NVIDIA Unveils GeForce GTX 1080 Ti: This One Goes To 11, Faster Than Titan X
NVIDIA just lifted the veil on its latest monster graphics card for gamers -- the long-rumored GeForce GTX 1080 Ti -- at an event this evening in San Francisco during the Game Developers Conference (GDC). The card will sit at the top of NVIDIA's Pascal-powered GeForce product stack alongside the mighty Titan X and GeForce GTX 1080, promising significant performance gains over the GTX 1080 and faster than Titan X-class performance, likely for a much lower price. However, pricing will be disclosed at an official unveiling later tonight, hosted by NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang. The card is an interesting beast and actually ushers in new premium GDDR5X memory from Micron.
Update - 8:01PM PST: NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang noted pricing for the new GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will be $699 and the cards are shipping next week. In addition, the GeForce GTX 1080 has been reduced to $499 MSRP.
The theme of NVIDIA's pitch for the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti payed homage to the vintage parody movie and band Spinal Tap -- as in, "this one goes to 11." The 12 billion transistor NVIDIA GP102-powered beast has 3,584 CUDA cores, which is actually the same as NVIDIA's Titan X. However, the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will have fewer ROP units at 88, versus 96 in the Titan X. And though it's not noted in the slide above, the card will come equipped with 11GB of premium GDDR5X memory from Micron clocked at 11,000 MHz for an effective 11Gbps data rate.
Micron has been working with NVIDIA to improve the signal noise and jitter of its high speed GDDR5X graphics memory, and with better equalization techniques, power delivery, and lower jitter, the signal is much cleaner, allowing NVIDIA to hit 11,000 MHz on the memory interface. Again, that's 11Gigabytes of memory at 11,000MHz -- so yes, "this one goes to 11" for sure, on multiple fronts. Here's how things map out comparably to the Titan X and GeForce GTX 1080.
| GTX 1080 Ti | TITAN X | GTX 1080 | |
| NVIDIA GPU | GP102 | GP102 | GP104 |
| Architecture | Pascal | Pascal | Pascal |
| Number of Cores | 3584 | 3584 | 2560 |
| Core Clock (Boost) | 1600 MHz | 1530 MHz | 1733 MHz |
| Memory | 11GB | 12GB | 8GB |
| Memory Clock | 11000 MHz | 10000 MHz | 10000 MHz |
| Memory Interface | 352-bit G5X | 384-bit G5X | 256-bit G5X |
| Memory Bandwidth | 484 GB/s | 480 GB/s | 320 GB/s |
| TDP | 250 watts | 250 watts | 180 watts |
| Peak Compute | 11.4 TFLOPS | 11.0 TFLOPS | 8.2 TFLOPS |
| Transistor Count | 12B | 12B | 7.2B |
| Process Tech | 16nm FinFET | 16nm FinFET | 16nm FinFET |
| MSRP | $699 | $1,200 | $499 (New price) |
Peak compute throughput of the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is slightly higher than the Titan X due to the Ti's higher Boost clock, and memory bandwidth over its narrower 352-bit GDDR5 memory interface is 484GB/s, which is also slightly higher than a Titan X. NVIDIA also noted that peak overclocks on the core should hit 2GHz or higher with minimal coaxing.
As a result, the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will be slightly faster than the Titan X in cases where compute performance and memory bandwidth gate performance, which will be most of the time. However, with 8 fewer ROPs, fill rate will be a but lower, so in some situations performance may be slightly softer for the 1080 Ti. Regardless, the majority of the time, this new card should indeed be faster than the mighty Titan X.
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Performance Gains Over GTX 1080 - Click for high res
Officially, NVIDIA is claiming the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will be roughly 20 to 40 percent faster than the standard GeForce GTX 1080 and they're highlighting a few numbers here in top game titles to showcase that. The interesting test will undoubtedly be to see how well it stacks up versus a Titan X. However, frame rate increases aren't all the new GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is packing.
Along with improved power regulation on the board and an improved cooler, the new GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will not only run cooler than its predecessors, but quieter as well. And again, though NVIDIA is being tight-lipped for a few more hours on pricing, we're told Founder’s Edition boards will not carry a premium. AIB partners will be building their own custom GeForce GTX 1080 Ti variants as well, of course.
NVIDIA will roll out new premium GDDR5X memory to standard 1080 and 1060 cards as well.
We'll update this article with pricing and availability for the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti as soon as it's available, so stay tuned and watch this space for more details as they are disclosed.
Update: NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang noted pricing for the new GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will be $699 and the cards are shipping next week. In addition, the GeForce GTX 1080 has been reduced to $499 MSRP.
NVIDIA will roll out new premium GDDR5X memory to standard 1080 and 1060 cards as well.
But wait, there's more good news for performance enthusiasts. NVIDIA also noted it will be rolling out the new higher speed, premium Micron GDDR5X memory to board partners to update existing GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1060 cards. This will allow NVIDIA's AIB partners to offer even higher overclocked models to take performance up a notch in these product SKUs as well.
We'll update this article with pricing and availability for the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti as soon as it's available, so stay tuned and watch this space for more details as they are disclosed.
Update: NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang noted pricing for the new GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will be $699 and the cards are shipping next week. In addition, the GeForce GTX 1080 has been reduced to $499 MSRP.
