NVIDIA announces GTX 1080 Ti at $699

NVIDIA has announced the much anticipated flagship of the GeForce series, the GTX 1080 Ti. Based on the same GP102 GPU as the Titan X (Pascal), the 1080 Ti promises to offer nearly the same gaming performance as NVIDIA's most powerful single GPU graphics card but at nearly half the price.

The 1080 Ti is closer to the Titan X than it is to the 1080. It takes the GP102 GPU from the Titan X but with two of the 30 SM units disabled. Both cards have the same number of CUDA cores at 3584, same 224 texture units and the same 12 billion transistors but the 1080 Ti has 88 ROP units compared to 96 on the Titan X. However, the 1080 Ti is clocked slightly higher at 1480MHz base clock and 1582MHz boost clock speed compared to the Titan X.

In terms of memory, the 1080 Ti has 11GB GDDR5X, one less than the Titan X. The memory interface width is also slightly lower at 352-bit instead of 384-bit. However, due to improvements and optimizations to the memory, the memory on the 1080 Ti is actually faster, with 11Gbps speed compared to 10Gbps on the Titan X and memory bandwidth of 484MB/s instead of 480MB/s.

The 1080 Ti is based on the same TSMC 16nm process and has a TDP of 250W, same as the Titan X.

The 1080 Ti features an improved thermal design with a radial fan and vapor chamber design. The removal of the DVI port on the side also means there is now a full slot for the fan to throw the heat outside. The 1080 Ti now includes three DisplayPort 1.4 and one HDMI 2.0b with an adapter for DVI provided in the packaging.

In terms of performance, NVIDIA claims the 1080 Ti is 35% faster than the 1080, making it the biggest improvement for a Ti card (980 Ti was 25% faster than 980 and 780 Ti was 18% faster than 780). Compared to the Titan X, there were no official figures revealed but it's likely they are going to be neck and neck for the most parts.

The GTX 1080 Ti will be available worldwide from March 10 for a price of $699 for the Founder's Edition and OEM versions, with pre-orders starting March 2. There will be no separate standard and Founder's Edition versions this time with NVIDIA making its best available at the standard edition price instead.

In other news, the GTX 1080 is receiving a price drop, from $599 for the standard OEM version to $499. Moreover, the 1080 and 1060 will now also benefit from the faster memory on the 1080 Ti, with the 1080 getting 11Gbps GDDR5X from the previous 10 and the 1060 getting 9Gbps GDDR5 from the previous 8. OEMs will have the choice to include these memory upgrades in their cards and sell them as "factory overclocked".

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