Nvidia GTX 1080 faster than a Titan X, costs nearly half as much

Nvidia has finally outed its 10 series of graphics processors, and on paper at least it was definitely worth the wait.

The two new cards — the Nvidia GTX 1080 and Nvidia GTX 1070 — both outperform the Titan X, use less power and cost much, much less, according to Nvidia’s claims.

This is mainly down to the company’s new Pascal architecture, which boasts a reduced GPU die size, increasing performance while requiring less from the wall socket. Even Nvidia’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang’s calling this marked jump in graphics thrust an “irresponsible levels of performance.”

Key numbers — Nvidia GTX 1080:

Architecture/Process: Pascal / 16nm by TSMC
TDP: 180w
Processing power: 9.0 TFLOPs
CUDA cores: 2560
VRAM/Type: 8GB GDDR5X
VRAM speed/Bus: 10Gbps / 256-bit bus
Clockspeed boost: 1733MHz

So just how irresponsible are we talking, and how much faster is the 1080 than the Titan X?

For one, the Titan X had a TDP of 250 watts; the GTX 1080 will require just 180. Furthermore, Nvidia has also priced this thing incredibly competitively at US$599. That’s US$400 less than the Titan X.

This Titan X comparison might seem excessive, but it’s a great way to explain the leaps in power and efficiency the new chips bring.

Nvidia’s also touting its new cards as perfect for virtual reality rigs, bringing them slowly into less affluent hands. The company’s also focusing on multi-screen rigs, and its new simultaneous multi-projection technology aims to correct the screen and rendering distortions inherent in these.

Although the cards will likely reach South Africa later in the year, the GTX 1080 will arrive on 27 May internationally, retailing for US$599. The GTX 1070 (which incidentally is also beefier than the Titan X), will arrive on 10 June, retailing for US$379.

Both cards will also get founders’ editions — cherry picked cards with the fastest factory-tested silicon — for US$100 more each.