Nvidia is in no rush to counter AMD's Vega with next-gen Volta graphics cards

With AMD's new RX Vega GPUs due to hit store shelves imminently, attention has now turned to competitor Nvidia, which has its own next-generation of graphics cards waiting in the wings. 

Unfortunately for Nvidia fans, it looks like they might have a little longer to wait for team green's response to AMD's latest cards, and successor to current Pascal cards. 

During a recent earnings call, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said, "Volta for gaming, we haven't announced anything... for the holiday season for the foreseeable future, I think Pascal is just unbeatable."

Strong competition

We'd disagree that Pascal is completely unbeatable. In our review of the AMD RX Vega 64 we found that the card is roughly on a par with the Nvidia GTX 1080 in terms of gaming performance. 

However, when it comes to power draw, Nvidia's cards have a clear lead, drawing significantly less power than their competitors despite offering a similar level of performance. 

If you're looking for the all around best card, then this could give Nvidia the edge if you care about power consumption, but we'd stop short of calling Pascal 'unbeatable', at least on a price to performance basis. 

The GTX 1080 Ti currently outperforms AMD's entire lineup, but it is also a significantly more expensive card. 

PCGamer notes that the real reason for holding back Volta is to do with cost. The new cards are currently available for professional uses such as data centers, but their high cost means that the company is currently unable to produce them cheaply enough to be sold to consumers. 

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Jon Porter

Jon Porter is the ex-Home Technology Writer for TechRadar. He has also previously written for Practical Photoshop, Trusted Reviews, Inside Higher Ed, Al Bawaba, Gizmodo UK, Genetic Literacy Project, Via Satellite, Real Homes and Plant Services Magazine, and you can now find him writing for The Verge.

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