Will the GTX 880 Be Announced at Gamescom?

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By Niels Broekhuijsen
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Is it possible that we'll be seeing the new GTX 880 at Gamescom in a few weeks?

VideoCardz.com, a website that frequently reports on graphics card rumors, has posted that the Nvidia GTX 880 might arrive next month at Gamescom.

The website points out that multiple sources are pointing towards a mid-August launch, and includes a forum post from NotebookReview.com. This post is made by user800, who appears to have signed up just to make this post. Included in the post is a screenshot of a 3DMark FireStrike extreme score, which is a higher score than the GTX 780 Ti achieves. The model name of the graphics card is blurred out, but there is a consensus that this is set by the upcoming GTX 880 graphics card.

Nvidia also posted on July 17 that it was "very excited," and "T-minus 27 days." Curiously, that corresponds to August 13, the first day of Gamescom. A quick peek in the vendor list for Gamescom also reveals that Nvidia will have a booth.

We suspect that Nvidia will announce the GTX 880 and GTX 870 at the show. They are reported to be GM204 based cards.

AMD will also have a presence at the show, although we haven’t heard any rumors tying an AMD graphics card to Gamescom. The rumored Tonga GPU is expected soon, but nobody seems to know exactly what "soon" means. Mid-way through May it was expected that a Tonga GPU would arrive within three months, more or less coinciding with Gamescom as well.

All of this is just speculation for now. Vendors do make these announcement at big events, but not always.

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Niels Broekhuijsen
Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

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37 Comments Comment from the forums
  • DelightfulDucklings
    I honestly think it is going to be a lot better for anyone considering an upgrade to wait until the gtx 900 series or AMD's 400 series to upgrade when they finally get a process shrink down to 20nm. Should see a pretty nice performance gain I would think
    Reply
  • bison88
    From what we know of Maxwell with the 750/750 Ti, there will be a solid 30% power savings, 30% improvement, or a mixture of both. Being that 28nm is most likely the silicon given TSMC's multiple delays, both venders are going to be limited on what they can do outside the scope of architecture differences.

    At this point I don't even think we can expect GDDR6 which was scheduled for 2014 cards. More then anything I'd just like to see the Nvidia GPU's come off their high horse down to reasonable prices. If we get to look forward to x80 cards starting at $649 and Titan/x80 Ti's in the future messing up the pricing we're in for a rough few generations until that cash cow blows up like it has before.
    Reply
  • williamcummins
    Hopefully, the announce of GTX 880 and 870 will reduce the price of 780 ti !
    Reply
  • balister
    I honestly think it is going to be a lot better for anyone considering an upgrade to wait until the gtx 900 series or AMD's 400 series to upgrade when they finally get a process shrink down to 20nm. Should see a pretty nice performance gain I would think

    You do realize that the GTX 800 series (not the laptop versions) will be 20nm right? That's the whole reason it's taken so long for the 800 series to drop, because TMSC hadn't been able to get the 20nm shrink to go as they were having problems with their manufacturing processes.
    Reply
  • DelightfulDucklings
    I honestly think it is going to be a lot better for anyone considering an upgrade to wait until the gtx 900 series or AMD's 400 series to upgrade when they finally get a process shrink down to 20nm. Should see a pretty nice performance gain I would think

    You do realize that the GTX 800 series (not the laptop versions) will be 20nm right? That's the whole reason it's taken so long for the 800 series to drop, because TMSC hadn't been able to get the 20nm shrink to go as they were having problems with their manufacturing processes.
    Given TSMC's delays regarding the 20nm process that we were told about earlier this year I would be surprised if the 800 series will be using 20nm, that being said I would be very happy if I am wrong :)
    Reply
  • childofthekorn
    I honestly think it is going to be a lot better for anyone considering an upgrade to wait until the gtx 900 series or AMD's 400 series to upgrade when they finally get a process shrink down to 20nm. Should see a pretty nice performance gain I would think

    I'm in the same boat. Although I'm not playing on ultra settings on all my games with my 5850 that I can't justify the upgrade for more FPS than can even be used by my 120Hz monitor, and still fewer FPS to get full 120FPS on the latest titles. Will definitely be a huge upgrade going from 1Gb VRam to 3+ though, thankfully I'm a (fairly) patient individual.
    Reply
  • Doug Lord
    No 20 nm, no h.265, no price drop. No sale. This thing is barely faster than a 780ti. It can't do 4k, even in SLI. Power savings are great if you are trying to run without a connector in a SFF. But for your flagship?
    Reply
  • hannibal
    20 nm is possible if this is paper launch. Full 20 nm production is supposed to roll out the next spring, so old robust 28nm is more likely used with these...
    Reply
  • soccerplayer88
    I'll wait for the 900 series. My GTX 680 is still running circles around every game at 1080p which is fine for me.

    So far I haven't been overly impressed with the 800 series. Some better power saving features (I control it anyways) and a marginal increase in performance that does not warrant a $500+ purchase.

    Sort of feels like the GPU market has stagnated as of late. Ever since the 40nm there really hasn't been a huge innovation on the architecture. The wafer price scaling gets pretty ridiculous at 20nm. We're most likely going to see some pricey 800 series.

    The strangest thing is that TSMC absolutely hates 20nm. They see it as a waste of R&D for a high performance product. TBH, we're running into a bandwidth wall (4k), which the 800 series (if rumors are accurate) aren't addressing.
    Reply
  • dragonsqrrl
    I honestly think it is going to be a lot better for anyone considering an upgrade to wait until the gtx 900 series or AMD's 400 series to upgrade when they finally get a process shrink down to 20nm. Should see a pretty nice performance gain I would think

    You do realize that the GTX 800 series (not the laptop versions) will be 20nm right? That's the whole reason it's taken so long for the 800 series to drop, because TMSC hadn't been able to get the 20nm shrink to go as they were having problems with their manufacturing processes.
    These GM204 cards, and likely most if not all of the 800 series lineup will be 28nm Maxwell. This has been pretty much confirmed by leaked specs, TSMC's continued process delays, and die shots. The images that leaked around 2 weeks ago place GM204 die area estimates at just south of GK110, so we're talking a large high-end chip at 28nm. At 20nm it should be much closer to your standard ~300mm^2 upper mid range GPU.
    Reply