The NVIDIA GeForce 2016 Liveblog

08:47PM EDT - We're here in Austin, Texas for NVIDIA's GeForce 2016 presentation

08:48PM EDT - Taking place in Austin this weekend is the Dreamhack conference, and while NVIDIA has not explicitly commented on why we're in Austin, it's a safe assumption that at least part of the reason is to tap into the Dreamhack crowd

08:48PM EDT - It will be a full house tonight with a number of press, along with the public coming over from Dreamhack

08:49PM EDT - NVIDIA is also broadcasting this event live on their Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/nvidia

08:50PM EDT - Run time for the event will be roughly an hour and a half, though it's likely we'll start a bit late

08:52PM EDT - NVIDIA has not officially commented on what will be presented, but the wide expectation is new GeForce cards based on the Pascal architecture

08:53PM EDT - NVIDIA's GP100 GPU is already in production, of course, being used for the Tesla P100

08:54PM EDT - These GeForce products will presumably be a smaller, more economical GPU that yields better on TMSC's 16nm process

08:55PM EDT - Just waiting for everyone to get seated at this point

08:55PM EDT - NVIDIA staffers are all wearing "Order of 10" shirts, NVIDIA's promo stunt preceeding this event this week

08:56PM EDT - So expect to see something about an order of 10 tonight

08:57PM EDT - NVIDIA evangelist Tom Peterson is currently warming up the crowd and throwing out t-shirts

08:58PM EDT - The big question tonight is going to be performance expectations. GTX 980 Ti was built using a massive 600mm2 28nm GPU

08:59PM EDT - Any consumer GPU this early into 16nm is going to be a lot smaller

09:00PM EDT - So it will be interesting to see the tradeoffs made on die size savings versus manufacturing costs and the performance target NVIDIA needs to hit to suitably beat GM200

09:02PM EDT - Tom is leaving the stage, so we're about to begin

09:05PM EDT - Still waiting to start

09:07PM EDT - Alright, here we go

09:07PM EDT - First on stage: Jen-Hsun Huang

09:08PM EDT - Opening up saying that they couldn't think of a better place to do this than Dreamhack

09:09PM EDT - History lesson time. History of gaming on the PC

09:10PM EDT - For NVIDIA of course, PC gaming is a massive market, even with their efforts to diversify

09:10PM EDT - "We've dedicated ourselves to advancing this platform"

09:11PM EDT - 4 things: New Art Form, New Sound, New King, New Tech

09:11PM EDT - "A brand new technology you've never heard of before"

09:12PM EDT - Taking screenshots as an artform

09:12PM EDT - Introducing a 3D in-game camera system: Ansel

09:13PM EDT - Instagram for the PC gamer?

09:14PM EDT - Free-moving camera, filters, capturing at greater than the screen resolution, and 360 degree stereo captures

09:15PM EDT - Demo time

09:15PM EDT - Looks like NVIDIA is locking the render state and then letting the user move around

09:17PM EDT - So this doesn't require the game engine to diredtly participate, but it wil be interesting to see what compatibility is like

09:18PM EDT - Demoing viewing a photograph on the Vive

09:19PM EDT - Photos can also be displayed on phones via Google Cardboard

09:21PM EDT - Listing several games that will be supported

09:21PM EDT - Next NVIDIA Works project: VRWorks Audio

09:22PM EDT - Sounds like an on-chip audio processor, ala AMD's TrueAudio

09:22PM EDT - Jen-Hsun is comparing it to physics modeling

09:22PM EDT - Based on the company's Optix technology

09:23PM EDT - Acoustically accurate modeling

09:25PM EDT - Still unclear if this is dedicated hardware, or just an application on top of the CUDA cores, with NVIDIA focusing more on the middleware

09:26PM EDT - Now rolling a video of a new demo, NVIDIA Funhouse

09:27PM EDT - Second announcement today: major upgrades to VRWorks for more physically-accurate simulations

09:28PM EDT - All current consoles are based on one current architecture: x86

09:28PM EDT - Not mentioned: that all of the consoles are also based on AMD's GCN architecture

09:28PM EDT - Talking about how a common platform has improved production values

09:29PM EDT - Demo time: The Division

09:29PM EDT - Just showing off the graphics quality

09:30PM EDT - More games; Tomb Raider, Mirror's Edge

09:31PM EDT - All three games were on maximum quality

09:32PM EDT - They were running, of course, on NVIDIA's new card

09:32PM EDT - GeForce GTX 1080

09:33PM EDT - Pascal, of course. Several thousand people have been working on it for over two years

09:33PM EDT - R&D budget was several billion dollars

09:34PM EDT - Most efficient and advanced architecture NVIDIA has ever created

09:34PM EDT - 16nm TSMC FinFET, GDDR5X

09:35PM EDT - Focus on card craftsmanship as well

09:36PM EDT - Energy efficiency goes hand in hand with performance. "Moore's Law is running out of steam"

09:37PM EDT - Discussing power delivery efficiency

09:38PM EDT - GPUs are primarily fed at 12v, so power needs to come down to around 1v in today's GPUs

09:40PM EDT - GTX 1080 has to beat GTX 980's power delivery efficinecy

09:40PM EDT - 1080 is faster than 980 SLI

09:40PM EDT - (No comment on under what game, given than AFR's limitations)

09:40PM EDT - Faster than a Titan X

09:41PM EDT - Titan X: ~3.6. GTX 1080: ~4.3

09:41PM EDT - So around 20% faster?

09:42PM EDT - "The Pascal family is going to be pretty amazing"

09:42PM EDT - Not charted: GTX 980 Ti. Which woiuld be at around 3.5

09:43PM EDT - Now on stage Tim Sweeney

09:44PM EDT - Back of the envelope calculation says that GTX 1080 should be around 25% faster than GTX 980 Ti, using NVIDIA's numbers

09:44PM EDT - Though for NVIDIA, they're going to want to focus on getting GTX 700 series users to upgrade

09:45PM EDT - Jen-Hsun and Tim chatting about the importance and progress of the PC

09:46PM EDT - This segment is supposedly unrehearsed

09:46PM EDT - Tim's response: this bridges the gap between photorealistic graphics and real-time graphics

09:47PM EDT - Pitching Epic's Paragon

09:49PM EDT - Showcasing real-time photorealistic rendering of Paragon models

09:50PM EDT - (For varying definitions of photorealistic, since the art style is slightly exaggerated/cartoony)

09:52PM EDT - "The future of graphics, available today"

09:52PM EDT - 2.1GHz GPU clock

09:53PM EDT - 11Gbps memory clock

09:55PM EDT - Now talking about display tech

09:55PM EDT - And specifically, multi-projection

09:56PM EDT - "Simultanious multi-projection pipeline"

09:56PM EDT - Up to 16 independent viewports

09:57PM EDT - What can we do with that?

10:03PM EDT - Demo time with Tom

10:04PM EDT - Correcting a multi-monitor display

10:08PM EDT - Fixing the warp/projection errors with an uncorrected setup

10:08PM EDT - Now multi-projection for VR

10:10PM EDT - Pre-distorting images to counter lens distortion

10:12PM EDT - Not clear how this is different from multi-projection acceleration

10:16PM EDT - 2x perf and 3x efficiency vs Titan X wheb using Pascal's special features

10:17PM EDT - The new king: GTX 1080

10:18PM EDT - $599

10:19PM EDT - $699 founder's edition

10:19PM EDT - Available May 27th

10:20PM EDT - GTX 1070, $379, June 10th

10:20PM EDT - Looks like reference cards are the founder cards?

10:20PM EDT - Wrap-up time

10:22PM EDT - We're done here