Nvidia now confirms previous rumors that the company will host a special event just before the Gamescom gaming convention in Germany. Called the GeForce Gaming Celebration, the event will be held off-site on August 20 at a location the company is currently keeping secret. Anyone in the Cologne, Germany area can attend the event by registering here.
“There’s limited space, so make sure you arrive early. Can’t make it in person? Don’t worry, it will be livestreamed,” the company says. “The event will be loaded with new, exclusive, hands-on demos of the hottest upcoming games, stage presentations from the world’s biggest game developers, and some spectacular surprises.”
One of the “spectacular surprises” is expected to be the GeForce GTX 1180 add-in graphics card, and possibly even the GTX 1170 and the GTX 1160. They’re the company’s highly-anticipated next-generation graphics cards based on its new “Turing” design, ignoring the company’s “Volta” design currently used in graphics cards for the professional market.
Rumors of the event surfaced in early July as Nvidia quietly distributed invitations to the press. These invitations were presumed to be the typical all-expenses-paid trips to the then-secret event in Germany, meaning Nvidia likely has more to show than just hands-on demos and game developer presentations. Nvidia will supposedly use this event to introduce its new GTX 11 Series followed by a retail release starting in August.
An alleged leaked email from one of Nvidia’s hardware partners surfaced last week that gave a look into the release schedule for Nvidia’s new graphics cards. Sent to a retailer, the email said the GTX 1180 would arrive on August 30 followed by the GTX 1170 and GTX 1180+ on September 30. Rounding out the 2018 schedule would be the GTX 1160 on October 30.
According to the email, Nvidia and its hardware partners delayed the GTX 11 Series launch due to the current flood of GTX 10 Series cards. That’s a different outlook compared to July 2017 when cards were hard to find — or severely inflated in price — due to the cryptocurrency mining craze. Manufacturers cranked out additional cards to compensate, but now the market is flooded due to the dramatic drop in digital coin mining.
“We have an overstock of 10xx GPUs and we’re in the middle of transitioning our manufacturing over from the 10xx to the 11xx series in preparation for releasing the new cards,” the letter states.” However, because we and other partners and manufacturers have an abundance of unfinished or unsold 10xx GPUs, Nvidia decided to have us delay the release of the 11xx cards.”
That said, Gamescom is the perfect time to reveal new cards and liquidate the current stock with crazy Gamescom-themed discounts. According to Nvidia, the event “will be filled with awesome new PC games running on the latest GeForce hardware” along with “some spectacular surprises.” If you’re in the area and want to attend, register now due to the event’s limited space. First-come, first-served, Nvidia warns.
