NVIDIA has announced the first of its new line of 10-series GPUs: the GeForce GTX 1080. It's the first graphics card to be based on the manufacturer's new Pascal architecture, which includes a number of technical improvements to its existing VRWorks suite.
Among them are two new techniques: Lens matched shading, and single pass stereo. According to NVIDIA:
"Lens Matched Shading improves pixel shading performance by rendering more natively to the unique dimensions of VR display output. This avoids rendering many pixels that would otherwise be discarded before the image is output to the VR headset.
Single Pass Stereo turbocharges geometry performance by allowing the head-mounted display’s left and right displays to share a single geometry pass. We’re effectively halving the workload of traditional VR rendering, which requires the GPU to draw geometry twice — once for the left eye and once for the right eye."
As for the actual hardware specs of the GTX 1080, NVIDIA claims it outperforms two GTX980s in SLI, and also outperforms the infamously expensive Titan X. Here's what's inside the card:
- NVIDIA CUDA Cores: 2560
- Base Clock: 1607 MHz
- Boost Clock: 1733 MHz
- Memory Speed: 10Gbps
- Standard Memory Config: 8GB GDDR5X
- Memory Interface Width: 256-bit
- Memory Bandwidth: 320 GB/sec
- Power: 180 W
The GeForce GTX 1080 will launch on May 27 for US$599. NVIDIA will also be releasing a baby brother version of the new card, called the GTX 1070, which will launch on June 10 for US$379. NVIDIA has yet to reveal the full specs of this card.
Finally, NVIDIA announced a new way of taking in-game screenshots called Ansel. It's essentially a free-camera mode that pauses time in the game and lets you capture the perfect screenshot, while controlling the camera angle, adding filters, and saving in super high resolution. For VR, however, you can also take 360-degree screenshots, which can then be viewed by other users with their own VR hardware.
