As computer hardware becomes cheaper and more powerful, leaps such as NVIDIA’s new GeForce GTX 1080 are why it has never been a better time to be a PC gamer. The rise of virtual reality and the growing 4K trend make the power and efficiency of the GTX 1080 heavily desirable. Not only that, but with a $599 price tag and claims by NVIDIA of faster speeds than the $1000 Titan X, the GTX 1080 is an incredible value for what is currently the most powerful graphics card on the market.
Running at over 1600 MHz and with 8GB of Micron’s new GDDR5X RAM, it is a massive megahertz bump which will hopefully spur other manufacturers to do the same and mirror the performance increases of modern CPUs. By comparison, last year’s GTX 980 Ti card came in at 1000MHz with 6GB of standard GDDR5 memory. Most of the GTX 1080’s performance upgrade can be credited to NVIDIA’s new Pascal architecture making its consumer hardware debut in this card.
The big benefit with Pascal is its 16nm FinFET transistor technology, allowing NVIDIA cards utilizing the new architecture to reach higher clock speeds while also becoming much more power efficient.
There are, however, a few reasons to hold off on purchasing the GTX 1080 immediately. The first is a general rule many tech enthusiasts follow about avoiding instant purchases of brand-new releases. Lowered costs, updates, and better optimized drivers are just a few reasons why staying away from the bleeding edge of products like this could be beneficial. That said, because it represents such a significant leap from previous generation hardware, some users will gladly jump into the new card right away.
For those looking to capitalize on deals for last-generation hardware now that the GTX 1080 is casting such a monumental shadow, the GTX 970 and GTX 980 will likely dip below $300 in the near future and still provide excellent performance, although less so in the VR department. Additionally, AMD has also shown off its next-generation graphics technology, Polaris, which appears to be just as powerful as Pascal. If a new GPU is something you are looking for this summer, however, Polaris specifications and even appearances are still relatively unknown, so it may not become a practical option until later in 2016.
Bottom line, you cannot go wrong with the GTX 1080 if you have the cash and are looking for serious power in your gaming rig. It is a sleek and capable piece of hardware that breaks the cycle of small, incremental improvements and is exactly what many users have been waiting for.
