Nvidia GTX 1080 could be unveiled next week

The next generation of Pascal-based Nvidia graphics cards could at last be revealed at an Nvidia event next week.

WCCF Tech reports that a shipping manifest for the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference Keynote on April 4th lists four new SKUs, one of which is certainly either the GTX 1080 or GTX 1080 Ti.

There had been some speculation that these were just placeholder names and that new flagship cards will be called the GeForce X80 and X80 Ti, but leaked pictures and analysis courtesy of Videocardz seem to confirm the GTX 1080, and indeed GTX 1070, names.

An X80 Titan has also been mentioned in earlier leaks.

Note that ‘1080′ does not refer to the resolution but instead continues Nvidia’s established GPU branding (it’s last high-end card was the GTX 980 and the one before the GTX 780).

It seems as if both the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 will be based on the GP104 architecture, while the 1080 Ti (and possible 1080 Titan) will be the company’s first GP100 cards.

Nvidia’s Pascal architecture uses 16nm chips. It has been estimated that Pascal will offer twice the performance per watt compared to the current Maxwell design. The cards will also likely support higher amounts of VRAM, possibly as high at 32GB. 8GB looks to become the new standard, however.

Rumours suggest the first of these new cards will go on sale in May or June.