But what makes these high-capacity cards interesting is their likelihood to stand up to the test of time.
With raytracing being pushed as the next big thing, and these cards already being barely able to run RT in current games (even upscaled) at the resolutions people would expect them to run, I rather doubt they will "stand the test of time" particularly well. RT will become the norm for high/ultra graphics, and the cards launching a couple years from now will likely handle RT significantly better than the current models. So it's not like people are likely to ever fully utilize that extra VRAM while still running games at ultra. If one is turning down graphics settings to get playable performance, the extra VRAM is less likely to be needed.
Not an owner, but it isn't right that a 3060 has more VRAM than a 3080/70. They need to fix the product stack.
They will undoubtedly launch another 3070, and probably another 3060 Ti with 16GB as well. Not that these cards actually need double the VRAM of the base models, but they can't just increase it by something like 50% without affecting performance due to the design of their memory system. It does give them an excuse to increase suggested pricing even if the added VRAM doesn't ever make much difference to performance though.
I feel bad for those who to date have (purchased) jumped through hoops for a 'base 3080' and now being teased with a much more powerful ti-version.
The 3080 Ti most definitely won't be "much more powerful" than the standard 3080. Even the 3090 is only 10-15% faster than a 3080 in games at 4K, with even less of a difference at lower resolutions. And even if the 3080 Ti maintains the same core configuration as the 3090, the reduced memory bandwidth due to the different VRAM configuration means performance will be somewhere in-between the two. So, expect the 3080 Ti to typically be no more than 10% faster than a 3080, if that, but expect the MSRP to be significantly higher. A $1000 MSRP would mean a price hike of over 40%, which might not be as bad of a value as the 3090, but still not good at all compared to the suggested pricing for the 3080 and below.