Being in the custom gaming PC business nothing is more exciting than a big next-gen graphics card launch!
Rumors and speculation have been circling for many months regarding the new Nvidia GPUs. When would they be announced? What would they be called? How much will they cost? How powerful will they be? Well today an Nvidia teaser trailer was posted on YouTube and it seems to have answered a few, but not all of these pressing questions.
What we know.
What is it called? While it’s probably the least important thing, the name has been hotly debated online with early leaks suggesting the card would be called the GTX1180 which would be a logical step forward after the GTX980 and GTX1080 predecessors. However today the new teaser has all but confirmed the card will be dropping the GTX prefix for RTX and jumping all the way from 1000 to 2000 making the imminently launching new GPU the RTX2080.
Why RTX? Well it seems that these new series of cards will be focusing heavily on ray tracing power, a rendering technique that generates an image by tracing the path of lights and shadows for a more realistic real time image.
When will it be announced? Gamescom kicks off on the 21st of the month with Nvidia scheduled to have a big presence at the show. Until today everyone thought we would be waiting until the show began before we got any details but the prospect of launching a product called the 2080 on the 20th of the 8th seemed like too much to miss. We are not exactly sure how it will be announced but the teaser trailer clearly states it will be this coming Monday, the 20th of August 2018!
What the rumors say,
Take these details with a grain of salt as nothing can be confirmed until we hear from the horses mouth, but various AIB partners have been letting slip the fact that custom cooled (aka non-founders edition cards) will available as early as ‘sometime in September’ and would be running 8GB of GDDR6.
What we don’t know for sure,
Well of course the most important thing any gamer wants to know is just how much of an improvement in performance over the previous generation these RTX cards will be. Followed quickly by wanting to know the price so they can grab a calculator and try to see if they can justify the purchase! Last but certainly not least, when will it be available for purchase? It seems to much to hope for that it would be on store shelves the moment it was announced but the sooner the better.
Jucy rumors of a RTX Titan are floating around that could launch along side the RTX 2080 for those of you with big budgets and a need for rediculous amounts of GPU power but nothing has been confirmed just yet and if it does happen, we’ve heard some speculation that it would come in at as much as $3000 USD, that’s about $4,500 AUD after GST.
Stay tuned for more details as they develop. It’s not uncommon for leaks to start springing up everywhere this close to a launch as more and more industry partners get their hands on the details to prep for launch.
The Trailer,
What to wait for,
Independent third party RTX2080 gaming benchmarks! Nvidia’s official numbers have always been exaggerated and derived from cherry picked data they’ve specifically optimized for. Be wary of bold claims like 50% better than last-gen because it almost certainly be with a big fat asterix and tiny disclaimer hidden somewhere on the page. We suggest hold off until you get some real apple to apple comparison points to can stack up against the price. We will definitely be doing A LOT of gaming testing as soon as we get our hands on some and are very eager to report our findings.
What about the RTX2070 / RTX2060 and RTX2080 TI? Well these pretty much inevitable but as to when they will be released… that’s anyone’s guess. The TI edition or what ever they end up calling it
Where to buy an RTX2080 Powered Gaming PC?
Rest assured Evatech we’ll have these available for purchase as soon as they are made available. If at all possible we will have a pre-order in place just like we did at the launch of the GTX 1080 and GTX 1080 TI so keep a close eye on our website to get your hands on the first wave of stock before it sells out.
If you are reading this more than a couple of days after this has been posted, head on over to our store page at www.evatech.com.au and they just might be available to order in our custom gaming PCs!
For those of you interested in purchasing a gaming PC today, well prices on current generation cards have come down significantly in the last few months as Nvidia clears out stock for their new generation of flagship cards so unless we are in a for an unprecedented leap in performance, you might pick yourself up a relative bargain if you get in quick. Expect the next-gen, what ever they end up being, to launch at a premium as they always do.