It’s coming up to two long years since Nvidia has graced us with a new graphics card family, and it’s now an inevitability that the GeForce GTX 20xx or 11xx Series will launch within a matter of months. The latest rumours come from 3DCenter, who claim that mass production of the GeForce GTX 2080 and GeForce 2070 GPUs is already underway, with a launch planned for April 12th.
Nvidia’s next-generation graphics cards will allegedly be based on the Ampere microarchitecture, rather than the Volta architecture rumoured last year. The Ampere GPU will replace Pascal and will allegedly be ready for a reveal in March, before launching in April 2018.
As for the current-gen, the Pascal-based GP102 GPU used for the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti and the GeForce GTX Titan XP has allegedly reached end-of-life. EOL status was apparently reached as long as November 2017, which would mean supplies of these graphics cards is going to be extremely limited (as if they weren’t limited enough). Typically, EOL would indicate that manufacturing has halted entirely, leaving only a modest number of GeForce GTX 1080 Ti’s manufactured and ready to head to market. If true, supplies of the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti are going to become increasingly slim over the next 4-8 weeks. Considering the current demand from cryptocurrency miners, it’s a possibility that you may not get the possibility to buy a GTX 1080 Ti again.
Suffice to say, if you’re on the hunt for a high-end GPU then you’re almost assuredly going to better off waiting for this next crop of GeForce Ampere graphics cards. While the nomenclature has yet to be confirmed, it's thought the next-gen will be either follow the GTX 2080 or GTX 1180 formats.
Nvidia’s typical release cadence would suggest the GTX 20 Series will launch with the GeForce GTX 2080 and GeForce GTX 2070. This would be followed by a more affordable GTX 2060 later in 2018, before the flagship GeForce GTX 2080 Ti subsequently launches in 2019.
The next big question is just how powerful the GeForce GTX 2080 and GTX 2070 will be. We’re still running on fumes in terms of rumours on this front, but conservative estimates peg this next generation as a potential 20-30% performance gain over Pascal. It’s thought both could make use of the upcoming GDDR6 memory standard, which has the benefit of being comparatively cheaper than HBM2.
With new GPU launches right around the corner, is this upgrade time for you? Or are you anticipating it may be next to impossible to get your hands on a GeForce Ampere graphics card if crypto mining demand stays strong? Let us know!
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