Nvidia’s 2016 cards are all powered by its new Pascal technology. Pascal replaces Maxwell, which was behind the GTX 9xx series and the Titan X. Nvidia’s headline claim about Pascal as a whole is that it’s three times more efficient than the previous generation, which is done both with computing improvements and a new design and manufacturing process.

Pascal uses a 16nm (nanometer) process, where Maxwell used a 28nm process. This means Nvidia can fit more transistors (the bits that do the computing work) into a smaller space while consuming less power, meaning the whole GPU is a lot more efficient and runs cooler.

In terms of clock speed, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 will sit at 1607MHz but is capable of boosting to 1733MHz, which is a huge figure when you consider the maximum boost speed of the GTX 980 was 1216MHz. Also nvidia at its event, reportedly showed off the GTX 1080 overclocked to 2.1GHz.

MEMORY

There’s a huge leap here, too. GDDR5 has been repalced by GDDR5X, a new memory technology that allows the GTX 1080’s 8GB of memory to perform more than a third quicker, with a bump in bandwidth up from 7Gbps to 10Gbps

A-SYNC | ASYNCHRONOUS COMPUTE

Asynchronous compute is a rewrite of the way GPUs process graphics rendering and computing tasks, such as where objects are, and what effect on lighting it might have.

In non-asynchronous GPUs, graphics tasks and computing tasks are handled separately, meaning one has to wait for the other to finish. This is inefficient, and fails to take full advantage of a GPU’s power at any given moment, with many of the GPU's cores sitting idle. Async Compute enables both tasks to run simultaneously (although not starting or finishing at exactly the same time), dramatically increasing efficiency. There’s still plenty of work to be done in this area, so it will be interesting to see how far Nvidia has come.

PERFORMANCE

In standard, non-VR benchmarks, a stock Founders Edition card appears to be between 10% and 30% faster than a Titan X. It absolutely blitzes the GTX 980, looking between 70% and 100% quicker in the same benchmarks.

The GTX 980Ti, which is actually priced closer to the GTX 1080, looks to have been beaten by around a third.

What's most interesting is that the GTX 1080 appears to be a genuine contender as a standalone card for playing Ultra HD games at high settings, something only the likes of the Titan X and AMD R9 Fury X could manage in the previous generation.

PRICING AND RELEASE DATE

Previously known as the reference cards, the Nvidia-manufactured versions of these new cards will be known as Founders Edition. They’re really rather pretty, with aggressive, angled designs and the now-iconic backlit green GeForce GTX logo.

The GTX 1080 will cost $699 (around £580 including VAT) in Founders specification, while third-party manufacturers will vary, although it’s expected the cheapest will cost $599 (around £500 including VAT). Founders Edition cards will start shipping on May 27th.

The GTX 1070, meanwhile, will be priced at $449 (around £391 inc VAT) in Founders spec, while third parties are expected to start from $379 (around £314 inc VAT). Founder Edition cards will start shipping on June 10th.

Looks familiar in the images? Yes you are right, the start Menu is back containing standard Windows software and Windows apps with modern UI. 

This time the Start menu is improved, and it may even make Windows apps useful. Look to the left and you'll see a list of your most-used apps, just as in Windows 7. At the bottom we see an 'All apps' shortcut, plus shortcuts to File Explorer, Settings and – conveniently – shut down and standby.

Also Microsoft has retained the functionality of the Windows 8 Start screen over on the right, with resizable Live Tiles so that you can immediately check unread mail or Calendar appointments. The Start Menu is customisable - you can resize it, and rearrange the tiles, create groups of tiles, and you can also revert it back to the Windows 8 Start Screen if you wish to.

Instead of placing a search box in the Start menu, or hiding it completely as is the case in Windows 8, Windows 10 sticks it front and centre on the Taskbar. This is a smart move, as it’s always there ready to serve up whatever you need to find or what to know. If you’ve ever used a phone running Windows Phone 8, you’ll probably know Cortana already. The beauty is that you can type or talk to her and it’s the same in Windows 10. Cortana can save reminders for you, show you news about specific topics, show you a list of topics containing the word you type to her and last but not least she can set alarms, record notes, play specific music, launch apps and give you directions on a map.

There's a new web browser in Windows 10, and it offers some unique features. As well as the reading mode you may already be familiar with from other browsers, which strips away page furniture so you can focus on the content, there's a new annotation feature which lets you highlight things and add notes and crop to a certain area of the page before sending them to others.  The new browser of Microsoft is really quick and can certainly compete against Google Chrome and Firefox.

Want to upgrade to Windows 10? Why not as you may already know that the new operating system by Microsoft is free to upgrade from if you are already running Windows 7, 8 or 8.1 so there is really no reason not to upgrade unless you really need to continue using the OS you are using now. The bottom line is that Windows 10 is a great operating system. Indeed it’s fair to say even at this early stage that it’s the best Windows yet. It’s not perfect, of course, and there will undoubtedly be bugs that need fixing, so expect patches and updates very soon.