If AMD was more of a threat, NVIDIA might be encouraged to rush their next line of GPUs, codenamed Volta, out the door. But in the company’s latest earnings call, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang indicated that the Pascal-based GPUs are the best option for gamers over the holidays – meaning we won’t see Volta until next year.
In the most recent earnings call, which was transcribed on Seeking Alpha and picked up by PC Gamer, the NVIDIA CEO responded to a question about Volta’s release for the consumer gaming market by saying that the Pascal-based offerings were “just unbeatable”.
“Volta for gaming, we haven’t announced anything,” the NVIDIA CEO said. “All I can say is that our pipeline is filled with some exciting new toys for the gamers, and we have some really exciting new technology to offer them in the pipeline. But for the holiday season for the foreseeable future, I think Pascal is just unbeatable. It’s just the best thing out there. And everybody who’s looking forward to playing Call of Duty or Destiny 2, if they don’t already have one, should run out and get themselves a Pascal.”
The underlying message there: Pascal is still the best offering on the market, and NVIDIA doesn’t need to compete with their own product just yet. And following recent benchmarks of the Vega 56 and 64 cards that just released, he’s right: while the Vega 64 goes toe to toe with the GTX 1080 in certain games, it draws a lot more power to do so, and it’s not an unequivocal winner. The GTX 1080 Ti is untouched as the king of gaming GPUs, and that’s not going to change come Christmas.
[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/08/amds-vega-graphics-cards-could-kick-off-a-war/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-large/vfv2hmbopmermwvxudnp.jpg” title=”AMD’s Vega Graphics Cards Could Kick Off A War” excerpt=”Every nerd loves a good tech war. Windows vs Mac, Apple vs Android, Intel vs AMD. They give us something to armchair argue about over beers with friends — or to rant over in the comments of illustrious tech blogs. After spending the weekend playing with AMD’s new Vega 64 and Vega 56 graphics cards, I think I can safely say an old tech war is back on — even if AMD’s latest salvo feels paltry. Nvidia might be leading the discrete graphics card industry, but AMD’s two newest cards are cheap and fast enough to finally compete.”]
So for those of you hoping for some flashy Volta GPUs by the end of this year, you’re gonna have to wait a little while longer.
Comments
6 responses to “NVIDIA’s Volta Cards Won’t Arrive Until Next Year”
Since the 900 series, Nvidia seems to be on a two-year cycle now for its architectures, with the x80 on the launch year and the x80 Ti on the subsequent year. With the 1080 Ti only 5 months old I think it might be a little overeager to expect the next generation before Q1 next year. My guess is March to May 2018.
I’m not too bothered by this – I think GPUs are at the point where simultaneously 1080/60 is affordable but 4K/60 is only just feasible.
If the next 1060/580 level cards can match the 1070/Vega 56 that makes them more powerful than the large majority of gamers need at the moment, as most still play on 1080p or lower screens or TVs. According to the Steam Survey <5% play above 1080p so while 4K would be more feasible with a new generation, most people won’t notice. That said it’s a chicken and the egg situation – more powerful cards = better adoption of higher resolutions.
From the original nvidia roadmap, volta was always planned for 2018, I expect cool innovations from it regardless, would be very hard to convince me to upgrade my GTX1070 though
Agreed. The 1070 is a solid card, especially for high end 1080P or mid to high 1440P gaming.
No proper competition, no need to push it out. AMD are more than a year late to the party with a product that drinks twice as much juice for similar to less performance with only a few out outliers in the LLAPI space.
Due to a mistake resulting in me pay triple the amount of tax I was supposed to I have quite a large return coming back in the next couple of weeks. Was looking to upgrade, but I am not too phased by this as a Titan is more than enough for me.