NVIDIA teaser hints at GeForce RTX 2080 launch at Gamescom

NVIDIA was already widely expected to have some big news for gamers up its sleeve for Gamescom, but a new teaser video posted by the graphics card giant gives us a strong indication of the "spectacular surprises" that are on deck. Namely, it looks like PC gamers will be treated to a new graphics card, to be dubbed the GeForce RTX 2080, if clues peppered throughout the teaser pan out (via PCWorld).

The first hint that a new card will make its debut is at the beginning of the video, which zooms in on tight shots of what could be the shroud for the card. While most of the rest of the teaser is dedicated to a variety of flashy hardware, the big hint at the name of the potential upcoming GPU comes from a brief shot of a discord chat between gamers subtly named "RoyTeX" and "Not_11," hinting at the RTX designation and that the next series won't carry the 1180 designation, as some had speculated. In another messaging screen, we see in the next shot, a user named "Mac-20" us speaking with someone named "Eight Tee," which is a little on the nose.

As PCWorld points out, a separate message thread seen just prior to the 2080 discussions hints that the card will leverage NVIDIA's new Turing GPU architecture. In the chat, a user named "AlanaT" (seemingly a nod to Alan Turing) posts GPS coordinates that lead to Cologne, Germany, where Gamescom is to take place next week.

If proven out, none of these details would be too surprising. NVIDIA this week unveiled its first Turing-based GPU, the Quadro RTX. Built to handle the workloads of designers and artists, the Quadro RTX series packs new capabilities in the form of hardware-accelerated real-time ray tracing, AI, and much more. If the RTX 2080 is built on the same Turing architecture, the addition of ray tracing alone could bring a huge graphical boost to supported games.

In any case, we'll know much more when NVIDIA's Gamescom event kicks off next week at 6 p.m. CET (1 p.m. ET) on August 20. Until then, have a look at our collection of the best graphics cards on the market.