I first heard of the GTX 1070Ti, my first thought was that it is a more of a rumor than anything else. AMD's launch of their Vega 10 architecture based cards the Vega 64 and the cut down version the Vega 56 have seen quite a stir in the market. AMD somehow managed to enter into the price fiasco with their latest hardware. While the specs of the Vega cards are whopping, they actually could not live up to the expectations. The Vega 64 could not meet or beat the Nvidia's flagship GTX 1080Ti so much so that it even struggles to keep up with the GTX 1080. Not to mention that Pascal architecture is more than a year old when the cards based on the Vega 10 architecture were released.
It seems like Nvidia felt that the Vega 56 has the potential to take the mid to high-end market segment by taking over the popular GTX 1070 in that segment. Initial benchmarks have shown the mix results when it comes to the Vega 56 and the GTX 1070. Nonetheless, the Vega 56 was able to disturb the commanding position in that market segment and is initially announced price of $399 was too good to nail the competition.