NVIDIA may not reveal new graphics cards at GDC or GTC 2018 after all

You may have to wait a little longer to see Pascal’s successor. Despite initial rumors that NVIDIA might unveil its next-generation GPUs at either the Game Developers Conference (GDC) or its own Graphics Technology Conference (GTC) in late March, new reports have surfaced that NVIDIA is unlikely to show off any new cards at either event.

According to Tom’s Hardware, it’s heard from multiple independent sources that NVIDIA may just tease its next-generation cards and will probably not reveal anything concrete.

This actually wouldn’t be much of a departure from tradition, as NVIDIA hasn’t revealed a new gaming GPU at either GDC or GTC for a while now. It did announce the Tesla P100 at GTC 2016, but the GeForce GTX 1080 was revealed at a separate event in May.

Nevertheless, the possible delay is disappointing, as the grapevine was abuzz in recent weeks with rumors that NVIDIA might skip Volta for its upcoming consumer cards and opt for two new architectures codenamed Ampere and Turing.

Ampere was supposed to be targeted at the server market, while Turing would be the gaming GPU architecture to succeed Pascal. Furthermore, Reuters even reported in early February that Turing could be unveiled in March.

That said, the delay may not be all that surprising, as AMD simply isn’t pressuring the market enough with Vega right now to force NVIDIA’s hand. The green camp still holds the performance crown by a comfortable margin, so NVIDIA probably isn’t in any hurry to launch any new cards.

Tom’s Hardware goes on to say that mass production of Turing cards may not start until the middle of June, so we may not see a proper launch of cards from board partners before July. The timing would appear to also exclude any announcement even at Computex in Taipei, which might push any unveiling as far back as Gamescom in August.

Of course, these are all unsubstantiated rumors, so things could change at any moment. It’s also possible that NVIDIA might hold a separate launch event for its new cards, so we might see them sooner than expected.

At the very least, one can hope for more details from NVIDIA at either GDC or GTC later this month, particularly regarding the separate architectures for servers and consumers.

Source: Tom's Hardware

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