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

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
Staff member
Joined
May 18, 1997
Messages
55,634
GeForce GTX 1080: Most Bizarre Secret Paper Launch Ever - Didn't we get promised 2.1GHz on air? Did early adopters just get told to pound sand? Now we have a Paper Launch from NVIDIA that just flew under the radar with hardly a notice? The GTX 1080 has generated more than a little conversation in the last couple weeks. I still have a couple of stories to tell and some editorializing to do.
 
Appreciate the candor. I for one, never buy first release, but usually wait for quite some time to make hardware purchases, so the "paper launch" thing never bothered me. At the end of the day, computer hardware is a tool to get a job done, whether that be providing entertainment or productivity. It will be the suitability of the hardware for the task at hand that prompts me to purchase a product, not whether or not the manufacturer messes up the marketing. Too many people feel otherwise.
 
Reading the material I've seen here, I got the impression that FE cards would be available on May 27, and AIB cards some time after that.

Either way, I'd prefer a custom-cooled card. Who knows when they will be available?
 
Chris_B said:
Was this you busting their balls kyle?



:D
Click to expand...

If they had just communicated this through their initial marketing I don't think there would as much confusion as there is now. My only concern is that even though they say they want to be "middle of the pack" that partners are going to see this as an opportunity to price their versions of the card even higher with the stigma of a reference board still hanging around in the market as the baseline product.
 
jfreund said:
Reading the material I've seen here, I got the impression that FE cards would be available on May 27, and AIB cards some time after that.

Either way, I'd prefer a custom-cooled card. Who knows when they will be available?
Click to expand...
This just reinforces how bad the communication and messaging on this has been from NVIDIA. Did they just think if they did not say anything, nobody would notice?
 
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.
 
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?
 
Last edited:
If they would have just raised the MSRP and said they would sell these boards for the entire length of the product branded as their board, it would have just avoided most of this issue.

I do agree, that it is basically a paper launch, if the announcement and then the review date allowed and then launch dates were much closer together then it would be closer to a normal hardlaunch we have been getting really. Like, for example, this live stream announcement is Friday, review date lift is that Monday and then by the end of the week you can buy it. That would be my ideal. Gives people a week to get thirsty for the product, read the reviews, etc.
 
Perhaps a bit of topic, but has Nvidia breathed a word about the day 1070 reviews will be allowed, or even about supplying review samples?
 
As my interest was piqued with this product I wanted to see if it was available for sale. Naturally it wasn't so I went to a manufacturers website to see the GTX 1080 could be purchased from them but I could not. I went to their website yesterday and it stated that the GTX 1080 would be available on May 27th.

Why would NVIDIA let their distributors know what the release date was going to be but nobody else? Sadly I think that I know what probably happened.

1) Manage expectations, under promise, and over deliver. This is rule number one for customers.

2) Over promise and under deliver. This is rule number one for marketing.

Based on the confusion on stage it is likely that marketing created the entire presentation and management was struggling to deliver a message that they didn't agree with. Management likely didn't have time to read the presentation before they gave it.

I'm sad to see that marketing destroyed the very thing that they wanted to promote. Hopefully, and hope is not a strategy, NVIDIA realizes how badly their marketing department screwed the pooch and fires the lot of them. Unfortunately NVIDIA appears to have dug their heels into the sand and is not going to budge.

Your thoughts on how it all went down were awesome. Replace Not Boss 1 with customer service and replace Not Boss 2 with sales.
Boss: "Those bastards saw right through our shoddy non-plan of charging them more for the same thing and are now labeling NVIDIA with charging and early adopter's tax, what can we do?"

Customer Service: "I know boss, let's just charge them MSRP this round and move on except next launch let's actually put together a plan that supports our claims and adds value to the entire Founders Edition program so it is embraced rather than ridiculed."

Boss: "Have that man put to death! Any other ideas?"

Sales: "I got it!!!!!! Screw all those early adopter guys and make them wait till AIB cards are out then there is no logical way you can label the Founders Edition cards as an "Early Adopter's Tax" since none of the "early adopters" will be able to buy cards earlier than AIB cards!"

Boss: "Stellar logic! Give that man a raise and a handjob!"
Click to expand...
 
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....
 
Glad to see this. I've been mildly confused by 1/2 the 1080 stuff I've read over the last couple of weeks.
 
Seems NVIDIA drank their own koolaid and went balls to the wall with performance hype, and no one thought it important enough to get releases clarified.
 
Yeah. Even if they'd come right out and made it obvious that this was a paper launch while production gets a few weeks to fully ramp up, it'd have been a bit more palatable. That said, as long as the damned things aren't unobtanium for the next 6 months I'll be okay. I'm gonna camp and wait for a HOF, Lightning or Matrix version with super beefy voltage regulation and cooling anyways.

Edit : Almost forgot. There are also a few sites out there that got the FE cards they were given to 2.0-2.1ghz stable on the shitty little blower cooler. Even if those review samples were cherrypicked, I see this as a good sign that your off-the-shelf average card should be able to manage 2ghz on an aftermarket cooler.
 
I liked this article. As someone who isn't really interested in the 1080, knowing there will be a TI version after that will probably be more 4K suited, I was mildly amused by this whole "Founder's edition" marketecture.


Thanks for putting it into a mildly humorous, yet slightly less confusing light :)
 
Do you think nVidia is going to send refund checks again after the Radeon R9-4-series cards come out, like they did for the GTX260 and GTX280 when the Radeon 4-Series came out in 2008, and offered very close to their performance for half the price?
 
Thanks for shedding some light on what has undoubtedly been an area of confusion for most of us in regards to this 1080 "launch".

I stated in another thread a little while back that I was likely going to skip 1080, but may consider 1080Ti depending on price, availability, and performance compared to my 980Ti. My typical upgrade threshold used to be 80-100% single card performance increase over whatever I was running at the time, but I was willing to drop that down as low as 40-50% increase for moving from a 980Ti to 1080Ti, if it did indeed deliver those kinds of gains.

After this shady paper launch bullshit and exhorbitant pricing on this marketing trick "FE" version of a non-Ti flagship, nVidia probably just lost me as a Pascal buyer...I'll wait until a non-halo single card solution emerges that will provide a min of double the 980Ti performance.
 
Honestly, I'm not upset about the 2.1 GHz demonstration because it's understandable when put into context that they got excited a reference card hit that and wanted to show off Pascal's clocking potential to the world. If they had just added in the caveat "don't expect 61 deg Celsius at 2.1 GHz in most games" that would've been enough. What I dislike is the fact that they changed their reference model moniker by adding a bullshit title to it with a $100 premium and expecting us not to say anything--that's an insult to their core audience's intelligence.

If their channel partners want a reference model available for the life of the card, then pass the cost of producing and supporting that on to them, not the consumer. Let Falcon Northwest, Dell, MainGear and whoever else demands this to pay extra for lifetime support while enthusiasts that buy NVIDIA products on day one still get reference cards at MSRP. That would have been the prudent move to make, even if it didn't net NVIDIA an immediate profit and they just broke even.

Mind share and goodwill are important in the PC gaming world, especially with the 1% of enthusiasts that run out to buy your product on launch day and subsequently evangelize it to the rest of their friends who make up the mainstream part of NVIDIA's business. Even though I kind of understand their intent in all of this, I don't like the decisions they've made and it has made me consider AMD much more than I would have in the past.
 
Last edited:
So, is there any indication that anything besides AiB FE cards will be available on the 27th? I still have absolutely no idea what to expect on the 27th. This is a really, really poor release.
 
I really hope that most cards can hit 2100mhz. That would be fantastic and possible change my mind about buying a 1080. But there's no way I'm buying anything until the 1070 reviews come out. I have no problem waiting but I do think nvidia's messaging to consumers is all over the place and a total flop. Not rehearsing for that stream was really, really dumb.
 
that is probably one of the best editorials i read in sometime. It really puts in perspective how this is all going on...

and i personally don't think we will see any 599 1080's till the fall...
 
From what I have read on various forums the 1080 will be "for sale" (essentially pre-order) Friday May 20 and "available" (ship date? in stores date?) Friday May 27.
I can understand the announcement date being embargo'd but blocking the review release date, pre-order date, etc just seems to confuse the situation.

My interpretation of all the information is that 5/20 we will be able to pre-order cards from Nvidia as well as AIBs for anywhere from 599 to 799+ (Just that FE cards ordered from Nvidia directly would cost 699) but that no one is allowed to ship any products until 5/27.
I suspect some AIBs will have FE variants ready the same day that Nvidia does. For example several reviewers have commented that EVGA built their cards so they might be the AIB Nvidia turned to for the initial batch order. If so I don't see any reason they wouldn't have their own branded FE model ready to go the same day. I am unclear if the FE pricing of 699 is specific to buying through Nvidia or for any card marketed as FE. Regardless I doubt that many if any cards will be "available" at anything less than 699 for at least a couple weeks. Though there may be an exception or two (that Galax card, perhaps).

I also haven't heard anything official that says AIBs can't deliver a customized product on May 27th, just hints that it isn't expected. From PCPer's interview with Tom yesterday, I get the impression that this is solely due to the AIBs not having much time between the final revision of the internal reference card being approved and the "available" date. I think basically once the FE design made it through testing Nvidia wanted to get them in customer hands as fast as possible and just set the "available" date based on the time frame their contracted card builder told them it would take to produce a sufficient number so that it wouldn't be considered a soft launch.

As for non-FE designs, as the TDP is close to the 980, the mounting holes are nearly identical, as are the VRM and RAM configurations, I could easily see AIBs reusing the coolers from their 900 gen line on an otherwise reference board. Tweaking the stickers and adjusting (1?) mount point might be doable in ~1 month. They could then run them through the same overclocking limit testing they already do to determine their factory overclock line. Then stick FE coolers on the ones that only manage ~5% OCs and their (slightly modified last-gen) cooler on the ones that do better. Depending on supply vs demand the AIB FE's might dip below 699 (maybe 649?) while their custom ones might be a little higher ~749 (dependent on factor guaranteed OC levels). Even if the factory overclocked lines aren't available on 5/27 I can only imagine they immediately started binning chips and saving the good ones for their special lines. That might be a reason to pay extra straight to Nvidia for their FE cards as they don't plan to have a factory overclocked line and thus wouldn't be binning chips.

Based on the testing PCGH did where they swapped the cooler on their test card it doesn't seem like cooling is the primary limiter for OC levels. There is still value in alternate coolers for reducing noise levels and the like though. If that early analysis proves true then I don't think it will be long before one of the AIBs simply adds another power connector, ups the TDP limiter, and releases a factory overclocked card at 2+ GHz that uses 225+ Watts to make it stable.
 
Last edited:
As far as I'm concerned if all that is available on May 27 is the $699 'reference edition' (whether it is sold directly by Nvidia or also AIB partners) and NOTHING for the $599 MSRP then it is STILL an early adopters tax. Anything over MSRP not used for better parts, pcb, cooling, etc. and just to be able to buy before cards at MSRP is still a price gouge.
 
Great article, thanks for clearing up or at least explaining the clusterfuck of a release schedule... These cards LOOK incredible, but I will be waiting for AMD to show off their new top end cards as well before I lay cash down to purchase... again your work is much appreciated as always.
 
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.
 
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
Click to expand...
Is that really Kyle?
 
Good read, been a while I've written that here.

I'm just surprised at nvidia's legal department being okay with sameday improvisation in the case of the air-cooled card or the CEO just bypassing them... oye...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top