Nvidia stock jumps after launching next generation GeForce graphics cards

LAS VEGAS, NV – JANUARY 04: Nvidia Founder, President and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang introduces the Nvidia Spot, a USD 49.95 microphone and speaker that will let owners use Google Assistant anywhere in a home, as he delivers a keynote address at CES 2017 at The Venetian Las Vegas on January 4, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada. CES, the world’s largest annual consumer technology trade show, runs from January 5-8 and is expected to feature 3,800 exhibitors showing off their latest products and services to more than 165,000 attendees.Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images

• Nvidia launched a new lineup of graphics cards at an event in Germany on Monday.
• The cards are the first time ray tracing is available to every day consumers. The tech creates cinematic renderings for video games.
• Shares of Nvidia rose about 3% following the announcements.
• Follow Nvidia’s stock price in real-time here. 

Nvidia rose nearly 3% on Monday, clawing their way back after a red open, after CEO Jensen Huang took the stage in Cologne, Germany at the company’s GeForce gaming convention to announce a new set of graphics cards. 

“Turing opens up a new golden age of gaming, with realism only possible with ray tracing, which most people thought was still a decade away,” Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, said at the conference.

“The breakthrough is a hybrid rendering model that boosts today’s computer graphics with the addition of lightning-fast ray-tracing acceleration and AI. RTX is going to define a new look for computer graphics. Once you see an RTX game, you can’t go back.”

The new lineup of video cards includes the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, 2080, and 2070. Some specs of the RTX were leaked over the weekend, and confirmed by the company on Monday. The flagship card will have 11 GB of memory with 4352 CUDA cores, a 20% jump from the previous generation.

Also included is support for real-time ray tracing, a technology that allows for more cinematic and realistic rendering for animation or video games, thanks to Nvidia’s Turing architecture. It’s the first time the tech has been made widely available to every day consumers. 

Monday’s event in Germany comes just days after Nvidia’s second-quarter earnings report suggested the chipmaker is no longer counting on contributions from cryptocurrency mining to pad its bottom line.

“The crypto mining market is very different today than it was three years ago,” Huang told analysts on the call, admitting that “it doesn’t make much sense” for crypto-specific products to be sold into the mining market.

You can live-stream and watch a recording of the full event on Nvidia’s twitch channel here.

Markets Insider