Announced earlier this month, the GeForce GTX 1080 goes on sale tomorrow, 27 May.
At the time of that announcement, Nvidia chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang said the GeForce GTX 1080 would deliver twice the performance of the company's Titan X card. That now appears to have been in the context of certain operations, as senior director of technical marketing Nick Stam said the GTX 1080 is 25-30% faster than the Titan X overall.
The lower-cost GTX 1070 model due for release next month is approximately on par with the Titan X, he added.
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The GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 allow simultaneous multiprojection, meaning that up to 16 viewports can be rendered at the same time from a 3D model. This results in a more realistic experience with complex display hardware.
For example, a three-screen wrap-around set-up seems more lifelike if the two side screens are each rendered separately from the central screen, as the perspective is more accurate than it would be if a single viewport was split over the three screens.
Similarly, multiple viewports can compensate for the visual distortion introduced by the lenses in VR headsets. A bonus is that this technique means a slightly smaller portion of the overall scene needs to be rendered, and that provides a further performance improvement.
"Multiprojection is a really important part of our GTX 1080," said APAC director of technical marketing, Jeff Yen.
The new GPU also simultaneously generates the left and right views for VR displays. Yen demonstrated a model being rendered in 3D, and the baseline performance of around 60fps leapt to around 90fps when this feature was enabled. High frame rates (ie, 90fps) are "really important in VR" to avoid nausea and other issues, he said.
Another source of improved performance is Pascal's ability to dynamically adjust the number of cores assigned to graphics or compute tasks. Previously this partitioning was done statically, but now as soon as there are no graphics tasks left for a core to perform it can start on compute, and vice versa.
Furthermore, cores can now be interrupted in the middle of rendering a pixel or performing a set of calculations. This is important for VR, Stam explained, as it means the headset position can be determined at the last possible moment, reducing the lag between the user's movements and what is shown on the display.
New or improved Nvidia software features highlighted by Stam and Yen included:
• Ansel technology for in-game photography – the camera can be moved independently of the player's position, resolutions up to 32 times the screen dimensions are possible, 360-degree images can be captured, and plug-ins for post-processing images are supported, all with just 100 lines or so of new code in the game. Ansel is "a few months to final release", said Stam.
• VRWorks Audio – a mechanism for processing sound to represent the reflections and absorption of sounds as they interact with objects in the scene. While developers have to provide information about the material properties, "we can tell a lot from audio", said Yen, and so the result is greater realism.
Stam told iTWire that while some customers used GeForce cards for business applications such as Photoshop and CAD software, they were better served by the Quadro family which is built with higher quality components to support round-the-clock use.
That said, there are "so many uses for VR" in business, notably in the travel, real estate and medical sectors.
Asked whether there would be a Pascal-based Quadro, he said that Nvidia did not comment on unannounced products but there would be further Pascal cards. "You can imagine Pascal permeating our range in the future."
Now we come to the thorny issue of price. When asked for the Australian recommended price, Yun said, "we don't have one." The company announces an MSRP in US dollars, and it's up to vendors and importers to set prices in their own countries.
The GTX 1080 has an MSRP of US$699 for the Founders Edition (essentially Nvidia's reference design) and US$599 for other editions.
None of the Nvidia managers present were prepared to deny or otherwise comment on rumours that the GTX 1080 will cost $1299 here.
The GTX 1070 prices are US$449 and US$379 respectively.
