The console vs. PC war is sure to endure, but what can gamers expect from the future of the GPU?
On 6 May 2016, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang revealed their new Pascal series GPUs (graphics processing units) to the world. A GPU is a computer chip that performs rapid mathematical calculations, primarily for the purpose of rendering images. This is an integral process to PC gaming as the GPU is tasked with loading and rendering the textures.
These GPUs are programmed and packaged into stylized graphics cards. The latest and most powerful of these Graphics Cards, the NVIDIA GTX 1080, was announced by Jen-Hsun at the DreamHack gamer gathering in Austin, Texas. Subsequently the GTX 1080 was launched on the 27th of May to near unanimous critical acclaim.
NVIDIA promised the power for the next generation of gaming and the consensus was that they delivered. With 8 Gigabytes of GDDR5X memory, 9TFLOPS and 2560 CUDA cores, the GTX 1080 is hailed by NVIDIA as being around 30% faster their previous flagship, the Titan X. The Titan X was the first GPU capable of gaming at 4K without having to resort to a multiple-card setup. And at the phrase “˜4K‘, PC gamers perk up. Popular PC gaming titles such as “œThe Witcher 3: Wild Hunt“ look nothing short of incredible rendered in 4K resolution. According to various benchmarks, the GTX 1080 has raised the bar for a single GPU configuration at 4K resolutions.
The litmus test for a GPU aimed at future gaming, is rendering Virtual Reality (VR). With application developers judiciously targeting performance well below the capabilities of the GTX 1080 it is difficult to gauge how future-proof the GTX 1080 is. The current consensus seems to be that it has the performance headroom to maximize visual fidelity in VR for a slew of current titles and the possibility to do so in the foreseeable future as well.
As if this wasn‘t enough to whet the appetite of gaming enthusiasts, NVIDIA is rumored to launch an even more powerful flagship graphics card at the 2016 Gamescom, held in Cologne, Germany, between 17-21 August. In the technological arms race for gaming supremacy, NVIDIA aren‘t pulling any punches. In the words of William Gibson: “œThe future is already here ““ it’s just not evenly distributed“.
The future of the GPU is bright indeed.
