After years of being stuck on 28nm process technologies, both Nvidia and AMD managed to push their graphics processors not one, but two full generations forward, to the 16nm and 14nm nodes, respectively. The wait was worthwhile.
Nvidia attacked this new generation of graphics cards from the high end, revealing the ferocious $600 GeForce GTX 1080 in May. This beast set new records for power and performance efficiency, trouncing last-gen’s lofty Titan X by a full 30 percent in games, and its GTX 980 predecessor by roughly 70 percent. That’s crazy.
Wait, that’s not crazy. The monstrous new $1,200 Titan X Pascal is crazy, coming in a full 30 percent faster than even the GTX 1080. It’s the first graphics card capable of playing modern games at full 4K resolution—with every graphical bell and whistle cranked to 11—and maintaining the hallowed 60 frames per second gold standard.
To sum up Nvidia’s GTX 10-series graphics cards in two words: mic drop.