** The Official Nvidia GeForce 'Pascal' Thread - for general gossip and discussions **

[Kaapstad]

People do realise that NVidia do have at least one more Maxwell card they could release if sales of the GTX 980 Ti fall off.

There is nothing to stop them releasing a full fat GM200 card with everything enabled (like the TX) and 6gb of VRAM.

This would give a nice boost over existing GTX 980 Ti's so all this talk about when Pascal is coming could be very premature.

 

[triss]

People do realise that NVidia do have at least one more Maxwell card they could release if sales of the GTX 980 Ti fall off.

There is nothing to stop them releasing a full fat GM200 card with everything enabled (like the TX) and 6gb of VRAM.

This would give a nice boost over existing GTX 980 Ti's so all this talk about when Pascal is coming could be very premature.

I wonder if it would clock aswell as the reduced core?

If it didnt it wouldnt really be any different than buying a titan so i dont see the point

 

[Kaapstad]

I wonder if it would clock aswell as the reduced core?

If it didnt it wouldnt really be any different than buying a titan so i dont see the point

All down to the cooler and power circuitry.

If you compare a reference 980 Ti to a TX there is a noticeable difference.

The fastest 980 Ti on the market is an 80%+ ASIC Kingpin which comes with Samsung memory, beefed up power and a great cooler yet it only manages to trade blows with my water cooled TXs using ordinary bios.

Full fat GM200 cards with 6gb VRAM and non reference boards/coolers would be very quick indeed and would have no trouble beating a Kingpin 980 Ti.

Almost forgot, they would be no more expensive to make and sell than existing non reference 980 Ti's.

 

[Jono8]

GTX670 when released was ~£330+: Roughly equal to AMD top end GPU HD7970
GTX770 when released was ~£350+: Roughly equal to AMD top end GPU HD7970-GE
GTX970 when released was ~£275+: Slower than AMD R9 290X and arguably the R9 290

Do you see a pattern emerging

Yes, like i said the x70 card is always around £300

The 770 was £329 as well - http://www.geforce.co.uk/whats-new/articles/introducing-the-geforce-gtx-770

Nvida wont be srlling their x70 pascal card at over £400 UNLESS it is part of the full fat pascal range and significantly bests a 980ti (which is highly unlikely )

 

[N19h7m4r3]

Ok, then think of it from this angle...

This may be the reason why Pascal is in no hurry, because the 900/Titan range is still selling really well, and why release a new range so quickly when the others are still selling.

So instead of releasing a 980ti equiv for £300-ish, they still do that but only when the current sales start to fade ?

Personally I'm hoping AMD's Polaris gives NV a kick in the rear and they manage to launch soon and kick Maxwell around. It'll force a response from NVIDIA.

 

[Simon Belmont]

Personally I'm hoping AMD's Polaris gives NV a kick in the rear and they manage to launch soon and kick Maxwell around. It'll force a response from NVIDIA.

I would love that to happen, then I would get pascal sooner rather then later

 

[Telecaster]

People do realise that NVidia do have at least one more Maxwell card they could release if sales of the GTX 980 Ti fall off.

There is nothing to stop them releasing a full fat GM200 card with everything enabled (like the TX) and 6gb of VRAM.

This would give a nice boost over existing GTX 980 Ti's so all this talk about when Pascal is coming could be very premature.

No chance of a 990 then you reckon?

 

[Kaapstad]

No chance of a 990 then you reckon?

It is possible that there could be a dual GM200 card, it all depends what NVidia want to do.

 

[maonayze]

It is possible that there could be a dual GM200 card, it all depends what NVidia want to do.

I wouldnt be shocked If Nvidia announce a dual card at GDC next week, just to compete with FuryX2 as a dedicated card for VR.

Well I can't see Nvidia letting RTG have a card out with no competition running against it, could you?

I think that will be a surprise announcement at GDC. I am willing to put a £5 on it.

 

[Telecaster]

It is possible that there could be a dual GM200 card, it all depends what NVidia want to do.

Oh I wasn't thinking of dual GM200 due to the cost, I had in mind maybe clearing out some 980s before Pascal launch with a dual GM204.

Surely a dual GM200 would be megabucks and not in competition with a Fury X2?

 

[D.P.]

You gotta remember though DP, that Nvidia may indeed be able to do that, but would they ? They would bring out a 980ti equivalent performer for roughly £300 and in turn killing off every current/future 980ti sale in one clean swoop ? I dont think so myself.

This happens every single release though.
The production of the older gen card gets curtailed and stock levels controlled before a release. Remaining stock at launch of the next gen is sold at discount.


If they release a 1070 that is say 5% slower than a 980Ti and a 180 that is 15% faster the 980Ti can drop in price somewhere between the 2 and sell off the old stock. The 980Ti is a cheap-ish card to make so they could lower prices a lot so they fit within a lineup.

The only card that wont make sense is the Titan X, but that probably has minimal stock now - once the ti was released they knew sales would be low and so have had a year to clean the supply line.


I'm not saying they will kill the 980Ti if it is selling well but at some stage there is enough market penetration that 980ti sales will slow to crawl regardless. And that is ignoring what AMD may ir may not do.

 

[FoxEye]

This happens every single release though.
The production of the older gen card gets curtailed and stock levels controlled before a release. Remaining stock at launch of the next gen is sold at discount.

If they release a 1070 that is say 5% slower than a 980Ti and a 180 that is 15% faster the 980Ti can drop in price somewhere between the 2 and sell off the old stock. The 980Ti is a cheap-ish card to make so they could lower prices a lot so they fit within a lineup.

The only card that wont make sense is the Titan X, but that probably has minimal stock now - once the ti was released they knew sales would be low and so have had a year to clean the supply line.

I'm not saying they will kill the 980Ti if it is selling well but at some stage there is enough market penetration that 980ti sales will slow to crawl regardless. And that is ignoring what AMD may ir may not do.

So... assuming "big Pascal" isn't due for some time (2017?), they are going to go from having a line-up which includes a £500 2nd tier card and a £400 3rd tier card, to a new line-up with only a £400 top tier and £300 2nd tier?

And in doing so kill sales of their current £500 GPU that's selling like hot cakes. They'll do this because?

Instead, why wouldn't they launch the "full" mid-sized Pascal for £500 ish, which will beat a 980ti by 15-20% or so, and a cut-down mid-sized Pascal for £400 ish, which will match or slightly beat a 980ti. And/or they could do a £300 2nd/3rd tier card which is roughly on par with a 980 non-ti.

Those prices still represent a £100 saving on today's performance points.

The only way 980ti performance would be lowered to £300 is if they had "big-Pascal" ready to launch imminently. Otherwise, they'd be killing sales of a £500 980ti, and for what? To make less money?

Since Titan nV have a good handle on the amount punters will pay. They aren't going to give anything away for free.

 

[straxusii]

The 980Ti is broadly the same price it launched for so there will have been a surge of sales at launch that is now well into the tapering off phase.

They know AMD are around the corner with their new offering which will destroy the 980Ti

They want to beat AMD and get the 980Ti owners to upgrade, this is why they will do it

 

[ICDP]

So... assuming "big Pascal" isn't due for some time (2017?), they are going to go from having a line-up which includes a £500 2nd tier card and a £400 3rd tier card, to a new line-up with only a £400 top tier and £300 2nd tier?

And in doing so kill sales of their current £500 GPU that's selling like hot cakes. They'll do this because?

Instead, why wouldn't they launch the "full" mid-sized Pascal for £500 ish, which will beat a 980ti by 15-20% or so, and a cut-down mid-sized Pascal for £400 ish, which will match or slightly beat a 980ti. And/or they could do a £300 2nd/3rd tier card which is roughly on par with a 980 non-ti.

Those prices still represent a £100 saving on today's performance points.

The only way 980ti performance would be lowered to £300 is if they had "big-Pascal" ready to launch imminently. Otherwise, they'd be killing sales of a £500 980ti, and for what? To make less money?

Since Titan nV have a good handle on the amount punters will pay. They aren't going to give anything away for free.

Anyone claiming Nvidia would deliberately sabotage their £850+ Titan X and £500+ 980Ti sales by releasing a £400 GPU that beats them by ~20%-30% and a £300 GPU that matches them are delusional (I beleived this myself a few months ago). This is what I have been trying to point out and assuming larger Pascal will not be released until 2017 why would Nvidia do such a thing. It would be financial suicide for Nvidia to do such a thing.

Remember the GTX780 was released at £550 though granted AMD had nothing to compete with.

The only way Nvidia will be forced to release initial Pascal GPUs at lower price points is if AMD Polaris has comparable or slightly better performance and have been out for 3+ months. If Polaris 11 is faster than FuryX/980Ti and out before Pascal I fully expect AMD to price it at Fury X release price ~£500 with the lower tier coming in at ~£400. Similar to FuryX and Fury pricing, or 980Ti and 980 pricing. Don't think in terms of naming conventions, think in terms of current GPU tier pricing (excluding Titan X).

 

[ICDP]

Yes, like i said the x70 card is always around £300

The 770 was £329 as well - http://www.geforce.co.uk/whats-new/articles/introducing-the-geforce-gtx-770

Nvida wont be selling their x70 pascal card at over £400 UNLESS it is part of the full fat pascal range and significantly bests a 980ti (which is highly unlikely )

A few months ago I would be agreeing with your price points but I now fully believe that Nvidia would be committing financial suicide if they priced their own top end GPUs out of the market. With no full(ish) fat Pascal in sight they simply would not do this.

The only way they would price at ~£400 top tier and ~£300 2nd tier is if AMD release Polaris at lower than Fury X/Fury prices. The reason GTX 980 and GTX 970 released at such prices was because both Nvidia and AMD had GPUs that could compete within a few % at similar price points already with older GTX780 and R9 290/X.

I guess/suspect as follows for Polaris/Pascal.

~£320+ 3rd tier similar to R9 Fury speed ~10% slower than Fury X/ reference 980Ti.
~£400+ 2nd tier being ~10% faster than FuryX/reference 980Ti
~£500+ top end being ~30% faster than reference 980Ti/Fury X.

The usual ~20% gap between each tier as per usual give or take 5% performance.

 

[ICDP]

Well just think of the 970. This card was just about a match for the fastest thing that NVidia had at the time and it was the second tier of the new 900 series cards at the time. It was around £300 (I paid £281.99 for MSI 970 on the 21st of September, 3 days after launch from here) it has been NVidia best selling card ever, you really think they wouldn't like to repeat that with the new 1070 model.

While you are correct in that GTX970 was a reasonable match for the fastest thing Nvidia (and AMD) had, you need to remember between GTX 780 and GTX980 was maybe ~23% (over all resolutions) performance delta. So the reason GTX970 and 980 were so competitively priced is because the GPU market at that performance level was pretty much saturated by that time.

780
290
970
290X
780Ti
980

Six GPUs all with ~23% performance delta is a saturated market, seven if we include Titan. Basically Nvidia were bringing out GPUs that were replacements for the more expensive to produce 780 and 780Ti on the same 28nm node. They couldn't jack up the prices because nobody would purchase considering the availability of cheaper alternatives with similar performance. It's the same scenario with GTX770 which was a rebranded 680 with faster VRAM and it was competing with the 7970-GE. Nvidia couldn't price it higher considering there was alternatives at a cheaper price point. The GTX780 had a release price of £550 which contradicts the argument that Nvidia x80 is usually ~£400.

The market dictates the price not GPU naming conventions.

 

[Jono8]

Six GPUs all with ~23% performance delta is a saturated market, seven if we include Titan. Basically Nvidia were bringing out GPUs that were replacements for the more expensive to produce 780 and 780Ti on the same 28nm node. They couldn't jack up the prices because nobody would purchase considering the availability of cheaper alternatives with similar performance. It's the same scenario with GTX770 which was a rebranded 680 with faster VRAM and it was competing with the 7970-GE. Nvidia couldn't price it higher considering there was alternatives at a cheaper price point. The GTX780 had a release price of £550 which contradicts the argument that Nvidia x80 is usually ~£400.

The market dictates the price not GPU naming conventions.

Um, which is my point

Nvidia arent going to release a card with same performance as a 980ti for £500+ a year after the 980ti release.

Everyone is adamant that medium pascal isnt going to be much faster than a 980ti in which case we will see similar prices to the 970 and 980 (with the 1070 about matching a 980ti and a 1080 being 15% faster).

OR

medium pascal is monsterous and makes the 980ti look slow,in which case yes they will be priced higher until big pascal comes out.

You can't have it both ways.

If next generation is how you have outlined it above i will be thoroughly dissapointed. We had a bigger jump on the same node last time!

 

[FoxEye]

Everyone is adamant that medium pascal isnt going to be much faster than a 980ti in which case we will see similar prices to the 970 and 980 (with the 1070 about matching a 980ti and a 1080 being 15% faster).

Why?

There's nothing above it to take the higher price points.

So you're simply saying that they will release these cards (mid-sized Pascal) as the 1070 and 1080 at £300 and £400, and simply not have any cards at the £500+ price point for months...

And they'll sell a card which beats the 980ti by 10-20% for £100 less, despite not having anything better to take the 980ti's price point.

So nV are simply going to wipe £200 off every card sold. Because. OK, then.

 

[bru]

If NVidia keep bumping up the price of the next card to come along, why aren't we all paying millions for graphics card. We aren't because that second tier medium size card has up to now been a £300 part, I believe it will continue to be so.

I really do hope we are all way off with our performance estimates, they managed to match the best performing large chip part with the medium part each time, over the last couple of generations and that was without a node size difference. Lets hope these cards, Pascal and Polaris alike really fly and make the 980ti/FuryX seem pitiful by comparison.

 

[Orangey]

Few new variables in play this time; die size restrictions, last gen being maxed out close to the reticle size, DP removed then added back, finfet problems, process being tuned for mobile, etc etc.

Also the arch is a band-aid on the roadmap that didn't exist until a couple of years ago, so a lot of Maxwell may be re-used, lessening the uplift from architecture.