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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HOOfan 1 - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
Not up this morning, don't they usually post content overnight? They were well behind the pack in publishing a Fury X review as well. With a review this late, I hope they do some extensive overclocking and compare it to SLi and Crossfire. Heck if they don't get the review up by tomorrow, maybe they can benchmark the 1080 in SLitarqsharq - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
Yeah, this is starting to get a little worrisome. Ryan mentioned getting it out sometime last week, and it's getting close to a whole extra week on top of that now...Maybe he found something interesting to test and wants to confirm before publishing? We won't know until it's posted obviously, but at least I'm not chomping at the bit till I see what AMD is offering this year.
justaviking - Friday, May 27, 2016 - link
10 days later...Today is the official "release" day...
Nothing new?
How about posting a 95% done analysis, and let us know what you're still working on? That would be a lot better that deafening silence.
Anato - Friday, May 27, 2016 - link
Where could I read analysis of new Nvidia Geforce GTX 1080?I'm asking because haven't followed other sites for long time, but I'm now so fed up with this. Broken promises of review and then nothing but silence? I will still come to Anandtech first, but I'm not going to wait for 10 days for important review!
@Ranger1065 Would you please elaborate your previous comment?
HOOfan 1 - Friday, May 27, 2016 - link
HardOCP, Tomshardware, TechPowerup, Guru3D plenty of other sites have posted reviewswira123 - Sunday, May 29, 2016 - link
anandtech is such a f***ing joke nowaday, most tech reviewer already publish their GTX 1080 & 1070 reviews today, and yet anand still stuck with 1080 PREVIEW. Hahaha what a joke......pencea - Sunday, May 29, 2016 - link
Anandtech sure is slow. Other major sites have already beginning to post reviews of the GTX 1070 while this site hasn't even posted a review of the GTX 1080 which came out days ago...Always late to the party.
HollyDOL - Wednesday, June 1, 2016 - link
While I have been advocating for AT, this hypothetic 1080 review could just go in a dust bin now. Everywhere over the web there are lots of detailed reviews for 1080 and now also for 1070. In the meantime since this preview Ryan posted two more articles. Unless his review GTX-1080 sample malfunctioned there is hardly any excuse for such a huge delay.masters_league - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
Maybe he's waiting for a more recent driver to get the most performance out the card.catavalon21 - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
May 17: "While I’ll get into architecture in much greater detail in the full article..."June 3: Still waiting for a full article
For a site that appropriately has criticized vendors for paper launches of hardware, it's starting to appear that it's happening with articles.