Nvidia GTX 1180 Expected in July

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Nvidia's 10-series of "Pascal" GPUs is getting really long in the tooth, with the original GTX 1070 and 1080 cards having released a full two years ago. We've been through a number of Intel and AMD CPU generations since then, so it's long past time for a new GeForce platform. Unfortunately, Nvidia has been extremely tight-lipped about its next-generation graphics "Turing" chips.

On the bright side, according to industry sources who spoke on condition of anonymity, the new cards should be arriving as soon as July. Here's what we know right now.

What will the new chips be called: GTX 1180 or GTX 2080?

The chips will be based on the Turing platform, but Nvidia hasn't announced a brand name. We've seen conflicting rumors that state that the new cards will be called either the 11-series or the 20-series. In other words, the high-end card will be called either the GTX 1180 or GTX 2080. Considering that we're moving on from the 10 series, the GTX 1180 makes more sense, unless Nvidia is trying to say that its new card is 10-generations ahead of the current ones.

When will the GTX 1180 come out?

According to industry sources who spoke with Tom's Hardware Germany's Igor Wallossek on condition of anonymity, we expect a July release for the Founder's Edition cards with third-party cards to follow in August or September. Laptop versions of the cards will come later in the year.

These sources indicate that Nvidia will be delivering the GPU and memory over to partners on or around June 15th. We expect the company to deliver Founder's Edition Cards to retail sometime in July. New Quadro cards based on Turing could debut at Siggraph in August.

How long will it take for third-party vendors to make their Turing cards?

Third-party GPU vendors such as MSI, Gigabyte and Asus will be later to market than Nvidia's first-party cards, because they have to go through a number of validation steps. For any card they make (even AMD cards), OEMs have to follow these procedures:

BOM Release	Bill Of Materials Release	Start
EVT	Engineering Validation Test	1-2 weeks
DVT	Design Validation Test	2 weeks
WS	Working Sample	1-2 weeks
EMI-Test	Electromagnetic Interference Test	less than week
PVT	Production Validation Test	2-3 weeks
PVT Sorting
PPBIOS	Final BIOS	a few days
Ramp & MP	Mass production and shipping	a few days

However, on top of these steps (which may also apply to AMD third-party cards), Nvidia has its own "Green Light" program which adds some extra quality-assurance. These steps include

Phase/Step	Description
Specs and Guidelines	Partner gets the program guidelines and specifications
CDP creation	Partner submits CDP (Virtual Customer Design Project) to Nvidia
CDP approval	Nvidia reviews the CDP and approves it
Design approval	Partner submits mechanical design (graphics card shell) and the board design files
Sampling	Nvidia ships chip samples to partner.
Acoustic approval	Partners without acoustic labs provide board samples to Nvidia. Otherwise, partner generates dB(A) curves.
Green Light approval	Partner conducts the Green Light review using the special software (VBIOS and driver) and submits the result to Nvidia Option 1: If the board passes Green Light, a Partner Production (PP) VBIOS will be provided by NVIDIA. Option 2: If not, Nvidia will tell the partner what needs to be fixed.
Box art approval	Partner provides the box art to Nvidia for review (must comply the GeForce GTX brand guidelines)
Mass production	After all approvals the partner can start the mass production. No further changes of the Green Light approved design are allowed

Of course, our information comes from a series of anonymous sources, rumors and estimates based on typical production processes. We reached out to Nvidia, but the company declined to comment.

What will the GTX 1180 have inside?

Our sources haven't shared technical details, but tech site Wccftech reported in April that the 1180 could have 3,584 CUDA cores, a clock speed of 1.6 to 1.8-GHz and 8 to 16GB of GDDR6 memory. The site also claimed that the card would have a TDP of 170 to 200 watts.

What about the GTX 1170?

In May, Wccftech also shared some rumored  specs for the rumored GTX 1170 (the successor to the GTX 1070). It is said to have 2,688 CUDA cores and also have 8 to 16GB of GDDR6 memory. Its clock speed could range from 1.5 to 1.8-GHz and its TDP is alleged to be 140 to 160 watts.

Tom's Hardware Germany provided the original, German-language article on this topic. Igor Wallossek contributed to this report.