News NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1080 TI

The NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1080 TI has been announced.
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[MarcParis]

Well, even if i'm more favorable to AMD, i've big doubt on vega 10 capacity to compete with gtx 1080 ti..

 

[PlayfulPhoenix]

Well, even if i'm more favorable to AMD, i've big doubt on vega 10 capacity to compete with gtx 1080 ti..

I wonder if, at the end of the day, it will be a repeat of last year - cost-competitive at lower price points, but no GPU that's at the performance level of nVidia's top card.

(Man, is it hard to turn around for them given that nVidia has the head start. I kinda feel bad :/)

 

[EdZ]

(Man, is it hard to turn around for them given that nVidia has the head start. I kinda feel bad :/)

To be fair, they've managed to claw back from a massive Intel lead to be much closer to parity than people expected with Ryzen. Even if IPC is still a couple of generations behind, it's better than the near-decade behind they were in with Piledriver.

 

[PlayfulPhoenix]

To be fair, they've managed to claw back from a massive Intel lead to be much closer to parity than people expected with Ryzen. Even if IPC is still a couple of generations behind, it's better than the near-decade behind they were in with Piledriver.

For sure. But that was a herculean, likely bet-the-company effort on the shoulders of some of the best minds in the semiconductor industry (not to mention the tens of thousands of employees that must have grinded for some time on this - my respect and thanks to them all). If Ryzen was deemed a disappointment or a flop, they would have been in very, very serious trouble.

My fear about their impending GPU lineup is in the face of the persuasive argument that it would be practically unheard of for a technology company to leapfrog entrenched and dominant competition in two different industries at once. It would be like Apple launching the iPhone and iPad simultaneously. AMD's simply not flush with resources, and to scratch-build on every technology product they provide would have been almost suicidal (scratch-building Ryzen being pretty ballsy all by itself) - if just one of those bets fails, you're in the hole for billions and have not nearly enough revenue to compensate, nor enough capital or projected value to bridge the gap with debt. It could kill the company as we know it.

...Consequently, given that they're 'less' behind in the GPU space, and given that they're actually ahead of nVidia a bit with respect to certain technologies, it could be that their strategy there is a slow-and-steady approach for Vega relative to Ryzen's sprint. They can continue to be the better value on the low end to gain market share, they can squeeze their existing IP and technology capabilities for as much as they can (and do so cheaply), and they can move that progress upward over a few generations to capture profit share through more moderate research investment amortized over a broader period.

At least, that's what I would guess is going on, with what I know. But how much do we really know?

 

[MarcParis]

At least, AMD Polaris (RX 580/570/560) refresh cards are announced by April. Last year AMD Strategy by focusing on high seller market with RX480 was successful.

Current forecast is RX Vega will be the direct competitor of GTX 1080 (not ti..). I must admit that even VRAM strategy HBM vs GDDR5X (and soon GDDR6) is not so obvious. Nvidia managed to achieve same bandwith with GDDR5X as AMD with HBM2.

Relying on first reviews of Ryzen, I'm now a bit lost on my next setup to put inside Cerberus-X... (@PlayfulPhoenix @Aibohphobia I wish each day, my Cerberus-x is on its way..)

 

[PlayfulPhoenix]

Current forecast is RX Vega will be the direct competitor of GTX 1080 (not ti..). I must admit that even VRAM strategy HBM vs GDDR5X (and soon GDDR6) is not so obvious. Nvidia managed to achieve same bandwith with GDDR5X as AMD with HBM2.

I think that tactically it was a compromise. Strategically, I think they're hoping to have a number of advantages spring out of bringing the technology to market much earlier - from maturation to manufacturing to architecture - but it will take time for any benefits ascribed from that to be realized on a balance sheet. Plus, to your point, nVidia has probably surprised them a bit with how much they've achieved with GDDR.

In any case, it seems that everyone in the GPU and CPU realms is surprising the other, and that's a good thing. Means nobody can drag heels and everyone has to meaningfully press for the best possible improvements now.

 

[MarcParis]

You are right about everybody surprising everybody..

 

[MarcParis]

Here is my "precious" GTX 1080ti... t(with...AT LAST...offset of power connector..

 

[QuantumBraced]

Random, but I think an ITX 1080 Ti/250W card should be possible. If you use a tall PCB with a dense all-copper vapor chamber heatsink, liquid metal TIM, and a single quality pressure-optimized 140mm fan it should be possible without an unbearable amount of noise. No one will do it, but it should be possible.

 

[|||]

@3lfk1ng has noted to me that the cooler on the Zotac GTX 1080 Mini should be sufficient to cool a 1080 Ti. The trick would be fitting the additional power phases and memory modules.

 

[QuantumBraced]

@3lfk1ng has noted to me that the cooler on the Zotac GTX 1080 Mini should be sufficient to cool a 1080 Ti. The trick would be fitting the additional power phases and memory modules.

Right, but that's not a true ITX card. I meant a card that is <7". So the limitation is PCB real estate? I'm sure it can be done. If ASRock could make an X99 ITX board, this should be possible.

The Zotac 1080 Mini has an ITX PCB, but the cooler extends past it to to 211mm. I'd love to see someone take the cooler off of a Gigabyte 1070 Mini and put it on the Zotac 1080 Mini and run some tests. I suspect it will work, but it definitely won't be enough for a 1080 Ti.

 

[|||]

The Gigabyte cooler extends quite a bit above the board in height...so what you lose in length you gain in height. It also doesn't seem to be as effective as the Zotac cooler with a single fan.

An all-copper version of the mITX vapor-chamber cooler that ASUS had on their 970 Mini could be interesting.

 

[MarcParis]

Well, GTX 1080ti design (power delivery and vram) is clearly not friendly at all with ITX card.
On this game, Vega GPU (like expected Nano 2) will be clearly favorite...but Vega is still pretty far away (2-3 months)

 

[QuantumBraced]

Tall is okay, long is not. There are quite a few SFF cases that employ a card-next-to-motherboard flat design or a back-to-back mini-tower design, and they usually support tall cards, but not longer than 7". That's what I'm thinking of. I think an all-copper vapor chamber with a good TIM (maybe liquid metal) and a 140mm fan should be doable.

But yes, it would be a challenge to fit the power and RAM on it, the GPU is bigger too. But possible, I think it's more of a demand issue than an engineering challenge. It would be very expensive with those components + R&D and very few people would buy it.

A Zotac 1080 Mini-sized card would be great too, but I can't think of a case that can fit a 210mm card that can't fit a full-length one, there seem to be far fewer of those.

 

[K888D]

The Gigabyte 1070 ITX cooler handles full load quietly at around 50% fan power keeping temps under 82C with full boost. But I think the extra 100w of a 1080Ti would push it up to 100% fan power which is very noisy.

The MSI 1070 Aero ITX cooler on the other hand seems to be around 10C cooler than the Gigabyte for the same fan speeds (from reviews I've read), so perhaps that would be a more suitable cooler to try out.

 

[fminus]

Have the Msi 1070 itx aero. Can confirm. Much cooler and quieter than gigabyte

 

[MarcParis]

Damned..my sweet msi gtx 1080 ti gaming x is also a 2.5 slots card ..here is a teardown :