NVIDIA has announced its new flagship graphics card: the GeForce GTX 1080 – the first gaming GPU based on the company’s new Pascal architecture.
The manufacturer is expecting the GTX 1080 to deliver up to twice the performance and three times the efficiency of the GeForce GTX TITAN X when performing certain VR (Virtual Reality) tasks.
New Architecture
The new series of graphics cards are powered by Pascal, NVIDIA’s new GPU architecture, replacing Maxwell, the technology behind the GTX 9xx series and the TITAN X. NVIDIA claims Pascal is three times more efficient than the previous generation. Pascal uses a 16nm (nanometre) FinFET manufacturing process, which consists of 7.2 billion transistors, compared with Maxwell’s 28nm. This means that despite the increase in performance, it only consumes 15W more power than the GTX 980 (180W vs 165W) and operates at a lower maximum temperature (94C vs 98C). It also comes with native DirectX 12 and integrated VR support.
Features
The GTX 1080 will come with 8GB of GDDR5X VRAM. This new 256-bit memory interface increases bandwidth from 7Gbps to 10Gbps, compared with the previous generation of VRAM. The GTX 1080 will run at a clock speed of 1607MHz with a GPU boost up to 1733MHz although it also has overclocking support. As part of the new NVIDIA 1000 series of graphics cards, the company will release the lower spec GTX 1070, which uses GDDR5 VRAM.
NVIDIA introduced new asynchronous processing to improve efficiency and performance. This is a new way of rendering graphics and performing computing tasks such as the location of objects and lighting effects. In non-asynchronous processing, graphics and computing tasks are handled separately, meaning one has to wait for the other to finish. This method is inefficient and doesn’t take full advantage of the graphics card, as many of the GPU’s cores are sitting idle. Asynchronous processing overcomes this limitation by allowing both tasks to run simultaneously, dramatically increasing efficiency. This technology is part of DirectX 12 API in Windows 10.
Pricing and release date
The Founders Edition (NVIDIA manufactured cards) of the GTX 1080 is expected to retail at $699 (£580 approx), while the cheapest card from third-party manufacturers is expected to cost around $599 (£500 approx). Release date is expected to be on May 27.
The Founders Edition GTX 1070 is due to start shipping June 10. It will be priced at $449 (£391 approx), while custom boards from partners are expected to start from $379 (£314 approx).
| GeForce GTX 1080 GeForce GTX 980 | Column 2 Heading | |
|---|---|---|
| GPU Architecture | Pascal | Maxwell |
| Frame Buffer | 8GB GDDR5X | 4GB GDDR5 |
| Memory Type- Speed | 10Gbps | 7Gbps |
| Boost Clock (relative) | 1.4x | 1x |
| Boost Clock (actual) | 1733MHz | 1216 MHz |
GeForce GTX 1080 Full Specification
GPU Engine Specs:
NVIDIA CUDA Cores: 2560
Base Clock 1607MHz
Boost Clock 1733MHz
Memory Specs:
Memory Speed: 10Gbps
Standard Memory Config 8GB GDDR5X
Memory Interface Width: 256-Bit
Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec) 320
Technology Support:
Multi-Projection
VR Ready
NVIDIA Ansel
NVIDIA SLI Ready: SLI HB Bridge Supported
NVIDIA G-SYNC Ready
NVIDIA GameStream Ready
NVIDIA GPU Boost 3.0
Microsoft DirectX: 12 API with feature level 12_1
Vulkan API
OpenGL 4.5
Bus Support: PCIe 3.0
OS Certification: Windows 7-10, Linux, FreeBSDx86
Display Support:
Maximum Digital Resolution: 7680×4320@60Hz
Standard Display Connectors: DP 1.4, HDMI 2.0b, DL-DVI
Multi-monitor support
HDCP: 2.2
Graphics Card Dimensions:
Height: 4.376in
Length: 10.5in
Width: 2-Slot
Thermal and Power Specs:
Maximum GPU Temperature: 94°C
Graphics Card Power: 180W
Recommended system power supply: 500W
Supplementary Power Connectors: 8-Pin
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