GPU enthusiasts jumped for joy when Nvidia bought itself the 2017 international CES keynote. However, those restlessly waiting for the company to announce the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti were dismayed. There was no mention of the company's highly-anticipated flagship graphics card at the event but that's about to change.

Nvidia is reportedly gearing up to unleash the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti sometime in March this year. The release date could coincide with the PAX East gaming festival slated to kick off March 10 in Boston, to be precise. No prizes for guessing, the GTX 1080 Ti is going to be toe-to-toe with the Vega 10 GPU family from AMD.

The Vega 10 GPUs are likely to hit the stores either in June 2017 or ahead of the GTX 1080 Ti, according to WCCFTech. Basically, the Vega 10 GPUs will arrive latest by March. The report cites an undisclosed NVIDIA AIB employee who divulged the company's plan to launch the 16nm GTX 1080 Ti marginally ahead of the Vega GPU cards.

It looks like NVIDIA intentionally plans to postpone the upgrade of the GTX 1080, realizing this will pit the original card against the Radeon RX 500 card series that are likely to arrive next month. The whole idea behind this is to buy some time to put finishing touches to the GTX 1080 Ti.

The GTX 1080 Ti is likely to undergo some minor alterations, allowing its immediate precursor to retain NVIDIA's topmost position once Vega hits the market and boots out the GeForce GTX 1080, the report suggests.

The Vega GPU demo shown at the recently concluded Las Vegas event did not leave even an iota of doubt about the Vega 10's capabilities to oust NVIDIA not only in terms of performance but also in pricing. As Vega GPU has been demoed to have the capacity to effortlessly overthrow the GTX 1080 and outsell it with a comparatively lower price tag, it is imperative for Nvidia to further polish GTX 1080 Ti with utmost focus on the two determinants.

There's hearsay that AMD will release Vega 10 bearing dual-GPU that is expected to be a spitting image of the GTX 1080 Ti in terms of performance tweaks. It remains to be seen whether or not NVIDIA will opt to lower the price below the $1000 mark in order to maintain its top spot in the market.

The GTX 1080 Ti will feature the GP102-based core and will pack not less than 10GB of GDDR5X VRAM. According to a report on TweakTown, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will be up for grabs in all variants starting the day it launches. In other words, GPU enthusiasts do not need to skepticize about it being a limited launch with only Founders Edition cards.