Over the weekend Nvidia announced its new line-up of GPU’s in Austin, TX. Greatly exceeding our wildest expectations, these new cards crush previous performance records with ease. The GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 were both announced last night, but it’s the 1080 that will cause bloodshed.
As Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang’s put it, “The GeForce GTX 1080 is almost irresponsible amounts of performance.”
The New Nvidia GPU is more powerful than two GTX 980’s running in SLI. Running with less power consumption, and more efficiency, it still outperforms the beastly Titan X, a $1000 USD GPU. Crazier still, the cheaper GTX 1070 also outperforms the Titan X. Built with a 16nm FinFET chip with 8GB of GDDR5X memory, the GTX 1080 outperforms any other graphics card on the market, and promises huge boosts to regular gaming and VR.
The new cards are based on the Pascal architecture rather than today’s Maxwell GPU’s and include such features as Ansel—high quality screen-cap tech—Multi-screen projection, VRWorks Audio, VR PhysX, and VR Touch. You can even take 360 degree screenshots in regular games and then view said shots in virtual reality, which is pretty cool.
Probably the part everything is psyched about is the price point. The GTX 1080 is just $599 USD, while the GTX 1070 will be $379 USD. That’s $379 for a card that outperforms the Titan X, a $1000 GPU. The Founders Editions, which include more overclock headroom and Nvidia’s reference design you see in all the glam shots, with higher quality—and some might say “sexier”—materials, cost $699 and $449 respectively.
The GTX 1080 launches May 27th. The GTX 1070 will follow shortly after on June 10th. The cards will be available from various Nvidia partners such as MSI and EVGA. This is great timing, with VR headsets hitting market, and me needing to upgrade my card anyways. There’s nothing at all wrong with my GTX 970, but this will be a serious upgrade regardless. Needless to say, I’m pumped.