NVIDIA has certainly shocked the world of PC gamers as it unveiled the new GTX 1080 video card that has double the graphics power compared to the GTX Titan with a significantly cheaper price tag.
What makes the GTX 1080 particularly more powerful but cheaper is the 16nm Pascal GPU inside which is considered to be a huge leap based on the current 28nm transistor node technology video cards have today. The technology now leaps forward after four years of being stuck.
Another interesting bit about the new video card from NVIDIA is that it would be the first to be powered by Micron's new GDDR5X memory. It is also another leap forward from the current GDDR5 that current GPUs have now.
First and foremost, the GTX 1080 has significantly improved clock speeds compared to the GTX 980. It has a base clock of 1607 MHz which can be boosted up to 1733MHz, PC World reported.
The new NVIDIA video card also has nearly double the Texel fill-rate at 277.3 Gigatexels per second compared to the 980's 155.6 Gigatexels per second. It also has 7.2 billion transistors which is two billion more than the 980.
NVIDIA has given out several GTX 1080 cards to be tested by reviewers. One of them was tested by Engadget and they said that they were able to overclock the card up to 1950 MHz with the card only heating up to 70c.
With the raw power the new video card has, PC gamers would be able to run most games at 60 frames per second on their 1920 x 1080 screens. It would also be able to run decent frame rates at 4K resolution.
Of course, virtual reality was kept in mind when NVIDIA was developing the GTX 1080. The Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive headsets require at least a GTX 980 and now the new card would have more power which means it would be able to run smoother frame rates.
NVIDIA will start to ship the Founders Edition of the GTX 1080 in May 27 for $699. The MSRP for the new video card is $599 and third-party manufacturers could also sell theirs at roughly the same price.