The hotly anticipated Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 is now official, marking a major leap in performance and efficiency with the introduction of the new Pascal architecture.

How major? Take the ultra beefy and expensive Titan X graphics card from last year, slice its power demands from 250W to 180W, cut its price from $999 to $599, and then throw in a bit more performance on top. Virtual reality and multi-monitor gaming have also been foremost concerns in Nvidia’s Pascal development, and the graphics company has a super cool new technology to make both better, called simultaneous multi-projection.

In Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang’s words, “The GeForce GTX 1080 is almost irresponsible amounts of performance.” Claiming twice the VR performance and three times the power efficiency of the Titan X, what Nvidia is doing with its new GTX 1000 series is bringing yesteryear’s insane high end into 2016’s mainstream.

In fact, the more significant GPU announced today might well be the GTX 1070, a $379 card that also outperforms the Titan X. Built on a 16nm FinFET process, these Pascal GPUs are evidently extraordinarily efficient, and once they start trickling down into more affordable models, they promise to unlock VR gaming for a much wider audience.

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