Nvidia GTX 1080 – Better than Titan X at half the price

Nvidia has just made their latest graphics card, the GTX 1080 all official. This monster GPU promises to take on 4K monitors and hi-res virtual reality headsets without faltering.

This is pretty much an annual thing, and having “Nvidia’s best, most powerful GPU yet” as a headline is almost redundant.

What makes the GTX 1080 slightly different is that it has been built specifically to get virtual reality looking its best, without having to spend a fortune on hardware. This has to be great news to PC gamers and VR enthusiasts in equal measure.

Nvidia is promising double the VR performance of its previous top-spec card, the Titan X which is currently just under £1k at Overclockers, but for nearly half the price.

Word is that you’ll be able to grab one for around £600 when they go on sale.

Following on from the latest batch of GTX cards, the new GTX 1080 is also three times as power efficient. This means you won’t need to worry about adding extra zeroes to your electricity bill whilst adventuring in virtual realities.

This graphics processing unit drops the power draw from 250w to 180w – the added bonus being that there’ll be no need to upgrade your computer PSU either.

Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang calls the GTX 1080 “almost irresponsible amounts of performance,” in case you were worried all the focus on VR meant good old fashioned 2D gaming was getting ignored.

Changes to multi-monitor gaming setups should mean no more warped views – so play with triple monitors without any concerns.

It’s not all about the high-end, either. The more mainstream GTX 1070 costs even less, but should still wipe the floor with a Titan X. 8GB of video RAM should keep the frame rates high when you’re gaming on a 4K display, too. Nice.
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If that doesn’t get your upgrading glands going, Nvidia is also launching special Founders Editions of each card, where it gets engineers to pick the best-performing chips to give you the most headroom for overclocking and getting even more performance – please be warned, this won’t totally mitigate the chances of you frying your expensive, new and shiny GPU.

The GTX 1080 goes on sale on May 27th at $599 with the Founders Edition setting you back US$699. The GTX 1070 will follow on June 10 for US$379, or US$449 for the Founders Edition.

It will be interesting to see what AMD responds with but this new Nvidia card definitely looks like one to stick on your gaming rig shopping list.