Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is "world's fastest gaming GPU"

Last night Nvidia officially launched the 'Ultimate GeForce', the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. The announcement wasn't at all a surprise after Nvidia's heavy handed teasing, via its countdown timer which started a week ago. Star of the GeForce GTX Gaming Celebration, at GDC 2017, was the long awaited GTX 1080 Ti graphics card which boasts 3,584 CUDA Cores, and 11GB of next-gen GDDR5X Video Memory running out of the box at 11Gbps.

It's interesting to compare the new GeForce GTX 1080 Ti with the regular GTX 1080 and the Pascal Titan X, so let's get straight to a comparative specs table:

Above you can see a lot of what Nvidia has done to stir up its high-end product mix. Overall it claims that the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti can deliver "up to 35 percent more performance of the GTX 1080," and its 11GB of faster clocked GDDR5X provides more headroom for 4K and 5K gaming, DX12, HDR and immersive VR.

Interestingly Nvidia has designed the GTX 1080 Ti with some Titan X beating specs. While it offers fewer ROPs and a reduced bus width, the GPU boost clock is higher and its memory runs faster, "at a staggering 11Gbp". As you can see towards the bottom of the table, this results in the GTX 1080 Ti beating the Titan X in the TFLOPS performance metric.

Further improvements have come to the new graphics card from a slight redesign of the hardware. Nvidia has designed a new high-airflow thermal solution with vapour chamber cooling, offering 2x the airflow area. It is said to be both "cooler and quieter than previous designs". Furthermore, it tweaked the power architecture which now features a seven-phase power design with 14 high-efficiency dualFETs.

The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will launch first in its Founders Edition form next week with pre-orders opening on 2^nd March. It wouldn't be surprising to see the dollar price be translated directly to GBP (i.e. $699 = £699). Shortly after the Founders Edition has soaked up the eager early adopter cash third party board partners will be let off the leash (Friday 10^th March) and be able to sell their custom SKUs with various coolers at a range of price points.

Last but not least, Nvidia also announced new 'OC' SKUs based upon the GTX 1080 and GTX 1060 designs. Both of these new 'OC' cards will be pepped up with the same faster GDDR5X from Micron. With the GTX 1080 price cut to $499 the GTX 1080 11Gbps OC will cost somewhere between it and the new GTX 1080 Ti. Similarly we will be seeing an Nvidia GTX 9Gbps 1060 OC with the faster GDDR5X memory installed - which should help it combat the AMD Radeon RX 480 more effectively. Pricing and availability for these OC cards is yet to be announced.

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