NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Reportedly In Production For March Launch
Ever since NVIDIA launched Pascal, the one card that enthusiasts have been champing (not chomping) at the bit for is the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. An earlier rumor had NVIDIA announcing the much anticipated Ti variant at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas last month, but that did not happen. The speculation that followed was that NVIDIA might skip the Ti part entirely. Maybe it will, but according to new (unconfirmed) information making the rounds, the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is only about a month away.
Swedish-language website Nordic Hardware claims to have heard directly from graphics card makers in Taiwan that the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will arrive to retail in late March, most likely around March 20-23. As for when it will be officially announced by NVIDIA, that is still a guessing game. It is possible that NVIDIA will use this year's Game Developers Conference (GDC) to formally introduce the new part, which would be interesting since it's expected that AMD will talk about Vega during its Capsaicin event at GDC as well.
This is not the first time we've heard that NVIDIA might launch the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti in March. After nothing came to pass at CES, one of the subsequent rumors was that it would appear at PAX East. However, that even takes place in the second week of March.
In any event, if and when NVIDIA does finally launch the Ti variant, it will be interesting to see how it competes with existing Pascal cards. Keeping in mind that nothing is yet confirmed, here is a look at how previously rumored specs would stack up with the regular GeForce GTX 1080 and the Pascal-based GeForce Titan X:
The big question here is how much NVIDIA will allow the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti to cannibalize it second generation Titan X. That might not be as big of a concern now as it would have been a few months ago—the Titan X is a bit harder to find these days. It's mostly available through third-party sellers at inflated price tags, though NVIDIA still sells it direct from its website for $1,200.
It will also be interesting to see what kind of memory the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti ends up with. Our guess is GDDR5X, though if the rumored specs ring true, the 1080 Ti will end up being a slightly toned down Titan X, probably priced at least few hundred dollars less.
Swedish-language website Nordic Hardware claims to have heard directly from graphics card makers in Taiwan that the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will arrive to retail in late March, most likely around March 20-23. As for when it will be officially announced by NVIDIA, that is still a guessing game. It is possible that NVIDIA will use this year's Game Developers Conference (GDC) to formally introduce the new part, which would be interesting since it's expected that AMD will talk about Vega during its Capsaicin event at GDC as well.
This is not the first time we've heard that NVIDIA might launch the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti in March. After nothing came to pass at CES, one of the subsequent rumors was that it would appear at PAX East. However, that even takes place in the second week of March.
In any event, if and when NVIDIA does finally launch the Ti variant, it will be interesting to see how it competes with existing Pascal cards. Keeping in mind that nothing is yet confirmed, here is a look at how previously rumored specs would stack up with the regular GeForce GTX 1080 and the Pascal-based GeForce Titan X:
| GeForce GTX 1080 Ti |
GeForce Titan X |
GeForce GTX 1080 |
|
| Architecture |
Pascal | Pascal | Pascal |
| GPU | GP102 | GP102 | GP104-400 |
| Process Node |
16nm FinFET | 16nm FinFET | 16 FinFET |
| CUDA | 3,328 | 3,584 | 2,560 |
| Base Clock |
1,503MHz | 1,417MHz | 1,607MHz |
| Boost Clock |
1,623MHz | 1,531MHz | 1,733MHz |
| Performance | 10.8 TFLOPS | 11 TFLOPS | 8.87 TFLOPS |
| Memory | 10GB | 12GB GDDR5X | 8GB GDDR5X |
| Memory Clock | 10,000MHz | 10,000MHz | 10,000MHz |
| Memory Bus | 384-bit | 384-bit | 256-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 480GB/s | 480GB/s | 320GB/s |
| TDP | 250W | 250W | 180W |
The big question here is how much NVIDIA will allow the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti to cannibalize it second generation Titan X. That might not be as big of a concern now as it would have been a few months ago—the Titan X is a bit harder to find these days. It's mostly available through third-party sellers at inflated price tags, though NVIDIA still sells it direct from its website for $1,200.
It will also be interesting to see what kind of memory the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti ends up with. Our guess is GDDR5X, though if the rumored specs ring true, the 1080 Ti will end up being a slightly toned down Titan X, probably priced at least few hundred dollars less.
