Today at GTC, NVIDIA talked a bit about and showed off RTX, the Ray Tracing technology that is used with their Volta GPUs. They also introduced some new AI technologies. They even had a person remotely control a car with autmented virtual reality. All cool stuff.
One thing noteably missing, however, is the mention of any gaming GPUs. Many gamers were hoping for an announcement today. It seems to have been confirmed recently that the next series will be the 1100 series of graphics cards, but with no mention of it today at GTC, a lot of gamers were left in the dark.
It has been almost two years since the release of the GTX 1080, the first of the 1000 series graphics cards.
So far, AMD hasn't announced any plans to release new graphics cards this year. But they could surprise us. With NVIDIA trying to devour the gaming market with their GPP (GeForce Partner Program), now would be an opportune time for AMD to announce something. In recent Linux driver source code, it was discovered that some new code has been given for VEGA GPUs. So is there a possibility we could see something in the mid range and low end from AMD?
Or are both companies waiting until things calm down again with RAM prices before they release a new gaming GPU? This is what I am currently thinking. RAM prices are not where the companies want them for a new graphics card release. And they know customers will complain right now if they release a gaming graphics card that's just way too expensive. So I think they're waiting it out.
One good piece of news for gamers is that graphics card prices are starting to come back down, as they have been expensive due to board partners selling direct to mining farms for mining cryptocurrency. Mining has been a major factor in the graphics card shortage and price hikes that have happened in the past year, and especially over the past few months. But with ASICs coming out soon, you can expect to see more of a price drop on graphics cards as time goes on.
Today was a disappointment for many gamers. But I'd say don't expect a new graphics card announcement until later this summer at the earliest. But don't be too surprised if AMD has something up their sleeve soon, though I don't see that being very likely either.