Nvidia Doubling Up prices on GeForce GXT 2080? Tackling Some Rumors

Ever since a week or 3-4, there have been massive amounts of chatter about NVIDIA Ampere (GeForce cards) and, what we assume to be, Turing (Mining / HPC Cards). You might have read and heard about it a number of times now. In this post, I wanted to walk you through some of these rumors, as that is all that they are, rumors growing out of their original proportions.

A few weeks ago, chatter indicated that new NVIDIA GPUs based on a name called Ampere would be announced at GTC/GDC in March 2018, this would be followed by a launch in April. That rumor now is again debunked and from the looks of it, indeed does not seem to be true. That or Nvidia has delayed the announcement. Considering the March announcement was based on nothing other than speculation, nobody really knows of these GPUs even really exist?

Three weeks ago, Reuters all of the sudden mentioned an NVIDIA GPU called Turing, they tagged it as a gamers card, which really contradicts with the name Turing. Turing would be a name better suited to AI and HPC products (Turing test for artificial intelligence). A Turing machine is a hypothetical machine thought of by the mathematician Alan Turing in 1936. Adding to the discussion. And today, a new rumor surfaces the web, Nvidia would be doubling up prices on GeForce GTX 2080 the benefit from miners purchasing the cards anyway. The source? There isn't any ... it's gossip, chatter, and rumors from the usual websites.

What do we know thus far?

Well really, nobody knows anything really - All GPU names are based upon speculation and are kept alive by feeding small bits of info explaining or denying stuff. The cards would be released in March, then all of the sudden it wouldn't. It was Ampere, all of the sudden it's Turing. There even was a specific launch date mentioned, April 2018, the 12th, again based on nothing substantial. Let me also remind you, neither Ampere or Turing ever surfaced on any of Nvidia's roadmaps, ever. To date, Nvidia has not talked about it.

So are these GPUs for real?

Well really, nobody knows anything really - Logic dictates that Nvidia will release new stuff this year, but that is merely an assumption. Wth the current state of the graphics card / GPU industry, there really isn't a need for it? Performance wise, the stack is filled and they are in the lead. NVIDIA's GPUs, no matter what they sell, will sell out anyway. So it is far more revenue effective for them to keep pushing Pascal, as it's a good yield GPU series to fab, and thus cost-effective. However, this is against the nature of the entity that is and represents Nvidia. We've seen it in the past so often, Nvidia lives and thrives on innovation, which gives them their reputation they have these days. So with that in mind, it would make much sense for them to release a GPU dedicated to mining (and here I'll mention Turing) and separate Gaming GPUs from cryptocurrency GPUs. Nvidia could potentially optimize their drivers for dedicated mining based cards, getting better hash rates with such cards, and IMHO that could help settle down the price inflated gaming graphics card market, allowing gamers to purchase gamer graphics cards at more normalized prices where miners would get the best results with their own dedicated GPUs. But yeah, this is speculation of the highest form as nobody really knows if the aforementioned GPUs are for real.

Nvidia doubling prices for GeForce GTX 2080?

Well really, nobody knows anything really - Today yet another rumor surfaced on the web, Nvidia would be hiking and jacking up the prices for the new 2000 series flagship card as one website mentioned it would be 50% faster (uh, huh?, based on what exactly?), another website then assumed that the 50% increase in performance automatically means a doubled prices. E.g. NVIDIA would be doubling the price up for the GeForce GTX 2080, this also in an effort to benefit from the mining demand craze, boosting NVidia's revenues. If there even is such a card in the works, rest assured that Nvidia isn't even ready to talk about prices. They never did so in the past prior to any release, and they never will. Nvidia announces prices a day prior to release to media and merely a few days for its add-in card and board partners. So that rumor is based on exactly that, a rumor. Would it make sense for Nvidia to do this? Sure, and since it sounds like common sense, this rumor sounds plausible, but it is that, a rumor and nobody can actually know this aside from Nvidia themselves. I'll leave it at that. 

Where did the Ampere name originate from?

This info and name is derived and traced back towards a German website called 3dcenter, and is nothing other than speculation based on a few observations. Nvidia would be readying a GPU series called Ampere, and not Volta. The name "Ampere" has been mentioned in the past a couple of times already, in fact, we wrote a few items about that GPU name popping up, constantly. It's mentioned that Nvidia halted production of the GP102 (e.g. 1080 Ti / Titan X) and likely GP104 GPU (e.g. 1070/1080), all originally released back in 2016. So, the question then arises, what is happening with Volta GPUs? Where are they?

So if it is Ampere, Why not Volta?

Currently, Volta is based on HBM2 memory which is not available in large enough mass-volume quantities, and it is expensive to purchase and implement as well. It also is an architecture with Tensor cores, that's expensive and not likely benefiting gaming. So why produce high-end graphics cards, or better yet, GPUs with Tensor cores? Then there are the recent announcements on GDDR6 graphics memory. Earlier on we reported about GDDR6 closing in, really fast and actually already announced as available. Currently, it is already possible to fab graphics cards with the blazingly new fast GDDR6 memory. So my thesis here is that Volta will remain on track for the HPC / enterprise side of things including data-centers with its Tensor cores, and Ampere GPU series would be used for the consumer slash gaming parts. And hey, think about it, the specs of the Titan V and the Nvidia Volta architecture just don’t that much sense for gaming with its 640 tensor cores that games are never going to use.

Ampere; a new architecture or Pascal refresh?

Well really, nobody knows anything really - In short, the "Ampere" GPUs series could be better suited for consumers, and not the "deep learning" market,  but it is assumed they are based on GDDR6 graphics memory. Ampere as an architecture never made it into the long-term roadmaps from Nvidia, never ever, hence logic dictates here that Ampere would be based on refresh Pascal architecture, perhaps fabbed on a smaller node and optimized fabrication process. Basically, Nvidia would release the GA104 and then we can speculate onwards, in a speculated chart, based on just assumptions and the rumor (!), that would look something like this (courtesy of 3dcenter):

Who's your daddy?

NVIDIA is your daddy; thus far nothing has been confirmed or denied. NVIDIA did well, nothing, shared no information, yet these GPU names surfaced with so much speculation continuously being posted on the web that it's getting out of proportion, and Nvidia is laughing really hard here as they receive a ton of media coverage, while they have yet to release a single shred of information. The honest truth is that nobody actually knows when or what is being released at what price and if the information that continuously surfaced is even factual right. 

Well really, nobody knows anything really - As far as this editorial goes, anything and nothing can be confirmed, neither denied.