GeForce GTX 1080: Most Bizarre Secret Paper Launch Ever @ [H]

I can see both sides of this. NVidia is trying to expand their perception to be equivalent to the other Consumer Electronic companies (Sony, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Nintendo, etc). These companies all have a marketing launch of their products ahead or at the time of preorders and then actual product shipments weeks to months later. This model is grudgingly accepted in the consumer electronics space since it has been done this way since Steve Jobs turned product launches into events. The computer industry isn't as used to or accepting of this model.

If NVidia wants to follow this practice successfully they need to be a lot more upfront about their schedules and releases. They probably need to pick their own launch dates and schedule a stand alone event (even though that would be more expensive). They should also give out the review samples at the event with no NDA embargoes. I don't mind granting them a little marketing license but if they want to market like an Apple or Samsung they do need to step up their game
 
alxlwson said:
Its official. NVIDIA CALLED IT 980 TIE. All of you that like to give people shit over the the pronunciantion being "Tea Eye" can now politely get bent.

Baldy said it.

And damn, they weren't expecting these hard questions haha. The one guy holding the card had a "uuuhhh uhhhh fuckfuckfuck" look on his face when Kyle was asking him questions haha. Well played Sir Bennett.
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Meh, I've been calling them "Titanium" since the Geforce 4600-Ti, because back then, nVidia didn't say "Tie" or "Tea-Eye" they just said "Titanium" which is what the Elemental symbol "Ti" Means.

It's Elemental - The Element Titanium
 
Is surround really dead, like going away in favor of things like VR? Or is it just no longer really something that is going to be important to AMD / NVIDIA given 4k displays and VR? What about 3x Monitor 4k setups?
 
Great Editorial. I so agree tri/quad SLI scaling does suck. I have done it before and never will again.

Hell I am still not a fan of Crossfire and SLI.....
 
Endgame said:
Is surround really dead, like going away in favor of things like VR? Or is it just no longer really something that is going to be important to AMD / NVIDIA given 4k displays and VR? What about 3x Monitor 4k setups?
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At the risk of putting words in Kyle's mouth, I think he is just saying a larger 4K monitor is superior so why deal with bezels.
And with respect to 3x4k you could just get a very large 8k, DP1.4 should be able to drive it.
 
Zion Halcyon said:
Solid input. Everything since that presser has been "Hype hype hype!" that to come down from that, and start to see some of the warts is actually gratifying, given the "too good to be true" stature of not just the 1080, but the claims that a 1070 is also faster than Titan.

I'll admit, if you have a story about "those guys in Austin Tx in the red shirts", I'd love to hear it. Many of us are waiting to see what AMD's counter-punch will be to this doozy of a right hook from NVidia....
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Frankly, if AMD actually is *truthful* about their performance and it is a 10-15% improvement in performance over its price point current item, that'd be a lot better than this has been.

The last couple days of super-hype reminded me of the Fury launch last year. Over the moon statements, marketing speak everywhere. Just be honest and *proud* of what you've created. The engineers have damn near worked a miracle, no need to issue 15 statements that end up needing so many footnotes they look like car manuals.

Edit: removal of incomplete thoughts and rambling that are better for another thread. :)
 
Had to delete my last comment after that video clarified some things, lol.

Great article... I enjoyed the video almost as much. Whoever that mysterious "Kyle" guy was skewered the shit out of them. I think the dude from Nvidia said it best when he said this would have been a whole lot easier if they had released the Founders Edition AFTER the initial release of custom cards by AIB partners.

It seems to be a damn good card. Solid gaming performance over the last gen and great power consumption, it's just a shame the bungled the marketing of the FE so badly. I'd sure hate to be Justin Walker right about now... The guy who has been "planning this Pascal launch from the product marketing side from start to finish."

I still think the $599 GTX 1080 is going to be a mythical unicorn for quite some time after release and if that ends up being the case the 1080 becomes more of a 980 Ti competitor instead of the 980 and I think that hurts it's value a bit.... I guess we'll find out on the 27th.
 
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I still haven't seen any FE cards running at 67C degrees, overclocked or not. The reviews I've seen all have the cards around 83-84C degrees.
I guess it could happen if you turn the fans up to 100% but I also expect that to be very noisy and not what anyone would want to run for longer than a benchmark session.
 
Endgame said:
Is surround really dead, like going away in favor of things like VR? Or is it just no longer really something that is going to be important to AMD / NVIDIA given 4k displays and VR? What about 3x Monitor 4k setups?
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For me personally, my main desktop PC is probably always going to be multiple-monitor just because I use it for work more than gaming. I guess I'm one that never minded bezels too much. I'd like to setup my new rig to have a 4k monitor and keep my existing 3 1080P 3D monitors and be able to quickly switch between the monitor setups for gaming.
 
Mong00se said:
WAIT A SECOND! Good ideas get you raises and hand jobs in the corporate world? We got to get Bernie on equitably redistributing the fun. I'm sick of the top 1% getting over 90% of the hand jobs! If the red team is smart they will give you a voucher with Polaris that redeemable for one HandJob. That is an add in bonus that will move allot of cards.... even if it cant hit 1000mhz.
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AMD doesn't have the luxurious advertising budget like Nvidia, you only get a bus token and a Kleenex.
 
I think the paper launch strategy hurts the company. They don't get the benefit of some rash buys and after a little while the hype settles down and reality settles in.

It seems like they timed their announcement to get in front of AMD even if supply wasn't completely ready. Or they're trying some new marketing tactic with the announcement -> review -> release schedule.

But these prices are getting silly.

Bring on Volta.
 
Great editorial Kyle, summed up my (and many of our) frustrations with this clusterfuck of a release quite well. I was ready to drop 600 bucks on a 1080 on day one but I'll be damned if I pay that "tax" .
 
1070 it is then. Maybe by the time it get released nvidia will change it's pricing to a more consumer-friendly. I like 1080, but it's quite overpriced in my opinion. At the end of the day 1070 will be more than enough for the majority of the gaming crowd and if it's not - they can upgrade to 1080ti later.
 
Did NV ever give PCB specs as to why this is better product than what is stated in the reviewer's guide?
 
Ketzer said:
This new reply from Nvidia to Kyle makes things even stranger with this cocked-up launch. If NV now suddenly says FE *and*custom AIB cards are all going to be available on the same day, May 27, then why haven't we seen any announcements of non-FE cards from the likes of big NV partners like EVGA, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, et. al.? That just seems bizarre to me, especially now that the NDA is lifted and there's really nothing blocking it. Why would they hold back and not announce them if there's basically only a week and a half left before they go on sale? I can't image they're just going to spring them on us a week from Friday and go "Surprise!"..

edit: I think I read too much into the "partner cards" verbiage to mean non-ref cards. Sounds like they are just reference/FE cards as well, but sold by the AIB partners instead of Nvidia themselves - is that correct?
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If memory serves me, most AIB partner cards are shown/announced within a few days of being released. I am not sure if this is the case for this particular launch, but I know that some places like EVGA have it on their site already.
 
I am gonna be piled on for saying this, but isn't Ansel more or less just the same thing as PS4's and XB1's photomodes with the difference that instead of taking a screenshot in the end, it takes the 3d composition?

It will get it's own thread but they just took an already existing thing and call it their own :p :) Still great to see it on PC.
 
I think the worst part about all the recent launches as of late (oculus/vive/etc) has been all the whining coming from impatient customers.
 
Much ado about nothing. If they are NOT available on the 27th I could see complaining but seriously?
 
Good call, and well done for showing objective tech journalism standards to grill everybody, ie. calling a spade a spade.

Oh, this FE stuff, AIBs are also selling the reference card on the 27th. So will NV.

No confirm date for custom boards though, time-frames of a month or two have been thrown around by various AIBs.
 
Endgame said:
Is surround really dead, like going away in favor of things like VR? Or is it just no longer really something that is going to be important to AMD / NVIDIA given 4k displays and VR? What about 3x Monitor 4k setups?
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Neither, that was just Kyle's opinion.
 
Here's NV answering this question at the tech conference.

It's quite clear they always inteded the FE to simply be a reference card with a new name, available on the 27th, from themselves directly or AIBs which ONLY have the reference cards to sell on that date.



So why the jacking up in price?

Because it's an EA tax, since custom boards will be available later (don't know when), they know folks can't wait and "I want it now!"... so here, +$100 for you now.

The real question will be, will AIBs sell custom boards which have BETTER power components, certainly more than 5 phases, with better cooling, with much better clock speeds out of the box and higher OC potential... will AIBs sell them less for the worse reference card? I doubt it very much.
 
They also say partner boards will be available on the 27th... so why didn't ANY media say that?!

Gahhh.
 
schizo said:
They also say partner boards will be available on the 27th... so why didn't ANY media say that?!

Gahhh.
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The partner boards on the 27th IS the reference card. Go to 6min+ in that video.

Like all the previous release. They emphasized the reference card goes first, in the past, the production stops as the custom boards come online.

The difference now is the reference card get produced for longer.

CUSTOM boards according to several AIBs, may come in June or later. Gigabyte claims sometime in June on their Facebook page.

The relevant line is here: "Whenever we launch cards, example the 980Ti, is $649. Custom partner cards are better, cooler, they overclock better... they are priced more."

G ffing G.
 
Cr4ckm0nk3y said:
Hopefully this video will put the BS, [H] is biased against AMD, to rest. It is evident Kyle and the rest of the team want the truth from all and won't put up with any manufacturers shit!

At this rate [H] will only get review samples from Matrox in the future. :D
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never going to happen, lol.. it usually flips between AMD bias and Nvidia bias arguement every 2-3 years.
 
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sirmonkey1985 said:
my guess, because the initial release from AIB's are just going to be the founder edition cards with the AIB's sticker on them with their assortment of software included.. which wasn't an uncommon practice years ago.
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That's what always has happened.

Reference cards with ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte stickers or box packaging.
 
Bahanime said:
Good call, and well done for showing objective tech journalism standards to grill everybody, ie. calling a spade a spade.

Oh, this FE stuff, AIBs are also selling the reference card on the 27th. So will NV.

No confirm date for custom boards though, time-frames of a month or two have been thrown around by various AIBs.
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You know me, I can only be bias in one direction for so long before I have to shift. LOL!

schizo said:
They also say partner boards will be available on the 27th... so why didn't ANY media say that?!

Gahhh.
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Bahanime said:
The partner boards on the 27th IS the reference card. Go to 6min+ in that video.

Like all the previous release. They emphasized the reference card goes first, in the past, the production stops as the custom boards come online.

The difference now is the reference card get produced for longer.

CUSTOM boards according to several AIBs, may come in June or later. Gigabyte claims sometime in June on their Facebook page.

The relevant line is here: "Whenever we launch cards, example the 980Ti, is $649. Custom partner cards are better, cooler, they overclock better... they are priced more."

G ffing G.
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sirmonkey1985 said:
my guess, because the initial release from AIB's are just going to be the founder edition cards with the AIB's sticker on them with their assortment of software included.. which wasn't an uncommon practice years ago.




never going to happen, lol.. it usually flips between AMD bias and Nvidia bias arguement every 2-3 years.
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See, you guys were now at the same meeting I was at, and are confused too. LOL!
 
Ever consider that you and those at the meeting were confused because they were intentionally trying to mislead you so your hype wouldn't dissipate and you wouldn't rake them over the coals?

Anyway, I think 'really easy' were the words used to describe the 2.1Ghz overclock during that presentation.
 
Watching that video... what an unbelievable clusterfuck.

They said "partner cards will be available around May 27" around 2:30, but it was totally not clear they were talking about partners putting reference cards in a box. Man, oh man.

I guess now we'll see real non-FE AIB boards coming starting May 27, so that's good, anyway.
 
Wolfkin said:
I still haven't seen any FE cards running at 67C degrees, overclocked or not. The reviews I've seen all have the cards around 83-84C degrees.
I guess it could happen if you turn the fans up to 100% but I also expect that to be very noisy and not what anyone would want to run for longer than a benchmark session.
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Apparently you're unfamiliar with AIB partners whose cooling is far superior to Nvidia's
 
We now know that the presentation demo did indeed have fans at 100%, to hit 67C.
 
schizo said:
We now know that the presentation demo did indeed have fans at 100%, to hit 67C.
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From what I've been seeing in reviews, either that was a cold ass room or they had some poor little intern with an upside down can of dust-off hiding under the desk. The reviewers that got their boards to 2ghz+ were showing temps in the high 70s and low 80s.
 
So nVidia puts May 27th up on a slide, journalists get excited and assume it's actually going to be earlier (for no apparent reason other than wishful thinking) and it's nVidia's fault for not correcting that assumption? Seems to me nVidia was very clear that this was a paper launch from the jump....says so right on the slide!
 
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