Nvidia's GTX 1080 Goes on Sale, Promptly Sells Out Everywhere

[marioandsonic]

I'm still stuck with my R9 270...

Should I just wait now, or is there a good card to upgrade to that won't break the bank?

 

[TotalerKrieger]

I'm still stuck with my R9 270...

Should I just wait now, or is there a good card to upgrade to that won't break the bank?

The upcoming R9 480 series and GTX 1060 should be in the $200-300 price range. The R9 470 series has also been confirmed and should be priced in the $150-200 range. All three cards should be on the market by late summer. I would wait for these cards to launch, it would be a shame to spend money on an older gen card only to have a much faster one launch a few weeks later for the same price.

 

[marioandsonic]

I'm still stuck with my R9 270...

Should I just wait now, or is there a good card to upgrade to that won't break the bank?

The upcoming R9 480 series and GTX 1060 should be in the $200-300 price range. The R9 470 series has also been confirmed and should be priced in the $150-200 range. All three cards should be on the market by late summer. I would wait for these cards to launch, it would be a shame to spend money on an older gen card only to have a much faster one launch a few weeks later for the same price.

Sounds good. Maybe I'll buy one of those once they come out, though I'm a bit hesitant to buy a card as soon as it comes out...

 

[gorfias]

Are the 980s cheaper yet?

Based on what I know of economics, 980s will be cheaper when the supply of 1080s catches up with demand. Then it will be hard to sell 980s at their current price, and their price will go down.

Businesses usually only drop prices when forced to.

Used ones will get cheaper but they don't do price reductions typically on the old models, they just stop restocking the retail channels and let stock run out on its own. At best you might find a small rebate. This is how it is always been for these parts.

This. I often go to http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html, newegg.com and microcenter.com to compare and I just do not ever see the GTX cards go down in price. They just stop being available new. I do recall seeing an Ebay sale of two GTX 570s for a total price of $80. That is a bargain, but when you think of how much power it is to run them when you could just get a new GTX 970 that can do DX 12, if you are that much an enthusiast, spend the extra money.

 

[deadish]

$600?!

And people ***** about console exclusive games when they can buy a PS4 for $350 to play them ...

PS4 games run like trash, though. This doesn't.

But damn, $600 for a component, not even an entire system ...

Don't know about some of your guys but I ain't made of cash.

 

[Magmarock]

Right, which is part of why it's screams gimmick to me. I mean, I'm sure the cards are probably really damned good and will be even better once the kinks get ironed out but, as you say, pricing a reference card higher than what will almost certainly be superior partner cards is especially nonsensical.

Not really. They do that as to not undercut their broad partners. As for why they are going to keep the references card available I'm not too sure why but I'm glade they are. There are people who prefer them and more options are always a plus.

 

[Gorrath]

Right, which is part of why it's screams gimmick to me. I mean, I'm sure the cards are probably really damned good and will be even better once the kinks get ironed out but, as you say, pricing a reference card higher than what will almost certainly be superior partner cards is especially nonsensical.

Not really. They do that as to not undercut their broad partners. As for why they are going to keep the references card available I'm not too sure why but I'm glade they are. There are people who prefer them and more options are always a plus.

No, they do that so that they fall somewhere in the middle of the pack depending on what offerings come from the partner cards. Calling it "founder's edition" is the gimmicky part of this since the 1080 offering from nvidia is just your typical reference card re-branded for marketing reasons. This re-branding is unusual as is the price increase. I, like the person I responded to, have seen reference cards usually priced toward the low end of the pack, not the middle. Somewhere around $50 cheaper than most of the AIB offerings.

I'm none too fond of this and the confusion it caused since there seems to have been no real reason for it. While I agree that, generally speaking, having more options tends to be better, introducing options that needlessly cause confusion and that don't add anything isn't a good option. While it's not a universal truth, AIB cards are generally going to, at the very least, have superior cooling options than the reference card and for a sizeable discount this time around.

You say some prefer the reference versions but I can't imagine why. I could see preferring a reference version to some specific AIB types or manufacturers, but to the whole field? Why on Earth would anyone pay 100 bucks over MSRP for a card that will have worse cooling and probably less overclocking capacity and other options like additional onboard memory? Sure, not everyone overclocks, but if you don't care about that and thus don't need the superior power input and cooling options, you'd still be paying more for the reference card than for an AIB with same/similar specs.

Can you think of any reason someone would prefer an almost assured performance drop in a higher priced reference card over the field of AIBs? What is the reasoning behind this except maybe looks?

 

[MercurySteam]

Nvidia's GTX 1080 Goes on Sale, Promptly Sells Out Everywhere

Translation. nVidia deliberately understocks card to create illusion of high demand and scarcity.. COme on, this is oldest trick in the book. Not like it matters, I mean by december well be hearing about the next great card they have.

New architecture releases are always like this, the flagship cards always sell like hot cakes. Nvidia has been purposefully creating hype for Pascal for months as well as pushing Global Foundries to produce and ship as many chips on the new 16nm process as possible. It's the first new architecture in two years meaning that they have no reason not to ship as many as possible because resellers sure as hell won't have any trouble moving stock.

And yes, there is likely going to be a 1080Ti announced by the end of the year, but also second generation Pascal will probably be unveiled within 6-8 months.

 

[TotalerKrieger]

Looks like some of the AIB cards are suffering from thermal throttling and/or voltage issues as well. The ASUS ROG Strix can only be pushed 48 MHz beyond factory settings before becoming unstable. That said, the new DDR5X memory does have excellent overclocking potential. The Strix only has a 8-pin plus a 6-pin power connector, so if you want to do any overclocking (and you should if you are willing to pay that much money for a GPU) you should perhaps limit your choices to models with 2 8-pin connectors. The Zotac Amp Extreme looks the most promising IMO.

Looks like Nvidia was being rather underhanded when they demoed an air-cooled GTX 1080 with the core clock set above 2100 MHz. CEO Huang even went on to claim that it could be pushed even further. So far even the best cooled cards are having trouble staying above 2000-2050 MHz. This is what happens when the competition (AMD) can't get their act together and the market moves towards a monopoly: contempt for consumers. Polaris and Vega better be damn good products otherwise AMD is going to be AMDead.

http://videocardz.com/60631/asus-rog-strix-geforce-gtx-1080-offers-poor-overclocking

 

[Strazdas]

This was expected. Sadly most of them sold to price scalpers, expect to see higher price versions on ebay and the like.

Reviewers who received a Founder's Edition GTX 1080 in advance have noticed that the card suffers pretty badly from thermal throttling issues. This means that after say 30 minutes of gaming, rising temperatures cause the core clocks to drop (ie. throttling) leading to a significant performance drop. It also suggests that the Founder's Edition will overclock very poorly.

Did they? I read the PCper tests and they seem to claim otherwise, with stock settings the clock speeds stabilized at above advertised on bellow specification thermal temperatures. They did have some limitation in overclocking, but we dont know if thats standard given that reviewers got ONLY founder edition cards so there is nothing to compare it to.

Personally im waiting for the partners versions because FE is most definatelly price scalping, but they are not inherently worse than reference.

DX12 performance for the 1080 isn't great either. In some games, we actually see slightly negative performance scaling when shifting from DX11 to DX12 modes. Not that it really matters at resolutions lower than 4K...the card's brute force performance can take on any title at 1080p or 1440p.

We also see the same thing on other cards though, so the card is not the fault here but rather the game design.

Or - OR... I could get two second hand 780ti at half that price and run smoothly anything that will come out for the next six to seven years, perhaps excluding VR.

and deal with horrible SLI support, outdated tech design that game developers wont account for and cooling problems?

Translation. nVidia deliberately understocks card to create illusion of high demand and scarcity.. COme on, this is oldest trick in the book. Not like it matters, I mean by december well be hearing about the next great card they have.

given the amount of release sales for this kind of thing, it would be quite hard to stock enough, especially given the large cost investment upfront (its not like cds where you can print them for couple cents and stock thousands in a truck).

 

[Magmarock]

Right, which is part of why it's screams gimmick to me. I mean, I'm sure the cards are probably really damned good and will be even better once the kinks get ironed out but, as you say, pricing a reference card higher than what will almost certainly be superior partner cards is especially nonsensical.

Not really. They do that as to not undercut their broad partners. As for why they are going to keep the references card available I'm not too sure why but I'm glade they are. There are people who prefer them and more options are always a plus.

SNIP

Could you please keep your reply's short I've not read the entire thing I've got things to do. Why people prefer the FE cards; I don't know I'm not one of them. I'm sure Google will shed some light on that though. Also there's really not that much to be confused by. They called their references models founders editions and are going to keep it available for sale during the period. As for the reason they named it that; I dunno Probably just to give it a title instead of a generic term or something.

 

[TotalerKrieger]

This was expected. Sadly most of them sold to price scalpers, expect to see higher price versions on ebay and the like.

Reviewers who received a Founder's Edition GTX 1080 in advance have noticed that the card suffers pretty badly from thermal throttling issues. This means that after say 30 minutes of gaming, rising temperatures cause the core clocks to drop (ie. throttling) leading to a significant performance drop. It also suggests that the Founder's Edition will overclock very poorly.

Did they? I read the PCper tests and they seem to claim otherwise, with stock settings the clock speeds stabilized at above advertised on bellow specification thermal temperatures. They did have some limitation in overclocking, but we dont know if thats standard given that reviewers got ONLY founder edition cards so there is nothing to compare it to.

Personally im waiting for the partners versions because FE is most definatelly price scalping, but they are not inherently worse than reference.

DX12 performance for the 1080 isn't great either. In some games, we actually see slightly negative performance scaling when shifting from DX11 to DX12 modes. Not that it really matters at resolutions lower than 4K...the card's brute force performance can take on any title at 1080p or 1440p.

We also see the same thing on other cards though, so the card is not the fault here but rather the game design.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXUo1S55ZUM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myDYnofz_JE&feature=youtu.be

Not surprisingly, the temps rise very quickly on the FE reference cards, but above 82 degrees they begin throttling core clocks below advertised speeds. The FE isn't a disaster, but it's hardly a product that is worth an additional $100. The thermal throttling issue and poor overclocking potential makes Nvidia's pricing all the more perplexing. When have reference cards ever been more expensive rather than cheaper? No explanation makes sense other than Nvidia is relying on hype to sell an inferior product for a premium.

I do think many AIB cards will show significant improvements in stability and overclock potential, they always do, but early reviews suggest they will need to add a 2nd 8-pin and a large heatsink setup.

As for DX12, Pascal shows no real difference in performance scaling over Maxwell. When your competitor does seem to be making notable improvements on much older cards, no significant FPS gain b/w Dx11 and DX12 with a brand new architecture is not terribly impressive. I still hear rumors of some sort of preemption driver coming down the Nvidia pipeline, so maybe this will all change.

 

[Gorrath]

Looks like some of the AIB cards are suffering from thermal throttling and/or voltage issues as well. The ASUS ROG Strix can only be pushed 48 MHz beyond factory settings before becoming unstable. That said, the new DDR5X memory does have excellent overclocking potential. The Strix only has a 8-pin plus a 6-pin power connector, so if you want to do any overclocking (and you should if you are willing to pay that much money for a GPU) you should perhaps limit your choices to models with 2 8-pin connectors. The Zotac Amp Extreme looks the most promising IMO.

Looks like Nvidia was being rather underhanded when they demoed an air-cooled GTX 1080 with the core clock set above 2100 MHz. CEO Huang even went on to claim that it could be pushed even further. So far even the best cooled cards are having trouble staying above 2000-2050 MHz. This is what happens when the competition (AMD) can't get their act together and the market moves towards a monopoly: contempt for consumers. Polaris and Vega better be damn good products otherwise AMD is going to be AMDead.

http://videocardz.com/60631/asus-rog-strix-geforce-gtx-1080-offers-poor-overclocking

I too hope AMD gets their shit together. I am not and have never been a fan of their cards but I do want serious competition in the space. nVidia has seriously annoyed me on many occasions but their tech is usually the best. AMD at least keeps nVidia competitive even if that doesn't always translate to nVidia also being on the up and up with everything they do. I'd love to now only see AMD thrive, I also want to see a major third option emerge. The problem is just that this is an enthusiast market and one where it can be easy to see who's on top with a quick visit to places like Tom's Hardware.

 

[TotalerKrieger]

Looks like some of the AIB cards are suffering from thermal throttling and/or voltage issues as well. The ASUS ROG Strix can only be pushed 48 MHz beyond factory settings before becoming unstable. That said, the new DDR5X memory does have excellent overclocking potential. The Strix only has a 8-pin plus a 6-pin power connector, so if you want to do any overclocking (and you should if you are willing to pay that much money for a GPU) you should perhaps limit your choices to models with 2 8-pin connectors. The Zotac Amp Extreme looks the most promising IMO.

Looks like Nvidia was being rather underhanded when they demoed an air-cooled GTX 1080 with the core clock set above 2100 MHz. CEO Huang even went on to claim that it could be pushed even further. So far even the best cooled cards are having trouble staying above 2000-2050 MHz. This is what happens when the competition (AMD) can't get their act together and the market moves towards a monopoly: contempt for consumers. Polaris and Vega better be damn good products otherwise AMD is going to be AMDead.

http://videocardz.com/60631/asus-rog-strix-geforce-gtx-1080-offers-poor-overclocking

I too hope AMD gets their shit together. I am not and have never been a fan of their cards but I do want serious competition in the space. nVidia has seriously annoyed me on many occasions but their tech is usually the best. AMD at least keeps nVidia competitive even if that doesn't always translate to nVidia also being on the up and up with everything they do. I'd love to now only see AMD thrive, I also want to see a major third option emerge. The problem is just that this is an enthusiast market and one where it can be easy to see who's on top with a quick visit to places like Tom's Hardware.

Yep, and unfortunately the trends in enthusiast market also heavily influence sales in the entry to mid range markets regardless of product performance. I agree, a third option for GPUs (CPUs too) would really breathe some life into the tech markets.

Here is the AMD CEO at some event in Macau, China to discuss Polaris and Zen among other things. They've either got something good or are partying their way to doomsday..

 

[Strazdas]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXUo1S55ZUM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myDYnofz_JE&feature=youtu.be

Not surprisingly, the temps rise very quickly on the FE reference cards, but above 82 degrees they begin throttling core clocks below advertised speeds. The FE isn't a disaster, but it's hardly a product that is worth an additional $100. The thermal throttling issue and poor overclocking potential makes Nvidia's pricing all the more perplexing. When have reference cards ever been more expensive rather than cheaper? No explanation makes sense other than Nvidia is relying on hype to sell an inferior product for a premium.

I do think many AIB cards will show significant improvements in stability and overclock potential, they always do, but early reviews suggest they will need to add a 2nd 8-pin and a large heatsink setup.

As for DX12, Pascal shows no real difference in performance scaling over Maxwell. When your competitor does seem to be making notable improvements on much older cards, no significant FPS gain b/w Dx11 and DX12 with a brand new architecture is not terribly impressive. I still hear rumors of some sort of preemption driver coming down the Nvidia pipeline, so maybe this will all change.

Sorry, i cannot watch youtube videos currently, so i will have to take your word for it.

Pcper seem to have no problem keeping a stable overclock at 2000mhz [http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/GeForce-GTX-1080-8GB-Founders-Edition-Review-GP104-Brings-Pascal-Gamers/GPU-B] for 1080 and 1070 has performed above specs even without overclocking.

Spoiler: large image

They managed a ~200 mhz overclock on top of that one as well.

I agree that the FE edition is price gouging and one should either buy reference or partner ones instead, but its not throttling itself from overheating as you claim.


You are right that there is no notable gain between DX11 and DX12, but that may end up not mattering if AMD cannot bring same boost in raw performance to match it. Because at the end of the day Enthusiasts are going to be buying the more powerful one. Especially since raw power benefit is going to work even in games that dont have async compute set up, while AMDs will only perform well when it does. Of course they may change all that with Vega, but so far we got no idea.

 

[TotalerKrieger]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXUo1S55ZUM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myDYnofz_JE&feature=youtu.be

Not surprisingly, the temps rise very quickly on the FE reference cards, but above 82 degrees they begin throttling core clocks below advertised speeds. The FE isn't a disaster, but it's hardly a product that is worth an additional $100. The thermal throttling issue and poor overclocking potential makes Nvidia's pricing all the more perplexing. When have reference cards ever been more expensive rather than cheaper? No explanation makes sense other than Nvidia is relying on hype to sell an inferior product for a premium.

I do think many AIB cards will show significant improvements in stability and overclock potential, they always do, but early reviews suggest they will need to add a 2nd 8-pin and a large heatsink setup.

As for DX12, Pascal shows no real difference in performance scaling over Maxwell. When your competitor does seem to be making notable improvements on much older cards, no significant FPS gain b/w Dx11 and DX12 with a brand new architecture is not terribly impressive. I still hear rumors of some sort of preemption driver coming down the Nvidia pipeline, so maybe this will all change.

Sorry, i cannot watch youtube videos currently, so i will have to take your word for it.

Pcper seem to have no problem keeping a stable overclock at 2000mhz [http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/GeForce-GTX-1080-8GB-Founders-Edition-Review-GP104-Brings-Pascal-Gamers/GPU-B] for 1080 and 1070 has performed above specs even without overclocking.

Spoiler: large image

They managed a ~200 mhz overclock on top of that one as well.

I agree that the FE edition is price gouging and one should either buy reference or partner ones instead, but its not throttling itself from overheating as you claim.


You are right that there is no notable gain between DX11 and DX12, but that may end up not mattering if AMD cannot bring same boost in raw performance to match it. Because at the end of the day Enthusiasts are going to be buying the more powerful one. Especially since raw power benefit is going to work even in games that dont have async compute set up, while AMDs will only perform well when it does. Of course they may change all that with Vega, but so far we got no idea.

As far as I know, the Founder's Edition are the only reference cards available for the GTX 1070 and 1080.

One thing to note about the PCper tests is that they have somehow managed to keep max temperatures below 82-84 degrees, which many reviewers have noted is the approximate point at which non-negligible thermal throttling appears. It has been largely confirmed that FE owners can avoid thermal throttling by creating a more aggressive fan curve which reaches 100% around 75-80 degrees.

Yep, as I said before Dx12 performance won't matter at anything other than 4K resolution where even 3-4 FPS extra requires quite a bit more horsepower. Who cares if you get 110 or 120 FPS at 1080p or 75 or 85 FPS at 1440p...I really wouldn't anyway.

AMD revealed performance specs for one of the Polaris 10 SKUs yesterday...not that exciting tbh. The RX 480 performs b/w a GTX 970 and 980 for $199. Awesome price to performance sure but I was hoping for something that reached close to Fury non-X performance to nip at the heels of the GTX 1070...Still, I guess it will be a great 1080p card.

 

[Strazdas]

As far as I know, the Founder's Edition are the only reference cards available for the GTX 1070 and 1080.

One thing to note about the PCper tests is that they have somehow managed to keep max temperatures below 82-84 degrees, which many reviewers have noted is the approximate point at which non-negligible thermal throttling appears. It has been largely confirmed that FE owners can avoid thermal throttling by creating a more aggressive fan curve which reaches 100% around 75-80 degrees.

Yep, as I said before Dx12 performance won't matter at anything other than 4K resolution where even 3-4 FPS extra requires quite a bit more horsepower. Who cares if you get 110 or 120 FPS at 1080p or 75 or 85 FPS at 1440p...I really wouldn't anyway.

AMD revealed performance specs for one of the Polaris 10 SKUs yesterday...not that exciting tbh. The RX 480 performs b/w a GTX 970 and 980 for $199. Awesome price to performance sure but I was hoping for something that reached close to Fury non-X performance to nip at the heels of the GTX 1070...Still, I guess it will be a great 1080p card.

Thing is PCper did not change the fan curve though and the temperatures in the graph i linked stabilizes with 52% fan utilization. in fact they specifically said they never maxed out the fans because, and i quote "that is not something sane people do". This makes it sound to me that the default fan curve is agressive enough to keep it bellow throttling temperature. Perhaps those that experience thorttling has high ambiet temperature (which might be true give that we are currently in a middle of a heatwave almost globally).

I think the AMD revew was pretty much as expected. Good mid-range card for good price, not competing with high-end market yet. They probably going to bring competition to 1070/1080 during Vega reveal, now they seem to target 1060. Though no independent reviews yet and stuff like using AotS benchmark for fake 2x480=1080 score (the benchmarks used different graphic settings and even different map!) does not inspire me with confidence. Then again Nvidias claims were hard to believe and they turned out to be true.

Im now debating whether to get 480 or 1070 since on one hand i game in 1080p, but on the other hand i want to be able to run games at 60 fps even 5 years down the line since i dont upgrade often. That 1070 may end up being capable of running future games just as well.

 

[TotalerKrieger]

As far as I know, the Founder's Edition are the only reference cards available for the GTX 1070 and 1080.

One thing to note about the PCper tests is that they have somehow managed to keep max temperatures below 82-84 degrees, which many reviewers have noted is the approximate point at which non-negligible thermal throttling appears. It has been largely confirmed that FE owners can avoid thermal throttling by creating a more aggressive fan curve which reaches 100% around 75-80 degrees.

Yep, as I said before Dx12 performance won't matter at anything other than 4K resolution where even 3-4 FPS extra requires quite a bit more horsepower. Who cares if you get 110 or 120 FPS at 1080p or 75 or 85 FPS at 1440p...I really wouldn't anyway.

AMD revealed performance specs for one of the Polaris 10 SKUs yesterday...not that exciting tbh. The RX 480 performs b/w a GTX 970 and 980 for $199. Awesome price to performance sure but I was hoping for something that reached close to Fury non-X performance to nip at the heels of the GTX 1070...Still, I guess it will be a great 1080p card.

Thing is PCper did not change the fan curve though and the temperatures in the graph i linked stabilizes with 52% fan utilization. in fact they specifically said they never maxed out the fans because, and i quote "that is not something sane people do". This makes it sound to me that the default fan curve is agressive enough to keep it bellow throttling temperature. Perhaps those that experience thorttling has high ambiet temperature (which might be true give that we are currently in a middle of a heatwave almost globally).

I think the AMD revew was pretty much as expected. Good mid-range card for good price, not competing with high-end market yet. They probably going to bring competition to 1070/1080 during Vega reveal, now they seem to target 1060. Though no independent reviews yet and stuff like using AotS benchmark for fake 2x480=1080 score (the benchmarks used different graphic settings and even different map!) does not inspire me with confidence. Then again Nvidias claims were hard to believe and they turned out to be true.

Im now debating whether to get 480 or 1070 since on one hand i game in 1080p, but on the other hand i want to be able to run games at 60 fps even 5 years down the line since i dont upgrade often. That 1070 may end up being capable of running future games just as well.

I don't know what PCper did to keep temps down, but many review sites are easily hitting higher temps. JayzTwoCents seemed to hit 84 degress very quickly when playing Crysis 3. An excerpt from the HardOCP review:

Naturally the Radeon R9 Fury X is running the coolest because it is using a closed-loop liquid cooling system. Compared to the air cooled GeForce GTX 980 Ti though the maximum GPU temperature seems to have a similar thermal limit set on the GTX 1080 as it is on the GTX 980 Ti at 83-84c. When it hits those temps it will throttle voltage and clock speed and TDP to keep it in that range. The only way to alleviate this is to use a third party overclocking program to raise the temperature cap. Or you could raise the fan profile to keep it cooler.