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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Yojimbo - Thursday, May 19, 2016 - link
Why is everything 100% with you? Neither of us know 100% anything about this issue. And the fact that half precision at double throughput is not possible on the GTX 1080 does not mean that it's not possible on the GP104.Further explanation of what you said "huh?" to: NVIDIA revealed the Drive PX 2 at both CES 2016 and GTC 2016. It has two Pascal-based Tegra chips and two larger Pascal GPUs. The main purpose of the Drive PX 2 will be to run inference algorithms for self driving cars. There are large portions of these algorithms which only require FP16 precision. NVIDIA would be leaving performance on the table if they didn't include the FP16 throughput enhancements in whatever chips they are using for the Drive PX 2. And those GPUs are definitely not GP100s. Unless they specially designed another GPU that is based on the GP100, but much smaller, they are probably using something along the lines of a GP106 or GP107 for that purpose.
I'm guessing it's easier to design 6 GPUs and put FP16 enhancements in all of them then it is to design 8 GPUs and put FP16 enhancements in 4 of them. I don't think you have any reason to believe it's so difficult for them to put the FP16 enhancements into GP104. (They had already done so for the Maxwell-based Tegra X1, by the way.) You just seem to want to believe things which fit into your preferred narrative of "GTX 1080 is almost identical to Maxwell".
dragonsqrrl - Wednesday, May 18, 2016 - link
@vladxThey're all based on the same underlying architecture (Pascal). I'm actually not sure why you think GP104 is closer to Maxwell architecturally than GP100. Are you referring to the SMM layout?
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, May 18, 2016 - link
"Does it support the special instructions that the Tesla P100 has for half precision float (FP16), which double throughput?"The answer is basically no. More info to come in the full review.
modeless - Thursday, May 19, 2016 - link
:( Thanks. Hope NVIDIA gets some competition in deep learning soon...Yojimbo - Thursday, May 19, 2016 - link
They have competition already with Xeon Phi and CPUs. The trouble with AMD's GPUs for deep learning is that they don't have nearly the same level of library support as NVIDIA's GPUs do. Intel is also hoping to adapt FPGAs for deep learning purposes, I think, but I doubt that's going to help you out much.damianrobertjones - Tuesday, May 17, 2016 - link
Each new gen sees around an extra 10/14fps being added to the top card over the previous gen. No. No thank you. These companies keep DRIP FEEDING us small advances and, obviously, this is business.Spend your cash, fine, but they're laughing at us each time. (I have an ebay 980)
FMinus - Tuesday, May 17, 2016 - link
Though the move was from Maxwell to Pascal, looks more like Paxwell, Maxwell on steroids - 70% clock, 30% compression, not much innovation. And that PCB is a disgrace, skimping on the 6th phase, and only one mosfet per VRM phase - weren't they speaking of premium components thus the added premium, certainly doesn't look premium.leoneo.x64 - Tuesday, May 17, 2016 - link
Ryan. Please excuse me for asking. I am not being rude. But where is part 2 of the Galaxy s7 edge review?leoneo.x64 - Tuesday, May 17, 2016 - link
Ryan. Please excuse me for asking. I am not being rude. But where is part 2 of the Galaxy s7 edge review?Lolimaster - Tuesday, May 17, 2016 - link
Fail gen for nvidia.They need 1.7Ghz to actually show improvement vs the 1-1.2Ghz of the previous AMD/Nvidia gpu's. Imagine the GP104 at 1.2Ghz.
Wheres the efficiency?
Polaris 10 is aiming at the same 1Ghz sweet spot, improving the hell out of it's gpu cores.