Pascal. Polaris. It’s the big GPU battle of 2016. If you’ve been following the rumour mill and various discourse from executives over the last few months, the battlelines are starting to become clear: AMD are going to target the mid-range end and below, while NVIDIA will be trying to knock it out of the park at the top end.
But it’s all bluster, because we haven’t seen any actual benchmarks yet. This morning, however, the first inklings of something firm began to emerge.
NVIDIA is set to unveil their first consumer-level Pascal cards at a briefing event tomorrow from Austin, Texas. It’ll be livestreamed from 9:00 AM Sydney time, and I’ll definitely be tuning in to see what the company has to say.
But more intriguing than that is the first set of benchmarks. Videocardz has posted a screenshot of a 3DMark11 test using a GeForce GTX 1080 with a Intel i7-5820K CPU.
According to the test, the GTX 1080 has 8GB of onboard RAM and is running at a core clock of 570MHz and a memory bus clock of 5005MHz. The GPU clocks are believed to be incorrect, however, and the test was supposedly run using 3DMark11’s Performance preset — which only runs at 1280×720.
Hardly the most taxing resolution. There was a follow-up for the 3DMark FireStrike Extreme test, however, which is rendered at 1440p. FireStrike is a more exhaustive GPU test than 3DMark11, although the test was only run using a stock Intel i7-3770 CPU.
The scores were intriguing though: the GTX 1080 supposedly scored 8959 on the test, a several hundred points higher than what most stock GTX 980 Ti cards returned last year. It’s believed that the GTX 1080’s higher clock speeds are the source of most of the gains, and it’ll be interesting to see how much room for overclocking the Pascal-based GPU has.
Plenty of questions remain, though. The big question for both Pascal and Polaris GPUs will be their capacity to handle 4K and VR content. The price point will also be of huge interest in tomorrow’s livestream.
What are you expecting out of NVIDIA’s cards tomorrow — and what would be the right price-to-performance point for an upgrade?
Comments
6 responses to “The First Rumoured Benchmarks For NVIDIA’s New Cards Appear”
Hmm, really interested in Nvidia’s offering this year thanks to VR. Fingers crossed it isn’t to expensive. Might even check it out at 9 tomorrow.
Wait until the end of the year. Polaris leaks allege that its midrange card performs about the same as a current 980ti but is expected to be priced about $350us. And Polaris apparently has been designed with VR in mind.
What is being shown tomorrow is the 1080/1070 and neithet will be cheap – replacing the high end cards. By years end Nvidia and AMD should have all their cards on sale and prices should drop and can make a better purchase.
Hmm fair enough. Currently have a 770 so I knew I’d be in the market for a new one – though I honestly haven’t looked much into it yet because the actual headsets are still a way off practically.
Whoop. I’ve been waiting a while, and I’m jumping on the 1080 hypetrain.
just hurry up already! i need a new gfx card and i cant justify spending the moolah on a 980 now if a new series is out soon 🙁
Yeah looking for a videocard that can handle fallout4 (with lots of mods) at 4k-60fps. My 390x atm probably averages 35fps, sometimes it goes to 60fps but in certain areas can drop down to 20fps. My settings are high-ultra with FSAA/Blur turned off (ALWAYS) , simpleDOF is on however, and I think I have shadowboost dropping the shadows down to 2000 distance allot.
I don’t think the 1080 will be worth the price, its going to achieve like 5fps more then the Ti but end up being a considerable amount more for us Aussies. Maybe we will see a sharp drop in 980Ti price? which might be worth it coming from a 390x (which hates Linux btw).