It’s time! Scroll down for our liveblog.
The stage is set for the next-generation graphics card showdown between Nvidia and AMD. Tonight in Austin during a special live event at 6pm Pacific/9pm Eastern, Nvidia is expected to fire first by formally revealing the new lineup of GeForce GPUs built using their next-generation Pascal architecture. The event has been shrouded in secrecy even to the journalists scheduled to be in attendance, but we do know tonight will be kicked off by Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang discussing the future of gaming, and we’re expecting a large portion of his talk to revolve around virtual reality. Why? Because I’m seeing a lot of VR-centric tech press here in Austin. Not to mention heavy promotion of the event coming from the Oculus and HTC Vive camps.
Like Maxwell before it, the Pascal architecture is expected to further improve performance while increasing power efficiency. This “more powerful and less power hungry” attitude has been driving their dedicated graphics card development for years, but we’re hoping Pascal also brings with it significant benefits for VR gamers and content consumers. If anything, the release of Nvidia’s next generation of graphics cards will have a ripple effect on the price tags of GTX 980 Ti, GTX 980, and GTX 970 cards, which should lower the barrier to entry for those of you wanting to buy or build VR-Ready PCs.
UploadVR is camping out in the Texas capital this weekend to go hands-on with whatever is announced, but in the meantime we’ll be liveblogging the entire event and keeping you up to date with news and analysis. A little green birdie tells me that in addition to the announcements, Nvidia has a “surprise musical guest” planned. Following tonight’s event, we’ll be interviewing key members of the Nvidia GeForce team with an emphasis on virtual reality and their place in its ecosystem. Be sure to listen to upcoming episodes of our VR podcasts GameCast and Presence to hear those conversations.
What do you think Nvidia will show us tonight? Will it be the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 graphics cards? Or perhaps their own dedicated VR headset? Let us know in the comments, and come back at 6pm Pacific/9pm Eastern for our liveblog.
