The folks over at Nvidia have unveiled a pair of game-changing graphics cards which more than live up to their hype. The next-generation GTX 1080 and 1070 are based on the “Pascal” GPU architecture and brand new GDDR5X memory standard by Micron. Nvidia introduced the GTX 1080 as the “new king”, which handedly out-performs all other units on the market, including multi-card setups running in SLI. The move to GDDR5X was simply brilliant, especially in an age where VR and high-resolution computing has become more and more prevalent. As a result, memory frame buffer size has double from 4GB to 8GB. Nvidia claims a roughly 2x performance increase over the previous Maxwell generation, which is accomplished by incredibly low power consumption, innovative cooling technology and overclocking capabilities. To prove this, Nvidia debuted an air-cooled GTX 1080, with a base clock of 1607MHz, running at a 2100 MHz overclock comfortably sitting at 67 degrees Celsius! This kind of overclocking headroom is unheard of in air cooled units, especially reference design! Many people, myself included, are excited to see the potential the GTX 1080 has when water cooled. As if dominating the enthusiast market wasn’t enough, Nvidia announced its second faster GPU aimed at mainstream consumers. The GTX 1070 is based on the same architecture as the 1080, but specific details were not released. However, Nvidia claimed that the $379 GTX 1070 outperforms last generation’s GTX TITAN X, which has sold for as much as $1100! These bold statements alone are enough reason to believe that Nvidia’s newest GP104 process is a ground-breaking achievement.
