Rumor: Geforce GTX 1080 with Pascal GPU and 8GB gddr5x coming in May

Nvidia will announce the GeForce GTX 1080 in May, a Taiwanese site claims. The manufacturer would provide the card with a GP104 GPU based on the Pascal architecture. Nvidia would not yet use HBM2, but would opt for gddr5x.

The exact date Benchlife mentions for the announcement is May 27, which is four days before the Taiwanese technology fair Computex starts. Benchlife regularly releases accurate information about Intel and AMD products early; whether the site also has authentic sources within Nvidia is unknown. Videocardz also believes that the card will sooner be known as GeForce GTX 1080.

The GTX 1080 would have a 256-bit memory interface. According to the information, the card will have a single 8-pin power connector and DVI, HDMI and two display ports are present for the output. The GPU of the card would be the GP104. This is the first GPU from Nvidia that will be based on the new Pascal architecture and also the first GPU from the company that will be produced on a 16nm finfet process from TSMC. Nvidia was set to release more details about the Pascal architecture at its GPU Technology Conference in early April.

According to the current rumor, the card would have gddr5x and not hbm2. In previous presentations about Pascal, Nvidia hinted that hbm2 would be used for this generation. That may happen with later cards, but it is striking. Nvidia would use Samsung memory and that group announced in January that it had started mass production of hbm2. On the other hand, Micron announced that the production of gddr5x will only start in the summer.

Hbm2 offers a higher bandwidth than hbm and gddr5 and in addition, the stacked memory takes up less space. Gddr5x offers a doubling of bandwidth compared to gddr5. This type of video memory still has to lose out to hbm and hbm2, but is cheaper to produce.