TR Forums

So... maybe it's just the latest buzz word, but they got me, and ray tracing is tempting me to upgrade to a new video card, but... let's face it, upgrading from a GTX 1080 to a 2000 series would be the pinnacle of frivolity and irresponsibility for someone as strapped for cash as I am. I'm thinking at the very least I've got to wait for the 3000 series cards to hit before even trying to justify the expense... but when are those cards even coming out? Any guesses? Any insider info? Any professional techreport.com insight?

04/2010 Fermi
04/2012 Kepler
02/2014 Maxwell 1
09/2014 Maxwell 2
04/2016 Pascal
09/2018 Turing

Rather than guess, it's better to take a look at what they've done historically. For this, I ignore marketing and just look at architectures. Since Maxwell 1 was somewhat half-baked, you could throw the mark somewhere in the middle and say they've been fairly consistent in putting out a new architecture about once every 24 months. Turing took 29 months, which could either be an anomaly, or suggestive of the new norm. Either way, if I had to take my best guess, I would say:

September 2020 - Feb 2021

But again, that's for their next architecture. There's no telling what stupidity their marketing department might engage in. For all we know, the "3000 Series" could end up being a 2nd refresh of Turing.

Heh. The Egg wins!

I was about to say...

GF 3000 - ~2020/9 - 2021/3

GF 2000 - 2018/9
GF 1000 - 2016/5
GF 900 - 2014/9
GF 700 - 2013/2 (half-generation)
GF 600 - 2012/3
GF 400 - 2010/4
GF 200 - 2008/6

So a year or two is a safe bet. I think I can survive without ray tracing for that long! Wow, haven't seen this smiley in a while. It's just as scary as I remember. Anyway, thanks for the replies!

Given what we've seen from TSMC's 7 nm fabrication process so far, I'd suggest holding off until your new CPU or GPU is manufactured on 7 nm (TSMC & Samsung) or 10 nm (Intel) rather than buying into any more 12 or 14 nm chips now.

Yeahhhhh, I'm still on my old 2600K. I think the plan is to start a whole new build when it comes time to get the 3000 series nvidia. But by then--let's call it 2021--I'll have been on my 2600K for 10 years! Can't complain!

Q3-Q4 2020, Nvidia still needs to move their Pascal and Turing stock. There's no pressure to rush things despite tension coming from Navi.

Krogoth wrote:

There's no pressure to rush things despite tension coming from Navi.

A $400 Radeon RX 5700XT (Navi 10) is impressive for an upper mid-range card, but it still performs slightly below the level of the $550 GeForce RTX 2070^SUPER in some titles, leaving NVidia's $745 GeForce RTX 2080^SUPER and $1140 GeForce RTX 2080Ti without credible competition. However... two new Navi chips are rumored to appear in the next 4 months. Navi 14 will go after the populist 1080p gaming market with 24 RDNA compute units (= 60% of the CU count in Navi 10). Navi 12 will push to higher performance (think 2160p60 target resolution) with 64 CU (= 160% of the CU count in Navi 10) - taking on GeForce RTX 2080^SUPER.

I expect that from high atop his perch on a mountain of cash, Jen-Hsun Huang won't be too bothered in 2019, provided that NVidia can get their own 7 nm GPUs out next year when AMD is expected to bring on a second-generation Navi.

Finally, we're starting to get some leaks about Ampere:
https://wccftech.com/nvidia-next-genera ... titan-rtx/
https://videocardz.com/newz/nvidia-coul ... chitecture

Ampere's impending (late Q3?) launch may be pushing down prices on RTX 20xx cards already:
https://hothardware.com/news/nvidias-am ... ring-sales

Ampere keynote on May 14
(FYI, that won't be RTX 3000)

https://wccftech.com/nvidias-ampere-gpu ... euv-rumor/
Ampere is rumored to be fabricated on TSMC's 7nm process.

Hopper is rumored for Samsung's 5nm.