Maybe Nvidia won't be releasing their new Ampere/Turing graphics cards at GTC 2018 after all

Earlier this week, the hot goss on the graphics card grapevine was that Nvidia was going to launch its new, next-gen line-up of GeForce GTX graphics cards at this year's GTC 2018 conference later this month. Dubbed RTX, these cards would replace Nvidia's current range of 10-series cards, such as the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 etc, with a brand-new, potential 20-series or maybe even 11-series of cards that would go something like the GTX 2070 and GTX 2080, or GTX 1170 or GTX 1180, making some of this generation's best graphics cards even better.

However, despite several outlets confirming with  lots of 'sources close to the matter' that this will in fact happen, a new report from Tom's Hardware suggests that all this is actually a load of hogwash and Nvidia won't be launching anything of the sort at GTC this year, or indeed GDC while we're on conferences beginning with the letter 'G'.

According to Tom's Hardware, 'multiple independent sources' have told them that Nvidia may well give us a tiny teaser of what they've got coming at GTC, but the proper launch of their next-gen cards, including concrete details on their specs and everything else, will come sometime later. So don't get your hopes up, essentially, as it may well end up all being a bit disappointing.

The good news, though, is that the whole confusion around what kind of architecture/code name/silicon wizardry might succeed its current Pascal tech seems to be getting clearer. For a while, we all thought Nvidia's next set of cards would use its souped up Volta architecture, which has already been deployed in its top-end incredi-cards like the Titan V. Then we started getting wind of something called Ampere that was meant to be the next Volta, and then another thing altogether called Turing.

Well, it would now appear that Volta will continue to be rolled out across Nvidia's higher-end products, but going forward there will be a much more distinct line between Nvidia's work and play products. Indeed, Volta's successor, Ampere, will be confined to servers and more businessy applications, while Turing will likely be whatever we end up with in consumer-based graphics cards.

Provided Tom's Hardware's info is correct, we might have to wait until mid-June before we start seeing Turing cards go on sale, as card partners have yet to receive Turing's actual specs. Right now, it's currently expected this information will arrive in May, with a proper launch pegged for some time around July. That means Nvidia will also likely miss the big Competux show in Taipei in June, and may even wait until Gamescom in September before pushing them properly.

Of course, there's still a lot of speculation surrounding these new-fangled graphics cards, so we're unlikely to find out anything concrete until GTC starts at the end of this month on March 26th. Either way, with graphics cards prices the way they are right now, I'm sure we can all stand to wait just a bit longer before we start thinking about any potential upgrades.