The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Preview: A Look at What's to Come
by Ryan Smith on May 17, 2016 9:00 AM ESTFirst Thoughts
Wrapping up our preview of the GeForce GTX 1080, I think it’s safe to say that NVIDIA intends to start off the 16nm/14nm generation with a bang. As the first high-end card of this generation the GTX 1080 sets new marks for overall performance and for power efficiency, thanks to the combination of TSMC’s 16nm FinFET process and NVIDIA’s Pascal architecture. Translating this into numbers, at 4K we’re looking at 30% performance gain versus the GTX 980 Ti and a 70% performance gain over the GTX 980, amounting to a very significant jump in efficiency and performance over the Maxwell generation.
Looking at the bigger picture, as the first vendor to launch their 16nm/14nm flagship card, NVIDIA will get to enjoy the first mover’s advantage both with respect to setting performance expectations and with pricing. The GeForce GTX 1080 will keep the performance crown solidly in NVIDIA’s hands, and with it control of the high-end video card market for some time to come. NVIDIA’s loyal opposition, AMD’s Radeon Technologies Group, has strongly hinted that they’re not going to be releasing comparable high-performance video cards in the near future. Rather the company is looking to make a run at the much larger mainstream market for desktops and laptops with their Polaris architecture, something that GP104 isn’t meant to address.
The lack of competition at the high-end means that for the time being NVIDIA can price the GTX 1080 at what the market will bear, and this is more or less what we’re looking at for NVIDIA’s new card. While the formal MSRP on the GTX 1080 is $599 – $50 over what the GTX 980 launched at – that price is the starting price for custom cards from NVIDIA’s partners. The reference card as we’ve previewed it today – what NVIDIA is calling the Founders Edition card – carries a $100 premium over that, pushing it to $699.
| GeForce GTX 1080 Configurations | ||||
| Base | Founders Edition | |||
| Core Clock | 1607MHz | 1607MHz | ||
| Boost Clock | 1733MHz | 1733MHz | ||
| Memory Clock | 10Gbps GDDR5X | 10Gbps GDDR5X | ||
| Cooler | Manufacturer Custom (Typical: 2 or 3 Fan Open Air) |
NVIDIA Reference (Blower w/Vapor Chamber) |
||
| Availability Date | June 2016? | 05/27/2016 | ||
| Price | Starting at $599 | $699 | ||
While the differences between the reference and custom cards will be a longer subject for our full review, the more immediate ramification is going to be that only the Founders Edition cards are guaranteed to be available at launch. NVIDIA can’t speak definitively for their board partners, but at this point I am not seriously expecting custom cards until June. And this means that if you want one of the first GTX 1080s, then you’re going to have to pay $699 for the Founders Edition card. Which is not to say that it’s a bad card – far from it, it’s probably NVIDIA’s finest reference card to date – however it pushes the card’s price north of 980 Ti territory, some $150 higher than where the GTX 980 launched in 2014. For those who can afford such a card they will not be disappointed, but it’s definitely less affordable than past NVIDIA x80 cards.
Anyhow, we’ll be back later this week with our full review of the GeForce GTX 1080, so be sure to stay tuned.
| Spring 2016 GPU Pricing Comparison | |||||
| AMD | Price | NVIDIA | |||
| $699 | GeForce GTX 1080 FE | ||||
| Radeon R9 Fury X | $609 | ||||
| $589 | GeForce GTX 980 Ti | ||||
| $429 | GeForce GTX 980 | ||||
| Radeon R9 390X | $399 | ||||
| Radeon R9 390 | $289 | GeForce GTX 970 | |||
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bill44 - Wednesday, May 18, 2016 - link
That's a bummer.Currently, I have 3x screens connected. 2x desktop monitors and 1x for HTPC trough the amp.
If I wanted full hardware HEVC 10bit decoding, DP1.3/1.4 for 2x 4K or 5K HDR monitor over 1x cable, I need to give up 10bpc support for windowed apps. Or, go with something like the quadro M2000 with non of the latest goodies (DP 1.2, HDMI 2.0b, full HW decode HEVC 10bit, HDR etc. etc.).
It will be quite a while before any new quadro support them. Regardless of price.
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, May 18, 2016 - link
To be clear, you get 10bpc support for windowed D3D applications, so your HTPC idea will work.The distinction is for professional applications such as Photoshop. NVIDIA has artificially restricted 10bpc color support for those applications in order to make it a Quadro feature, and that doesn't change for GTX 1080.
sagman12 - Tuesday, May 17, 2016 - link
"Gamers however won’t be able to get their hands on the card until the 27th – next Friday – with pre-order sales starting this Friday." I hope this is true. I don't want to have to stay up all day hitting F5 until i secure my 1080FER3MF - Tuesday, May 17, 2016 - link
Looking at an unopened Gigabyte R9 390X G1 that I picked up for £250 (standard price for an R9 390X is £330-£360 in UK money).
This is getting 50-66 percent of the framerate of the GTX 1080, but for slightly less than half the price ($599 for the non-Founders edition translates to roughly £500 inc VAT).
Knowing what we know no about likely performance of upcoming 14/16nm products, should i be sending it back?
cheshirster - Tuesday, May 17, 2016 - link
Perf/$ would not change drastically.But perf/watt will skyrocket. You probably will be able to get the same perf in half the power.
R3MF - Tuesday, May 17, 2016 - link
cheersMarucins - Tuesday, May 17, 2016 - link
Where is COMPUTING tests?3ogdy - Tuesday, May 17, 2016 - link
Ryan, please consider integrating this in your upcoming review of the 1080. It would be extremely useful:Clock the 1080 just like the 980 and then compare their performance. I would like to see how much of that 15-FPS-on-avg increase vs 980Ti comes from clock speed increase and how much of an impact does Pascal actually have. As it looks right now, the 1080 is a disappointement - I was expecting something truly stellar from nVidia after touting this and that and making serious all-around changes , taking advantage of a process node half as big as the previous one...so far 1080 is shaping to be just an incremental upgrade if not even a sidegrade when clock speed differences are negated. I hope I'm as wrong as one could be, though. Good preview so far!
tarqsharq - Tuesday, May 17, 2016 - link
Yes, this would be very interesting!genekellyjr - Tuesday, May 17, 2016 - link
Doing some quick calcs w/ BF4 FPS numbers gives 1080 - 111 FPS/MHz/core, 980Ti - 150 FPS/MHz/core, 980 - 75 FPS/MHz/core for 4K. The 1440p and 1080p numbers also follow suit (150/206/102 for 1440p, 231/319/159 for 1080p).Essentially, doing meaningless number crunching does show that normalized the 980Ti is better per MHz per core, at least for BF4. I used the boost clock numbers for the MHz. Hope it is investigated because it seems like Nvidia spent extra transistor bank on other aspects significantly (maybe F16 compute?) to the detriment of their F32 gaming chops.