NVIDIA Slashes GTX 1080 To $499, Offers Faster GDDR5X Memory For 1080 And 1060 OC Cards

But now that a new gaming Titan has entered the fray, what happens with the current GeForce GTX 1080? Thankfully, NVIDIA is instituting a price cut, which sees the GeForce GTX 1080 falling from $599 to just $499 effective immediately. When it comes to the GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition, it will receive an even bigger price cut — $150 — taking it down to $549. Likewise, the GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition will receive a $50 price cut, bringing your out-of-pocket cost to just $399.

But lower pricing isn’t all that NVIDIA has in store for gamers who don’t want to pony up for a $699 GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. NVIDIA will give its board partners the option to purchase faster memory to bundle with GeForce GTX 1080 and GeForce GTX 1060 6GB boards. The GeForce GTX 1080 was originally spec’d with 10Gbps GDDR5X memory, but NVIDIA will now provide the option for partners to select 11Gbps GDDR5X. For the GTX 1060, a new 9Gbps GDDR5 option joins the existing 8Gbps GDDR5.

Board partners will be able to purchase this GPU + higher-clocked memory pairing to offer customers factory overclocked boards. This should allow for even more variety when it comes to Pascal cards, hitting a wide range of price points to make NVIDIA even more competitive against AMD.

Speaking of AMD, these price cuts and faster memory options are likely a preemptive strike against the upcoming Radeon RX Vega cards. No one knows for sure how exactly AMD’s new graphics cards will perform compared to Pascal, but NVIDIA for now seems pretty confident that its new lineup will be able to holds its own against a Vega bum-rush.