After a lot of speculation, a few leaked pictures, and lots of anticipation, Nvidia have finally announced the new 10 series of Geforce cards. Instead of releasing the lower powered 10 series and building up to the higher end Nvidia has decided to launch near the top end first, with the GTX 1080 being the flagship card until there is a “ti” version of the card. A special “Founders Edition” will be available from May 27th, for $699 with the 1070 following up two weeks later on June 10th for $379.
The speculation for these cards has been building for months. The die shrink from 28nm to 16nm created some truly crazy theories. The GTX 1080 reality however is a lot more down to earth. Looking at the Titan and 9 series it is a mix of improvements and setbacks.
The headline features do look impressive, a 1700 mhz core clock is faster than a Titan X. We’ve got 8GB of GDDR5x, which will still use a 256bit bus, but run at 10Gbps. 2560 Cuda cores, which is halfway between a standard 980 and the more powerful Titan X. This is a running theme for the 10 series specs that have been revealed, enough to be a decent upgrade from a 980 but on paper not quite enough to threaten the current top Titan card.
Paper however doesn’t tell the whole story, in practice the 1080 looks like a fantastic card. During the reveal, DOOM (2016) was shown running at between 120 and 200fps @1080p on ultra settings. Even the 980ti can’t hold a locked 60fps. In just a few short weeks it’ll be in our hands, and we’ll find out how good the 1080 really is.
The problem with theatrical events and launches like this is that we never really know the full story back stage and whether there’s some computer trickery, or just trickery, to help with the stats and gameplay. Will I be buying one? Well perhaps, but only if it’s a huge improvement over my 980ti and if they change that damn ugly shroud. How about you? Is your GPU simply good enough that you won’t even be tempted to look at the 1080 or is your wallet itching? – Craig
