Two years have been passed since the reveal of the 10th generation of the Graphics cards from Nvidia, and it feels like a century has passed in the world of hardware. On the other hand, the rumors about the new Graphics cards from Nvidia are riding on a Bandwagon. The technological drought in the world of hardware may end soon as Nvidia has finally announced that it will hold a “Gaming celebration” event a day before Europe’s biggest gaming event Gamescom 18. In the invitation post, Nvidia did not reveal much of the information regarding what they are going to do in the event, they will show their gaming collection, and they have a “special surprise” for the fans. The traditional stuff is there, but the special surprise thingy should be worth noting.
“The world’s biggest gaming expo, Gamescom 2018, runs August 21-25 in Cologne, Germany. And GeForce will loom large there — at our Gamescom booth, Hall 10.1, Booth E-072; at our partners’ booths, powering the latest PC games; and at our own off-site GeForce Gaming Celebration that starts the day before [August 20th].”
Timeframe
The timing of the event is crucial since it is just a day off the biggest gaming event in Europe Gamescom, the event can be a strong contender for the reveal of Nvidia’s best of the best hardware. However, we can only speculate what Nvidia means with the special surprise. In 2016, Nvidia released the 10-series Graphics cards at the same event just before the Gamescom on August 20th which makes it more credible to say that Nvidia may want to release their next generation on the same event/date. The difference is the 2016 invite was only an invitation to an unnamed event while this time Nvidia specifically mentioned games and surprises. So. theoretically we can make anything out of the surprise thingy, and the most appropriate assertion would be the revelation of new Graphics cards.
Hot chips
The information that Nvidia revealed and quickly revoke it back when media started to notice it that before the event the Vice president of GPU AISC engineering, Nvidia Stuart Oberman will host a conference during the Hot chips conference on August 20. For reference in Hot chips conference, the chip manufacturers show their craftsmanship and expertise in the development of Silicon chips.
Whenever there is a presentation of a well-known chip maker, it usually means new hardware will launch ahead of the conference and for Nvidia, the new hardware should mean new Graphics cards. Launching the new architecture would be the only reason why Nvidia wanted to make their move in the Hot chips conference, but we can not say that with authority until late August. Nvidia had to jiggle around with the time zones to make sure that people perceive that the presentation in the Hot chips will be after their gaming celebration event. Why would they had to do such a thing if they had nothing to show, we can only ponder to that.
Why do we need new cards?
The question remains why we think this event would be the best time to release the Graphics cards the answer is the immense hype of 4k 60 frames in a game is declining since the release of 4k G-sync monitors that can rock the 4k resolution at a maximum refresh rate of 144Hz and a response time of 3 milliseconds.
The current flagship Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080Ti can rock solid 60FPS at 4k resolution with some graphics tweaking inside the game settings, but people want their graphics cards to get even further beyond to get the most out of the g-sync monitors. The generational gap would at least make the games easy to play at the Ultra high definition resolution with framerates at the very least hitting the 100 or 120 mark at the highest possible settings. Nvidia proved that they could obtain 30% more performance from the pascal cards compared to the card with almost similar specifications from Maxwell generation.
Specifications
The rumors are mostly around the release date of these cards, so the specifications of the cards were mostly overshadowed. We can not say anything for sure at this time, but the specifications will become black and white very soon now. The specification that is sure to be the part of the new chips is that they will have the GDDR6 memory either made by Samsung or Nvidia’s partner firm Micron. These chips could be made by the TSMC’s 12nm process as suggested by the rumors, while other rumors suggest that the all-new TSMC’s 7nm process will specially make a card and that card could be the flagship of next-generation Graphics cards, the 1180+ from alleged email from the Nvidia’s partner could be made with the 7nm process. The architecture can either be named as Ampere or Turning, but the architecture would be based on the gaming perspective of Volta.
Hopefully, we’ll get the Graphics cards on 20th August; the event is public, so anyone around is encouraged to attend, you may want to register here. However, for those who cannot attend Nvidia says the event will livestreamed too, but the details have not yet closed.