ASUS STRIX GTX 1060 9Gbps and GTX 1080 11Gbps Models Surface

News of NVIDIA planning to release faster memory refreshes of their GTX 1080 and GTX 1060 video cards surfaced last month but apparently have delayed them to match AMD’s Radeon RX 580 and RX 570 launch date itself on April 18th. Some retailers and partners have slipped however and it seems have revealed photos of these products ahead of time, verifying their existence.

These faster memory updates bring about higher bandwidth with the regular GTX 1080 having 320GB/s which has now been bumped to 352GB/s in the refreshed model (256-bit x 10GHz divided by 8bit/byte) while the GTX 1060 started out as having 192GB/s of memory bandwidth available and ups that to 216GB/s with the refreshed GTX 1060 9Gbps model (192-bit x 9GHz divided by 8-bit/byte).

The ASUS STRIX versions shows the GTX 1080 11Gbps sporting a triple fan cooler with RGB LED while the GTX 1060 9Gbps sports a dual-fan cooler design. There is no word on how NVIDIA is going to price these yet but they are slated to go head to head against AMD’s upcoming Radeon refreshes so expect aggressive pricing to happen. Other manufacturers are preparing their own faster memory refreshes as well with MSI reportedly planning on launching a Gaming X version and Gigabyte releasing an AORUS branded GTX 1080 11Gbps soon. Hold on to those wallets, and wait a few more weeks before you purchase your new graphics card to get the maximum value.