Jayztwocents clarifies what the Founders Edition actually is, you might be surprised.

[GoodBytes]

I am starting to wonder if the the founder edition is the reference cooler that we see, but the non-founder edition, the cooler is those cheap plastic ones, like the GeForce 970 one. Beside the fact that the components are lower grade, and we have to see about circuit design which that last part concerns me. Why? Because of example, if you recall the GeForce 200 series reference design, it had a flaw where the GPU fan was kicking-in for several second at full blast when the system was powering up, and then it booted the GPU, and then the fan slowed down. This was due to circuit design cutting by using shortcuts to reduce the board cost. That another reason why Quadro's are more pricey, much like server oriented products, where manufacture does no cost cutting on anything.

[TidaLWaveZ]

It's the card formerly known as reference.

[TidaLWaveZ]

Here's the next curveball

 

Why is EVGA making founders cards?

 

http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=08G-P4-6180-KR

[Daiyus]

5 minutes ago, TidaLWaveZ said:

Here's the next curveball

 

Why is EVGA making founders cards?

 

http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=08G-P4-6180-KR

Because it's the founder's specification?

 

I guess any card made to nVidia's specification is classified as a Founder's Edition regardless of who actually made it. I guess they made them so they can start profiting at launch instead of waiting on their custom cooler designs. Once the board partners start releasing classic aftermarket cooling options (Twin Frozr, Windforce, etc) they will probably stop manufacturing Founder's Editions just like they phased out reference cards on the older generations. The only difference this generation is that nVidia will continue to offer the Founder's Edition for the duration so once the board partners have moved onto their own stuff you can still get a reference card if you want one. And yes, there are situations where blower can be better. 

[raphidy]

Dat tax thought. Well, that's what you get when you launch first. AMD's always late to the party.

[No Nrg]

I'm not sure where they got this info, but Cnet made mention in a recent article that the "Founders Edition" is going to be more overclockable than the other versions, whatever that means

http://www.cnet.com/news/new-600-nvidia-gtx-card-announced-faster-than-titan-x/

 

Quote

Huang also said that the 1080 is "crazy overclockable," would have 8GB of video memory, and would retail for both $599 and $699, the latter of which would be for the company's "Founder Edition" card which would be even more overclockable.

Huang did not delve into what makes it more overclockable compared to the stock version.

 

[GoodBytes]

1 hour ago, raphidy said:

Dat tax thought. Well, that's what you get when you launch first. AMD's always late to the party.

Late.... or super early for the next generation....

[MilfShake]

18 hours ago, SCGazelle said:

K, not sure if anyone knows yet, but are they unlocking more performance with it or doing something that makes it worth it, other than the sick design. Cuz if not, Im paying $100 for a worse cooler. It would make sense if they added something to make it worth the extra 100

sick design? you mean the batmobile cooler? you've gotta be kidding.

[Simon771]

So higher price because they want it to be on the market for long time?

They should make founders edition card like 50€ lower than others, to keep it on market and people will buy them. But that's just my opinion.

[Shahnewaz]

4 hours ago, Spectrez said:

you pointed it out yourself, early bird card and the fact taht the reference designed cooler will now stay in production. that is to me a fine reason as the blower style does benefit tiny machines, and its near impossible to find current gen cards with blower designs.

Because they are very unpopular. They are not that good at dissipating heat, they are very loud, and so it doesn't make much sense to slap them onto higher end cards. Lower end cards are simply better off dissipating heat outside because it's not much heat anyway.

And most people don't have that much space or airflow constraints anyway. Good reasons why not many people buy or no board partners make that many blower style high-end GPUs.

We bought a reference R9 290X just to slap a Corsair HG10 on it.

4 hours ago, TidaLWaveZ said:

The whole thing is fairly normal, they just stirred up an ordeal by creating a name for whats been referred to as reference card.  If you look at the nvidia GTX 970 it's probably still $389.99 only sold from Best Buy.

 

The whole reference cooler is made from premium, expensive materials. Third party manufacturers will be able to offer cheaper alternatives by using cheap materials to make the coolers, like thin full plastic covers.

 

Not all third party cards are going to be $599, I honestly think very few if any will be less than $620. $599 is just the baseline suggested price, so if any are around this price they will be very standard with very inexpensive parts.

 

You're right to seek better alternatives as you will almost always be able to find better price/performance than the reference card.  

"Premium, expensive materials" - Straight out of Nvidia's mouth?

So are you telling me this premium card will match or beat out a factory overclocked MSI Lightning variant in terms of OC and cooling capabilities and build quality, if both happens to be around the same price? So are they directly competing against their own board partners? That doesn't make any sense.

 

 

Another point: Does anyone know how loud this Founders Edition card is or was during the demo?

[TidaLWaveZ]

22 minutes ago, Shahnewaz said:

Because they are very unpopular. They are not that good at dissipating heat, they are very loud, and so it doesn't make much sense to slap them onto higher end cards. Lower end cards are simply better off dissipating heat outside because it's not much heat anyway.

And most people don't have that much space or airflow constraints anyway. Good reasons why not many people buy or no board partners make that many blower style high-end GPUs.

We bought a reference R9 290X just to slap a Corsair HG10 on it.

"Premium, expensive materials" - Straight out of Nvidia's mouth?

So are you telling me this premium card will match or beat out a factory overclocked MSI Lightning variant in terms of OC and cooling capabilities and build quality, if both happens to be around the same price? So are they directly competing against their own board partners? That doesn't make any sense.

 

 

Another point: Does anyone know how loud this Founders Edition card is or was during the demo?

"The whole reference cooler is made from premium, expensive materials"

I was just talking about the cooler. The reference/founders cooler is supposed to be made from premium/expensive materials like the maxwell reference coolers were. Think of comparing the maxwell reference cooler to a EVGA ACX cooler, the ACX just has a thin layer of plastic around the heatsink/fans while the maxwell reference cooler is a big thick block with multiple parts and an aluminum casing.  From what I have read/heard (gamersnexus, jay) is that they made the cooler this way(just premium material with normal performance).  I only say this is somewhat normal because we've seen it before, like the 970 for example(reference cooler edition $379 vs MSRP $329).

 

I think they are actually favoring expensive materials over performance as to push themselves to the outer ring of the third party market to try and keep partners happy.

[Shahnewaz]

On 2016-05-10 at 1:32 PM, TidaLWaveZ said:

"The whole reference cooler is made from premium, expensive materials"

I was just talking about the cooler. The reference/founders cooler is supposed to be made from premium/expensive materials like the maxwell reference coolers were. Think of comparing the maxwell reference cooler to a EVGA ACX cooler, the ACX just has a thin layer of plastic around the heatsink/fans while the maxwell reference cooler is a big thick block with multiple parts and an aluminum casing.  From what I have read/heard (gamersnexus, jay) is that they made the cooler this way(just premium material with normal performance).  I only say this is somewhat normal because we've seen it before, like the 970 for example(reference cooler edition $379 vs MSRP $329).

 

I think they are actually favoring expensive materials over performance as to push themselves to the outer ring of the third party market to try and keep partners happy.

I bought that argument until I saw the PCB and the cooler. And don't tell me an aluminum shroud with a vapor chamber cooler costs $100.

And no, they aren't pricing this outside the competition. They are directly competing with MSI Lightning and EVGA FTW/Classified variants.

[s3ns3]

i really like the reference design

[TidaLWaveZ]

54 minutes ago, Shahnewaz said:

I bought that argument until I saw the PCB and the cooler. And don't tell me an aluminum shroud with a vapor chamber cooler costs $100.

And no, they aren't pricing this outside the competition. They are directly competing with MSI Lightning and EVGA FTW/Classified variants.

 

This isn't really my opinion, this is based on explanations I've heard from gamersnexus, jayztwocents, etc.

 

Regardless of what they're doing they are directly competing with board partners, but apparently hiking the price gives board partners a chance to offer cheaper alternatives(thin plastic shrouds).  

You're right about how the shroud/cooler shouldn't cost more than $100 extra to produce, but I also have a feeling that we won't see too many (if any at all) GTX 1080s for $600.

[IG-88]

1 hour ago, Shahnewaz said:

I bought that argument until I saw the PCB and the cooler. And don't tell me an aluminum shroud with a vapor chamber cooler costs $100.

And no, they aren't pricing this outside the competition. They are directly competing with MSI Lightning and EVGA FTW/Classified variants.

Yes but the lightning and classified cards will have custom pcb's and coolers potentially allowing higher over clocks.  So even if they are the same price they will be a better card for the money.

[Sharp_3yE]

On 5/10/2016 at 11:59 PM, JuztBe said:

 

What was the first thing you've thought after hearing founders edition? There is a reason why this topic was created, it sounds like a limited edition product, somehow special.

Maybe I oversaturated with "scummy", but in my eyes it still has potential to be a scummy move. At the very begging there are going to be only reference cards, so people are going to pay 700 instead of 600 dollars for it. And I wouldn't be surprised if in few months "Founders edition" is going to drop to the price bracket of non reference GPUs.

Reason why we didn't know what founders edition was is because they never had this name or way of doing it this way before. After knowing what it is it makes perfect sense why they would do it this way.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

" yes and the next day you buy it, nvidia will announce the 1080 ti for $200 at 6.5 ghz "

On 5/9/2016 at 1:11 PM, Master Disaster said:

That's always the way with buying PC parts

 

Hence why I try to buy the best I can afford (without exceeding the price/performance/capacity/whatever sweetspot), then keep it as long as I can.  My previous system was a dual-core Athlon from 2008, my current has a 4790K.  (Integrated graphics on both, although I'm eyeing the GTX 1070 next month.)

I'm not one of those people who may have been like like "Oooh, the 4790K just came out, I better sell my 4770K", or "The 980 Ti is out, I'm selling my 980", etc.   I like to get a huge performance leap when I upgrade (like my aforementioned Athlon 64 X2 4000+ in 2008 to 4790K in 2015, or better yet, my dad's 286-10 for probably $300-500 in 1989 (invoice says $939 for AT 286-10, 640k, 1.2 floppy, 101 keyboard; HDD, graphics, OS extra) to 486-120 for $100 in 1995).

 

[Scitesh]

On 5/9/2016 at 2:18 AM, SCGazelle said:

K, not sure if anyone knows yet, but are they unlocking more performance with it or doing something that makes it worth it, other than the sick design. Cuz if not, Im paying $100 for a worse cooler. It would make sense if they added something to make it worth the extra 100

The thing with founders card is Nvidia wants to make more profit at the beginning of the cycle as for a limited time only Nvidia would be offering it also the first few board partner variants would be blower styled only the likes of windforce3 Strix amp extreme waterforce  would come in a months time(or a bit more)