GeForce 10 series

The GeForce 10 series is a series of graphics processing units (GPUs) developed by Nvidia, initially based on the Pascal microarchitecture announced in March 2014. This GPU series succeeded the GeForce 900 series, and is succeeded by the GeForce RTX 20 series and GeForce GTX 16 series using the Turing microarchitecture.

The Pascal microarchitecture, named after Blaise Pascal, was announced in March 2014 as a successor to the Maxwell microarchitecture. The first graphics cards from the series, the GeForce GTX 1080 and 1070, were announced on May 6, 2016, and were released several weeks later on May 27 and June 10, respectively. The architecture incorporates either 16 nm FinFET (TSMC) or 14 nm FinFET (Samsung) technologies. Initially, chips were only produced in TSMC's 16 nm process, but later chips were made with Samsung's newer 14 nm process (GP107, GP108).

New Features in GP10x:

Nvidia has announced that the Pascal GP100 GPU will feature four High Bandwidth Memory stacks, allowing a total of 16 GB HBM2 on the highest-end models, 16 nm technology, Unified Memory and NVLink.

Starting with Windows 10 version 2004, support has been added for using a hardware graphics scheduler to reduce latency and improve performance, which requires a driver level of WDDM 2.7.

Announcing the GeForce 10 series products, Nvidia introduced Founders Edition graphics card versions of the GTX 1060, 1070, 1070 Ti, 1080 and 1080 Ti. These are what were previously known as reference cards, i.e. which were designed and built by Nvidia and not by its authorized board partners. These cards were used as reference to measure performance of partner cards. The Founders Edition cards have a die cast machine-finished aluminum body with a single radial fan and a vapor chamber cooling (1070 Ti, 1080, 1080 Ti only), an upgraded power supply and a new low profile backplate (1070, 1070 Ti, 1080, 1080 Ti only). Nvidia also released a limited supply of Founders Edition cards for the GTX 1060 that were only available directly from Nvidia's website. Founders Edition cards prices (with the exception of the GTX 1070 Ti and 1080 Ti) are greater than MSRP of partners cards; however, some partners' cards, incorporating a complex design, with liquid or hybrid cooling may cost more than Founders Edition.

The biggest highlight to this line of notebook GPUs is the implementation of configured specifications close to (for the GTX 1060–1080) and exceeding (for the GTX 1050/1050 Ti) that of their desktop counterparts, as opposed to having "cut-down" specifications in previous generations. As a result, the "M" suffix is completely removed from the model's naming schemes, denoting these notebook GPUs to possess similar performance to those made for desktop PCs, including the ability to overclock their core frequencies by the user, something not possible with previous generations of notebook GPUs. This was made possible by having lower Thermal Design Power (TDP) ratings as compared to their desktop equivalents, making these desktop-level GPUs thermally feasible to be implemented into OEM notebook chassis with improved thermal dissipation designs, and, as such, are only available through the OEMs. In addition, the entire line of GTX Notebook GPUs also are available in lower-TDP and quieter variations called the "Max-Q Design", specifically made for ultra-thin gaming systems in conjunction with OEM Partners that incorporate enhanced heat dissipation mechanisms with lower operating noise volumes, which are also made available as an additional more powerful option to existing gaming notebooks as well, which was launched on 27 June 2017.

In addition, the GT series line of Notebook GPUs is no longer introduced starting from this generation, replaced by the MX series of Notebook GPUs. Only the MX150 is based on Pascal's GP108 die used on the GT1030 for Desktops, with higher clock frequencies compared to its Desktop counterpart, while the other chips in the MX series were re-branded versions of the previous generation GPUs (MX130 is a re-branded GT940MX GPU while MX110 is a re-branded GT920MX GPU).^{[citation needed]}