NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1180/GTX 2080 – Everything we know so far!

NVIDIA released their GTX 1080 & 1070 GPUs back in May 2016, based on the NVIDIA Pascal Architecture. Since then, they’ve released more 10 series GPUs like the GTX 1060, GTX 1050 and the GTX 10 Series Max-Q GPUs for Gaming Laptops all catering to different markets. Their next big move is the GeForce GTX 11 Series or GTX 20 Series GPUs, likely to be based on the NVIDIA Turing GPU micro-architecture. We don’t really have anything official from NVIDIA themselves, but here’s everything we know so far – there are certain things that we’re extremely sure about.

Price, Release Date and the Name

There’s a ton of uncertainty in terms of price. There are a ton of factors right now – the cryptocurrency craze, memory supply shortage, and all of this has resulted in most GPUs being sold at above MSRP price. The situation has improved drastically though, and there is a good chance everything will be back to normal and we can all expect a smooth launch from NVIDIA. The price should be similar to what NVIDIA has been setting for years, which is around ~$700 for early Founder Edition Models.

Earlier it was speculated that the new GPUs will have the 20 series prefix, but recent rumours indicate that it’s more probable for the GPUs to have the 11 series prefix. The release date GTX 1180/GTX 2080 was previously rumoured to be scheduled for late July, but recent speculations point out that it’s going to happen in late August.

Everything we know so far – New Turing Architecture, GDDR6 Memory, 2GHz Clock Speed

The TITAN V & Quadro GV100 GPUs were released back in late 2017 for Machine Learning and Content Creating applications based on the Volta Architecture, so it would seem likely that the GTX 11 series or GTX 20 series GPUs will use the Volta micro-architecture. But, the next generation architecture to be used for these GPUs is code-named ‘Turing’.

Rumors indicate that the Turing GPU Architecture will be manufactured on the 12nm FinFET Process but considering the fact that AMD has confirmed their Vega 20 GPUs to be processed on the 7nm manufacturing process, we can very well expect that the GTX 1180/GTX 2080 GPU and other GTX 11 series or GTX 20 series GPUs will have a 7nm manufacturing process as well, or at least something less than 12nm. This new manufacturing process will allow more transistors to be put on the GPU die, resulting in more efficiency and less power usage.

The new Turing GPUs will surely use GDDR6 Memory and not HBM2. But the GTX 1170/GTX 2070 and lower end models might use GDDR5X or GDDR5 Memory instead. GDDR6 Memory will surely result in higher performance compared to GDDR5X – but by how much? Let’s take a look at the history of GPU Memory Bandwidth speeds. GDDR5 had a Memory Bandwidth of 133.9 GB/sec on the GTX 470, and then 256 GB/sec on the GTX 1070. For the GTX 1180 Ti (which used GDDR5X), the Memory Bandwidth was 484 GB/s – almost twice as much compared to GDDR5. We can’t really say how much of a marginal improvement in performance will be present, but judging by the history – it will be tremendous.

People would expect more VRAM, but it’s not likely that the new high-end GTX 1180/GTX 2080 would have more 8GB to 12GB of VRAM. They could put 16GB of VRAM or more, but here’s the thing – at this point, it won’t be useful for Gaming at all. Only professionals involved in machine learning, virtualization, video editing would be able to use 16GB of VRAM.

The GTX 1180/2080 could be the first NVIDIA GPU with 2GHz Stock Clock Speed. Here’s how it could happen –

But NVIDIA isn’t locked into any specific core count. If Turing sticks with the 128 CUDA cores per SM, which seems likely, the number of cores present will determine clockspeeds. The Titan V runs 5120 cores at up to 1455MHz, and with a refined 12nm process and changes to the underlying architecture, Turing could run 5120 CUDA cores at 1.5-1.7GHz. Or Nvidia could go with fewer cores and higher clocks, with GTX 1180 potentially being the first NVIDIA GPU to ship with stock clocks above 2GHz. – PCGamer

Performance Improvement

That’s all numbers and stuff. What is the real performance improvement you ask? Again, we can’t precisely say how much the performance gain will be. It will be much higher than the GTX 1080 Ti, that’s for sure. Wccftech even said that it could be faster than a Titan Xp! Whatever NVIDIA does, the performance for the GTX 1180/GTX 2080 is expected to be at least 40-50% faster than the GTX 1080.

Here’s a speculated relative performance graph by Wccftech on 2560×1440, comparing the GTX 1080 to GTX 1080 Ti, GTX Titan Xp and the to be released GTX 1180 GPU –

Conclusion

Those were all the rumours we have for the upcoming GTX 1180/GTX 2080 GPUs right now. To sum it all up, late August 2018 release, new Turing Architecture, 12nm or less manufacturing process, GDDR6 Memory, up to 2GHz Clock Speed, up to 50% better performance compared to the previous GTX 1080 and if the memory supply problems & cryptocurrency mining situation is improved, a $700 MSRP for the Founder’s Stay tuned for updates!