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Nvidia is gearing up to launch its new Pascal GPU architecture this year. While early rumours pointed towards a Q1 2016 release it is clear that the timeline has shifted a bit. The latest unofficial word on the street is that Nvidia may launch the GTX 1080 in May, with the card prepped to use a fully enabled GP104 GPU core and 8GB of VRAM.
This news comes from Chinese site, Benchlife, so we don't know how valid it really is. However, according to the report, Nvidia's GTX 1080 could arrive in May, following a presentation of Pascal graphics cards at the Game Technology Conference this year. Nvidia may also launch a GTX 1070 in that same time frame.
Pascal will be based on the 16nm FinFET process and the new GP104 core may offer up to double the performance per watt and use a single 8-pin power connector. If this rumour is to be believed, though, then the GTX 1080 won't arrive with HBM and will instead use 8GB of GDDR5 VRAM. HBM 2 will likely feature on the flagship GP100 GPU-based card, like an 80Ti or Titan series product.
While we are currently going on the assumption that Nvidia's next card will be called the GTX 1080, the naming scheme is not confirmed. It is possible that Nvidia will switch its product naming up this year with the launch of Pascal.
KitGuru Says: Nvidia has been pretty quiet recently but hopefully we will hear something official on the launch of Pascal graphics cards soon. If the supposed GTX 1080 is coming in May, then it won't be long before we hear something more concrete. That said, this is all rumour for now so don't get your hopes up just yet.
I can’t see them calling it the 1080.. that would just be asking for loads of ‘hilarious’ jokes ‘ohh it’s made for 1080p ahuhhuhhuh’ urgh -.-
disappointing that they’re not releasing the card with HBM2, glad i picked up a 980ti a while back instead of waiting.
that’s probably why xbox went with xbox one instead of xbox 720 lol…
but most of their games are 720p@60 or some strange 900p@30
Well the whole question is, when will we see the TI version, I’m thinking of getting at 980 TI but I’d rather wait.
the games which will be releasing in 5y (myb even more) forward, 980Ti will be kicking games as hell good, so no point of waiting, cause the 980 cards are one of the best card nvidia has ever made and if this cards come out then 980 will be even cheaper to get, btw if some of you have SLI of 980Ti (me included), then this two card will just swallow gtx1080.
First come the reference design cards then after market additions, same thing every year folks. Only this time a huge boost in performance over the 980 Ti.
Whatever its called it should be able to handle 4k gaming with a single card at 60fps. All I care about.
Yes thats why u need 4x sli for 4K. Heueheueheueh
Except on games with poor sli xfire scaling
I thought the same thing about my 780, yet i’m already having to take games down to MEDIUM. I’m planning on upgrading to the 1080 (or whatever they decide to call it; I HOPE it’s not that stupid name) when I gets my tax refund.
I agree, something like GTX X80 and X70 would make more sense.
Maybe they knew that in advance 😉
I wonder how the 1070 (or X70) will compare to the 970, should it be released. Cause the 1080/X80 is going to be out of my budget anyway.
I disagree smoky07
This is a massive upgrade. Do you know what a die shrink is? Do you not realize the 300$ cards today, will be half as powerful as the 300$ cards in 2 months time?
This is a horrible time to buy a new GPU, just wait! The 980Ti is already not good enough for VR and 4k games coming later this year. Good for 5 years my butt! You just want to feel good about your card purchase, and I can sympathize with that, just don’t mislead people into a bad choice here.
The only reason past cards were good for 5 years, was because the industry was stalled on 28nm GPU parts… now we are going to 14 and 16, this is a massive upgrade. Not only will you save some money every year on electricity costs, but you’ll have 2x the horsepower for your dollar. Unless for some reason the prices on these new cards are horrible, which I wouldn’t expect with AMD also ready to launch parts on this new node!
AMD and NV both get their chips made from TSMC, which is years behind schedule on releasing this new node option. Both of them have been waiting for this for A VERY LONG TIME, and have had a lot of time to plan. Long delayed, here we go! Finally! Good bye 28nm, and good riddance.
if you don’t do VR and 4k, your card will be good for a year or 2 yet, but certainly you won’t be rocking high settings in high quality games in even just a couple years. This is what happens when we get to a new node, developers can ever push more polygons and high quality textures. It’s kinda like playing age of empires, and you go from the bronze age to the iron age! It’s a massive upgrade!
Unless you get a really awesome deal like buying from a friend or something, just wait! WE NEED MORE POWER SCOTTY! ALWAYS MORE POWER! GIVE IT TO MEEWEWEWEEWEWEEEEEEE!!!!
Question from an idiot girl who just built her first PC. I also have a 980 TI which I thought was good, but if I get this next card could I play Skyrim with all the graphics mods running at 4K without my graphics card exploding my PC or the new Elder Scrolls game whenever that comes out at max stuff? Sorry I’m just curious on whether I should save like $2000 to do an upgrade although I built my PC less than a year ago.
You should always save, you never know when there be a raining day.
Hardware. AMD seems to have a very strong lead in 4K but we’ll have to wait and see what Nvidia and AMD show us this year in order to pick a winner.
Yeah that is also my belief, right now the battle to get a card out that can run 4K is intense and whoever manages that will have an edge on the market. Pricing wise I’m not so sure AMD really screwed up when they released their fury X cards I’n my opinion. They decided to put their price on par with Nvidia cards, if they had gone and sold it somewhere between 10 – 20% less they could have done much better, this is pure speculations but I believe they would have done a lot better.
Like you said MORE POWER I’ll be waiting that is for sure.
GDDR5 or GDDRX5 which can be up to 2x faster in theory based on some micron benchmarks, and i would rather have 1K70 with 6 gb of GDDRX5 ram than 4 GB od HBM1, so im preety positive
Pascal with 8GB of GDDR5 VRAM will rip even more market share from debt doomed AMD, Pascal will be MUCH more future proof than gaming gimped Fiji/tonga (fury/nano) HBM1 with its measly 4GB of memory.
We have been recommending the 980Ti/6GB as the most future proof GPU investment, and will change recommendations to Pascal/8GB. Later in the year Pascal HBM2 will be released but the Pascal/GDDR5 VRAM/8GB will still be the biggest budget bang for your GPU buck.
Care to explain how AMD have a ‘strong lead in 4k’? I run two 980ti SC cards at 4K and in most tests are benching better than the fastest AMD cards
I agree with this guy, this is the absolute worst time to buy a graphics card on either team (red/green) It’ll be better to wait till the end of the year and see what the new cards are like.
Its funny that amd’s cards are thrashing Nvidia’s cards in DX12 benches now tho isnt it eh.
I have a feeling the Polaris chips are going to thrash nvidia’s pascal chips too. We’ll just have to wait and see tho.
Your 980ti will last you a good long time, if you’re gaming at 1080p or 1440p the card will easily beast any game that comes out the next 2-3 years.
Crossfire has 80-85% scaling and its far better than Nvidia’s scaling, at 4k AMD is beating Nvidia, just go look up some benchmarks.
With DX12 just around the corner we’ll be seeing AMD take much more of a lead too.
Its going to be an interesting year for graphics cards.
Even though I myself am a Nvidia guy, I kindaa Hope AMD wins this time just to get some more competition and hopefully Price cuts.
A warning about Skyrim: The engine it is built on ties its physics to the framerate, meaning really weird and annoying things can happen if your FPS is significantly above 60. You can get a frame rate limiter, but I have run into some issues with those as well.
Yer not an idiot, you just didn’t know. Don’t feel too bad. This is what the old days of PC gaming was like… That hot new voodoo 2 12mb card you got for 400 dollars last month?
WHO HA!! WATCH THIS!
PRESTO!
Is now garbage…
Back then advancement was very rapid. In the span of only 7 years we went from 266mhz cpu’s, to nearly 3 thousand mhz. From 2d graphic cards with very awkward 3d graphics in games, to powerhouse 3d cards like the geforce 4! Still got my 4200ti laying around somewhere =D
If I were you, I’d just ebay that card a few weeks before the new products launch, take a small hit in losses, and then buy the hot new card. You pay a little to upgrade this way. Being a higher end part, the 980Ti should hold it’s value quite well, as I know from experience. I can never find a cheap used high end part on ebay, unless it’s multiple generations old.
You must not play kerbal. Trust me, we need much more power then even the new cards will be..> The age of mass physics is upon us, REPENT!
The problem is it’s just too early to vote a winner on these fronts. Dx12 is still very new, and many patches are needed from the games that do, as is more driver updates from both companies. We might as well cal this EARLY ACCESS dx12, or beta, cause that’s really what it is in practical use.
I would expect to see some wins for NV and some wins for AMD, and silly fanboys throwing that in each others faces in pointless arguments and benchmarks that will be irrelevant in a few months time. It’s kinda always been this way.
The new graphics cards will probably be closer matched in performance then we’ve seen in recent years. Both companies had an extended time to plan for this node with the years worth of delays from TSMC. I’d give the edge to NV who likely has a huge RD budget compared to the dangerously close to bankrupt AMD, but we’ll see. It is going to be very interesting for sure.
If this goes badly for AMD, we are going to need its “bulldozer” to clear forest so we can “excavate” a landfill to put all their “zens” into, bwahahahahaa!
Yeah, so far I’ve been going 1080 and it’s pretty darn awesome.
Thanks for the tip. I’ll definitely look into finding away around that. I think maybe FarCry4 or Metro has an issue like that too, because when I was playing my frame things went to hell in the menu.
Yeah…I bought all my parts new on Amazon and shelved out $2000 for it. Not bad because I can play Emulators of the Gamecube since I lost my actual Gamecube remote, so it’s good to go back and play that kind of stuff. I mainly only got my PC for Skyrim and trying to learn 3D animation though. Haha!
Because you’d look at it once, turn 720 degrees, and moonwalk away.
This late in the Maxwell game, it would be a foolish “investment” of your money.
I’m sure the Pascal X70 will meet that performance level for less money.
I am in doubt whether or not I should wait for the HBM editions but yeah 1070 og 1080 will be alright, Nos only thing is to wait for them to come out in May
I also ignorantly neglected to list another option.
Buy Polaris!
Good time to sell one to the ignorant masses, though!
Due to the drop in Canadian dollar, I will probably make $100 profit reselling my 970 this month.
😀
I feel like the HBM editions will only be Titan and the X80 Ti which will only launch in 2017 if Nvidia’s mid-range milking trend continues this generation.
If you are on GM204, the GP104 is the best bet for a green upgrade this summer.
But we still need to see what the non-HBM polaris GPUs look like to see which is the better buy.
You can make a decent educated guess at what the perf will be by looking at previous node shrinks.
At the jump to 28nm the 670 blew away the 580 by about 20%, for instance. It’s easily plausible that the 1070 could be substantially faster than the 980 Ti is today.
The main caveat is that double precision is coming back when it was removed completely in Maxwell, so the gains in rendering power might not be as big.
That link dates back to July 2015 when the Fury X was released, the article doesn’t even reflect the general consensus within other benchmarks. Care to show us some newer benchmarks because the way I see it outside of games designed for specific cards they are pretty much equal
They’d have to drop the GTX bit tough
The leaked shrouds for both the 80 and 70 seem to say that tough, depends on whether those leaks are to be believed
For those of us that can afford to wait, I’ll wait for the Titan. The 1080/1070 specs are already leaked and those are coming first. The 1080 will feature GDDR5X 8GB and the 1070 will sport the same memory with only GDDR5 though. I can’t wait for the new Titan to set up my new 2-way SLI with the Titan of Titans!
So you understand why I’m waiting for the Pascal Titans for a 2 way SLI. There are regular people and hardcore/dedicated gamers. As a gamer, I can’t live until I know that I can play any modern AAA 4K game running on ULTRA at 60FPS or higher.
If you’re talking about perf per $ though, most people would fall into the Pascal 1080 range and call it enough. Enough for them is not enough for me.
I’ve seen some new benchmarks where the classic r9 295×2 gets smoked by a single 980Ti 🙂
AMD are using Global Foundries and Samsung for Zen/Polaris not TSMC which is why they are on 14nm as opposed to 16nm.
Though both companies are claiming 2.5x performance per watt both are using more efficient nodes, so the gains might not be that great as they will fight for power consumption rather than performance on the cards coming this year,
The flagships will still suck power, the P100 Tesla Pascal is 300watt TDP
I know you didn’t mean to do this, but I totally read your laughing as a donkey sound.
I’m pretty sure Nvidia makes deals with developers like Rocksteady to make crappy ports so people need something like a 980ti just to play Batman at 60fps maxed at 1080p
If your goal is to play ported AAA games maxed all the time, you’re going to be spending a pretty penny.