Please note that this post is tagged as a rumor.
How many stories have you read about upcoming GeForce series? How many codenames have you heard about? The answer is many, probably too many. Unfortunately, this post will not provide an answer. It will, however, cover all the recent rumors with an understanding that some of them might be correct.
NVIDIA: Not Soon
Let’s start with the official word directly from NVIDIA CEO, Jensen Huang. Jensen clearly stated at Computex 2018 press conference that GeForce 20 series are not coming soon. He confirmed that the press will be invited to the special event, which itself should tell you a lot. NVIDIA tends to send invitations with 2 weeks notice. If you start seeing rumors at a higher density than before, someone from the press is likely talking too much.
Jensen Huang:
When is the next GeForce? I will invite you guys, don’t worry! I promise, not only will you be invited, there will probably be lunch […] A little hint?! It’s a long time from now…
HotChips: Before August 20th
Let’s go back to HotChips ‘leak’. Initial program schedule had Nvidia’s Stuart Oberman presenting ‘NVIDIA’s Next Generation Mainstream GPU’ at the symposium. That changed, because now the program does not even list NVIDIA, in fact, the whole segment is marked as ‘to be determined’.
Assuming that the original program was correct and NVIDIA is just trying to hide it for now, it would suggest that next-gen GeForce would launch before the symposium (not at the symposium). HotChips is not a public event, it is definitely not an event for product launches, it is a place where existing products are discussed. That said, next-gen GeForce should already be released by that time, which is before August 20th.
AIBs: Mixed Answers
If you ask AIB partners about upcoming GeForce series, then you can expect at least three different answers: we don’t know/they didn’t tell us yet, we can’t say or August/September.
The latter was actually caught on a video during Computex where (allegedly) Galax representative says September is likely the month when new cards are to be expected (translated by redditor):
August, our inside info says that probably August we get the data and after design. It would be September. And every month after that, it will be a new card.
DigiTimes: The End of August
DigiTimes has a new piece on GeForce 20 launch date. According to their sources, NVIDIA will launch new gaming graphics by the end of August. It is also said that the product would be based on TSMC’s 12nm fabrication node and 7nm products are to be expected in 2019:
But industry sources expect the new platform to still be built using TSMC’s 12nm process and hit the market by the end of August 2018 at the latest to stimulate demand in the gaming market.
TweakTown: July 30th
Anthony from TweakTown has a story about GeForce GTX 1180 (as he claims next flagship is called). According to his sources, NVIDIA is set to launch new card(s) on July 30th, which is Monday. This is probably the earliest date mentioned in any leak so far, so we might know if this is true very soon:
But walking across the floor of Nangang and talking to various industry people, NVIDIA will be launching their next-gen GeForce GTX 1180 graphic card on July 30. […] July 30 isn’t too far away, and while we were wrong about the GTC 2018 launch, my sources were very clear about July 30. I asked multiple people and more than one confirmed it was less than two months away, with July 30 specifically being mentioned by multiple of my sources.
Conclusion: The truth is in the middle
A two-year-old Pascal architecture will be remembered for performance superiority and poor availability. Lack of competition is clearly not helping NVIDIA push new architecture to the market. The mining craze has created a stagnation. Apart from few ‘bizarre’ products such as TITAN V, GTX 1050 3GB or RX Vega 56 Nano, nothing interesting was presented for almost a year.
Just ask yourself, when was the last time you were truly interested in graphics card review? Or you have been waiting for one.
The rumors about GeForce 20 series are not yet in a state where they should be taken seriously. Knowing how this market works, I can tell you that the first ‘legit’ leak will take us all by surprise, it might as well originate at NVIDIA marketing HQ because that’s what drives the hype train, right?
You can never truly be sure about launch dates, full specs or the price till you see actually embargoed slides or emails from manufacturer asking you take the story down. That’s just how it works.
I can promise that we will cover all rumors that make sense or we were able to confirm (it’s not always possible). For now, just stay tuned and keep your graphics card cool.
