NVIDIA Could Launch A New GPU Series At GTC 2018… Or Maybe It Won’t

It feels like no tech product is safe from incessant rumor, but details surrounding NVIDIA’s next graphics card launch have been so clouded, I feel like we’re at a point where we know so much, we know nothing at all. There are many contradictions out there, but at the end of the month, we should have an idea of which ones fell flat, or held true.

At some point last fall, the first murmur of NVIDIA’s Ampere architecture hit the web, and that was immediately latched onto as being the base for the next GeForce launch. That rumor heated up again last month, when it came out that Ampere could launch at NVIDIA’s GPU Technology Conference, AKA: GTC, at the end of this month. Being a developer-focused event, I felt like a full-blown launch there would be unlikely, but like most people, I’m basing that on assumptions. Assumptions don’t always work though, especially with a company like NVIDIA. I didn’t expect the Pascal-based Quadros to launch when they did, for example. I also didn’t anticipate Volta only being for AI-focused cards. This might be why I don’t gamble.

Following the advent of Ampere rumors, a new architecture was revealed days later (or way sooner if you were really on top of things), called Turing. It was then believed that Ampere would become the GeForce gaming card, while Turing, named after crypto legend Alan Turing, would be suited for mining-specific workloads.

A couple of weeks ago, TweakTown wrote that a GeForce launch could take place at GTC, something that was countered a few days ago by Tom’s Hardware, which reports that its insiders believe GTC won’t have a GPU launch at all.

If you were to ask me, and I didn’t have the outside influence of the last few rumors, I’d wager that we’d see a launch of some sort at GTC, but I still believe it wouldn’t be GeForce-related. Instead, it could be Ampere or Turing going to either Quadro or Tesla. Volta, with its reliance on HBM2, and not to mention the built-in Tensor cores, make it an architecture not suited for all workloads. Plus, when Volta begins out at $3,000, it’s leaving a big part of the market hanging, waiting on newer parts.

It must be said that Pascal is still ruling the roost in the performance game, so NVIDIA doesn’t really need to release anything anytime soon if it doesn’t feel like it. That’d be unfortunate for consumers, but when the company is selling out every last current-gen GPU it can make, thanks to mining, it’s not exactly hurting. The company actually needs to be careful about how it launches its next series, given that the GeForce market has expanded well beyond gamers and the occasional computer scientist by this point.

In some ways, I definitely miss the old days, when finding a new GPU in stock wasn’t like securing the hottest Black Friday deal – every single day of the year.

Update: A new Quadro with tensor cores has now been confirmed, the GV100.