Following all the game announcements at E3 2018, the just-around-the-corner Gamescom expo in Germany kicks off August 21. Word on in the street is that PC power gamers are in for some very good news, especially when it comes to near hardware and, potentially, GPUs.
The day before those festivities officially begin, NVIDIA is set to jump start the expo with a press conference at a secret location. Dubbed a “gaming celebration,” it’s scheduled to run from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. EDT on Monday, August 20.
This seems like the perfect time for new hardware to be announced — except for one potential little snang.
At the Computex expo in Taiwan back in June, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made an off-hand comment about the next generation of GeForce graphics cards not being revealed until “a long time from now.”
With info finally beginning to leak and the press conference set for August, it seems like that “long time from now” may very well have just been a little over two months.
New GeForce Video Card Announcement Rumors
If you happen to be in Cologne, Germany, on the 20th, you can still sign up to attend the GeForce celebration in person by signing up here. However, since it doesn’t seem like the event will be live-streamed, the rest of us will have to wait for info to start leaking from attendees and stories posted by attending outlets. But it’s probably safe to surmise that what those participants are going to discover will likely dominate hardware news for months to come.
This statement from NVIDIA about the pre-expo, off-site celebration has got the message boards lighting up:
The event will be loaded with new, exclusive, hands-on demos of the hottest upcoming games, stage presentations from the world’s biggest game developers, and some spectacular surprises.
It’s those last three words in particular that are fueling the rumor mill right now. We’re overdue for a new generation of graphics cards powerhouses, with the 1080s getting a little long in the tooth at this point, and Titans already going through some iterative changes.
Beyond a simple desire for ever more horse power under the hood, there’s good reason for new cards to hit soon. With 4K G-Sync HDR monitors already here and with gamers constantly searching for more horsepower to run their games at 60fps, it’s just flat out time for more graphical processing power.
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New GeForce Video Card Names
We know new cards are coming, and it’s highly likely they will be announced August 20, but we don’t quite yet know what they will be called.
The naming conventions for these new cards are up in the air, but there are three in particular that have gotten traction. It seems likely the architecture for the new GeForce cards will be code-named Turing, although the words Ampere and Volta are also getting thrown around by unnamed industry sources.
Following the recent numbers pattern of previous cards, it seems likely these new GeForce cards will be the 11 series of 1160, 1170, and 1180, but that’s not guaranteed.
Many hardware sites are expecting a change in the prefix to a whole new naming convention, with the 2060, 2070, and 2080 currently topping the running.
There’s also been some speculation that the suffix will potentially change this year as well, going from 60, 70, 80 to 65, 75, and 85 to further differentiate from previous generations. But right now, most things are up in the air and we’ll just have to wait and see.
New GeForce GPU Release Dates
Based on the upcoming press conference and previous GPU release dates, the most likely scenario right now is that the new NVIDIA video card lineup will officially launch at the tail end of the summer or early fall. The exact dates however, are still a bit of a mystery.
YouTuber Gamer Meld recently posted a video revealing supposedly leaked documents from a hardware supplier, providing some insight into when new cards and GPUs might arrive. The validity of the document in question is unknown, as obviously NVIDIA isn’t commenting on it, so take it with a grain of salt.
According to this source, three separate card types are coming in staggered releases at a rate of one a month from August to October of this year, with one video card potentially being called the 1180+ instead of the 1180ti (yet another unconfirmed convention).
This is disputed by other sources claiming to have leaked info, however. Wccftech supports the three card theory, but is claiming the GPUs will all be released in September on a staggered weekly schedule.
New GeForce Pricing
No matter when the release date(s) will be, the biggest question right now is price point. Anyone who has built a gaming rig recently knows there have been huge spikes in graphics card prices over the last two years, with attempts directly from NVIDIA and retailers failing to do much in the face of cryptomining.
All things considered, we should expect the high-end cards to cost more than the current 1080s but probably lower than the current Titans, although specific price points just aren’t available beyond wild speculation. For those looking to get in on a new graphics card before the new lineup arrives, be sure to head over here to find the 5 best tools for locating cheap graphics cards.
The impending lineup of new cards could potentially be good news for budget gamers, too. The current catalog of GeForce GPUs, specifically the 1070s and 1080s, still run modern games very well. With the release of new cards, prices for older graphics cards are sure to decrease — and if new unit release before the 2018 holidays, you can bet that Black Friday sales will discount the previous models even more.
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Right now, that’s all we know about the current state of NVIDIA’s GPU catalog and it’s upcoming lineup of cards.
What do you all think — are we in for an 1180, a brand new Titan, a 2075, or something else altogether, and what are you hoping the specs will look like on the all new top of the line cards?
Sound off in the comments below, and check back in with us on August 21 after the official announcements are made for the latest info!
