[twitchyzero]

for the geeks

Finally Thoughts

NVIDIA has excited the PC gaming world with the release of Pascal and the GeForce GTX 1080 graphics card. It hits some critical points in the process of doing so. It’s the fastest GPU in the world. It’s the most power efficient GPU in the world. It could be among the best values in a high graphics card in years. It leaves me craving both the inevitable “big Pascal” card as well as the lower cost 1070/1060/1050 options coming later in the year. If you are PC gamer, regardless of your current GPU commitments, you WANT to see launches like this, ones that push the envelope and make competitors work harder to keep up. NVIDIA’s GP104 launch does exactly this.

It’s not a perfect release – the added $100 to what was once the reference design, but is not renamed the Founders Edition, will leave a sour taste in many gamers’ mouths. Does NVIDIA deserve to be able to charge $100 more for the early adopters? Sure, capitalism states that they should sell it for whatever people will buy it for. We had this same argument about G-Sync monitors and the market upheld NVIDIA’s higher prices. I think the same will happen here with the GTX 1080. You may not like it, and I’m not a big fan, but it clearly is what NVIDIA thinks is best for them in the long term.

The GeForce GTX 1080 8GB Founders Edition Review - GP104 Brings Pascal to Gamers | Sound Testing, Pricing and Conclusions