Just Buy It: Why Nvidia RTX GPUs Are Worth the Money

[lukwtwz]

Such language in a high-class establishment like this!* (You do know that the You're-going-to-die-soon-enough-so-why-not-take-the-plunge-right-now sales pitch is considered taboo in civilized society, right?)

 

[totalinsanity4]

I'm amazed that an author of a major tech news website is not just recommending, but URGING people to buy a new, not-yet-reviewed product, simply because the manufacturer has put out potentially misleading numbers about performance being better than the last generation.

On top of that, you cite "great performance at 4K" as a reason alongside all the raytracing goodies - I can personally assure you that if you have raytracing enabled, you will NOT be getting ANY kind of performance at 4K, let alone "great," if the Shadow of the Tomb Raider demo was any indication. Sure, I recognize that there are optimization issues on both the game's end and the card's end right now. But I don't think that just optimizing drivers and software is going to make up for the giant gap between 1080p30fps and 4K60fps

 

[mlmorrison]

Just wait untill third party benchmarks come out.

 

[mlmorrison]

You forgot to mention the elephant in the room, the HUGE FPS difference between RT off vs On. One report had the RTX2080 doing 55fps wirth RT on at only 1080P while getting way over 70fps with RT off. It's like first Gen. PhsyX, players will just turn RT off when they see how massive the FPS hit is.

 

[littleleo]

Wow, all was missing at the beginning was "Now a word from our sponsor". Really a piece begging us to spend our hard earned money on these over priced cards that no game requires and won't be out for a month yet. I don't think I've ever seen a "review" website do that before. So when did Tom's become the marketing arm for Nvidia? So am I'm going to start getting "Please buy Nvidia cards emails from Tom's now too? JSMH! I guess objectivity is a mater of perspective at Tom's now.

 

[jrasero23]

How much are you getting paid to post this article?

Haha I wish something it would pay for my near $1200 card. Listen I understand why people are upset and I understand $1200 is a lot of money for any consumer tech. But I look it at this way, we spend $1000 on a phone that maybe we use 1-2 years at best so a $1000-$1200 graphics card that arguably will have better resale value than a phone in 3 years and provide me with more entertainment than a phone could IMO is doable. Yeah again it's still a lot of money but if you are saying the 2080 and Ti can handidly play 4k how is that not a huge selling point.

 

[logainofhades]

Until we see actual reviews from various sites, I would not recommend preordering an RTX card. Recommending someone spend that much money, with only Nvidia's word on the performance, is a bad idea.

 

[littleleo]

How much is Nvidia paying for this article?

Not as much as AMD is paying for the negative comments. 😉

You should have asked for more since you sold your credibility.

 

[13thmonkey]

Anyone remember nvidia FX series, the 5000's I think it was, they did something different, that worked out well. Now it might be that this works, it probably will, but given that the reviews will be out soon, just wait, surely that's the advice.

 

[mlee 2500]

Pretty weak arguments for buying an expensive item with no certain understanding of it's performance or value (which *will* be known in just a month or so..).

Me thinks someone got a check and a phone call from NVIDIA after Derek Forrest's last article on the topic.

 

[pirobot668]

Early adopters...
I pronounce it "suckers".
The Alpha/Beta testers, excuse me, early adopters, are going to learn the hard way that their enthusiasm for NVIDIA's newest is creating a huge pool of unpaid and unrecognized Alpha/Beta testers.
Wait for the V1.1, we all know that V1.0 is NEVER the version to go with.
Patience, vigilance.
Let NVIDIA spend the time and money to get it right!
Gamer-glitz didn't invent the Turing architecture, so why is gamer-glitz the only thing being used to sell them?
Got my GTX1080 ti on water cooling; don't talk to me about 4K frame-rates (human eye can't even see 4K!) when all I run is Blender+Cycles...

 

[lukwtwz]

Such language in a high-class establishment like this!* (You do know that the You're-going-to-die-soon-enough-so-why-not-take-the-plunge-right-now sales pitch is considered taboo in civilized society, right?)

Seriously, though. Jen Hsun Huang devoted a substantial amount of time at last year's keynote to point out - verbally and by way of graphs - that certain games such as Deus Ex: Mankind Divided were already consuming 10+GB of VRAM at 4K with max settings - and that's why the 1080 Ti's 11GB would be so important for 4K gaming in the near future. I could be wrong, but as last I read, Final Fantasy XV reportedly requires 12GB in order to use the high-res textures pack. In light of that, I think it is more than a little disingenuous of Nvidia to cite FFXV as an example of a game that will run at 60FPS at 4K in HDR with the RTX 2080 given that that GPU has only as 8GB of VRAM for the same price or higher than the 1080Ti which has 11GB. Granted, the 1080 Ti wouldn't be able to run such a game at 4K without reduced resolution scaling (thus, not really at 4K) but it would still be able to utilize higher res textures in certain and upcoming AAA games than the 2080 with its 8GB would. Fallout 4, an older game that requires substantially less GPU power than FFXV to run smoothly at 4K, states an 8GB VRAM requirement (again, as last I read) for its high-res texture pack, and those textures would likely choke the RTX 2080 in the event of the slightest VRAM leak (which is not all that uncommon) if indeed that texture pack really requires that much VRAM. The bottom line is: Any current 8GB Nvidia GPU owner who has been planning to upgrade to an Nvidia GPU with more than 8GB has no sub-$1200 option apart the 1080 Ti as far as new cards go. And that's a pathetic state of affairs for someone who has already shelled out many hundreds for Nvidia GPU's over the past few generations.


*Zork quote

 

[aule 10]

Did you really think this would get people to buy it? people that read your website, are people that cares about performance. But right now you are telling us to not give 2 f... about performance, just because of some new lightning effect that will tank our pc's to the ground? Not smart my man, not smart at all. Think next time of what audience you are speaking to.

 

[mlee 2500]

What ELSE in life does Avram Piltch recommend buying this way? Only a month or so before you actually know what it is your spending $800 on?

I think it's safe to assume someone got a call (and possibly a check or advertising commitment) after Derek Forrest's entirely reasonable article on the topic.

 

[Integr8d]

Avram,
I wouldn't recommend *ANYONE* to buy a GPU, no matter *what* GPU and from whatever vendor, until at least the reviews will be out. Sure, nVidia claims that the new RTX 2080 is 50-125% faster, compared to the 1080Ti.
That's great, but nVidia is a business company would like to push as much as it can it's GPU, while reviewers care about their integrity and real results.
So I suggest: Wait for the results, then decide if you want to purchase or not.

His job is to sell video cards. That's what half of these 'tech pundits' are here for. Joel, over at ExtremeTech, laid out a very reasonable hypothesis about why nVidia is cherry picking numbers for their graphs and why Turing isn't, in classical terms, a huge jump over Pascal. I would never evangelize for Joel. But every now and then, he pinches off a decent bit of logic.

 

[Integr8d]

Some enthusiasts are upset about the price of the Nvidia RTX 2080 / 2070, but the opportunity cost of sticking with old technology is higher.

Just Buy It: Why Nvidia RTX GPUs Are Worth the Money : Read more

So this is what damage control looks like, huh? And your job was to win hearts and minds with this? nVidia must be really feeling it. Because your article totally has the stench of desperation. To be honest, I don't think it's going to work. They're going to have to drop 20 or 30 points on their pricing, if they want more than just a few well-heeled suckers to buy into this.

I guess that's the problem with us tech guys. You're not selling some new, magic age-reversal cream in a cosmetics store.

Good luck w/ it.

 

[teknobug]

This article is a blatant sales pitch.

 

[jrasero23]

Until we see actual reviews from various sites, I would not recommend preordering an RTX card. Recommending someone spend that much money, with only Nvidia's word on the performance, is a bad idea.

So one of the main points of the article deal with the concept of FOMO, the fear of missing out. Without a doubt cards will not be readily available for the first few months at the bare minimum. Some people will be 100% fine for this others who need a card asap or just don't want to miss out will care less about actual benchmarks. Should we be skeptical about Nvidia's claims and how they came about these results? Without a doubt, but one thing is for certain these cards by no metric are a step backwards performance wise over Pascal. Yes pricing wise we are getting less for the money and yes we will not see this size mic jump like we saw from Maxwell to Pascal, but if you are okay with knowing you have the best consumer card on the market PERIOD and you can afford it, and when I say that I mean actually afford it and not just put on plastic, yeah why not pre-order it? Most sites don't charge until the item ships, at least with Newegg and we will be getting results as soon at 9/14. So why not be first in line at zero upfront? If the cards suck and in everyone's opinion can't justify the price hike, just cancel or as some people plan to do, just sell the cards which sadly will garner hundreds above MSRP or at the very least allow you to break even.

 

[TMTOWTSAC]

My initial reaction was pretty much the same as everyone else.

"Hardware review site says don't wait for hardware reviews, buy now."

Then I sat back for a second and thought about it. I still disagree with the sentiment in general. But, I do sort of reach a similar conclusion. Just, for completely different reasons.

If you bought a 1080ti the moment it came out, you had the fastest consumer (ignoring Titan here) GPU in existence, and you've had it for over 2 years now. Until RTX cards ship at the end of September, you still have the fastest card. So while it's never going to win the value proposition, from the perspective of wanting the latest and greatest it's had one of the longest reigns of any modern GPU.

Looking ahead to future generations, the release cadence has definitely slowed. I'd be pretty surprised if AMD can match a 2080ti anytime soon. The next process shrink doesn't seem likely until at least 2020. And Nvidia probably won't do more than a refresh in the next year. So given all that, in terms of longevity (such as it is at the bleeding edge) if you always want the fastest card then the 2080ti is likely to be top of the heap for quite some time. If that's your criteria then waiting isn't going to serve any useful purpose.

But for everyone else who actually cares about value, of course wait for reviews and benchmarks. Who knows, maybe it'll be like adaptive refresh. It doesn't improve fps at all, but people seem to like it nonetheless because it can make games look/feel better. And Freesync, G-Sync certainly don't get the kind of hate we've seen directed at Ray-Tracing so far.

 

[spdragoo]

Well, the amount of comments asking about payola is (not so astonishingly) quite high, so I don't need to say anything more about it.

But I have to chime about "the 4K experience". On my system, I would not be able to enjoy 4K except through the use of DSR: I don't have a 4K-capable monitor (#1 is a 1600x900/75Hz model, #2 is a repurposed 1366x768/75Hz HDTV), & it's been fine running R9 380 for my graphics. A GTX 1070TI/1080, let alone a 1080TI/Titan XP or an RTX 2070/2080, would be a complete & utter waste of my money...especially since a) the primary games I play on it (SC2, D3, Halo:CE, Fortnite, HBS's BattleTech, & occasionally BF4) are not photo-realistic enough to have any kind of benefit from ray-tracing (not to mention not even on the support list), b) I would see little to no visible improvement with the GPU but would see much more improvement if I were to spend $800 to $1,000 USD on a new CPU/motherboard/RAM (& wouldn't even need to spend that much, the cost of a discounted 1080/1080TI would give me a decent upgrade budget), & c) I would say that my PC's gaming usage maybe tops out at 10%; the rest of it is used for email, shopping/research, & by my wife to prepare presentations & reports for work (none of which would benefit from a GPU upgrade). I know I'm not in the "power gamer" category, & although I love games & gaming I know that between my system & the time I spend I'm not technically an "enthusiast"...but I AM a "mainstream" gamer. These RTX cards provide nothing for mainstream gamers like me...& from the information nVidia has provided, their 2050/2060 cards aren't going to have ray-tracing anyway (as apparently they'll be badged as GTX, not RTX).

So, yeah...if you have the kind of disposable income where you can drop as much on a new PC as you would for a down payment on a new car, and have the mindset of having to stay light-years ahead of the Joneses by always having the "bleeding edge" technology (& paying every year to get it)...then yes, by all means, go ahead & preorder as many RTX 2080s as you can get. Otherwise, you can safely ignore the "advice" from this article.

 

[djinnter]

What a load of crap. Ray tracing is so new that games designers won't utilize it for the next 2 game cycles. In the mean time you overpaid for a card that won't hit 60 fps on current games. You really need to stop taking money from Nvidia and do your own reaseach.

 

[mlee 2500]

Most biased article for Tom's ever. WTF? Recommend buying without any numbers whatsoever? You gotta be kidding me. This isn't Tom's Hardware for me.

Yeah, it sucks because now you really have to second guess and wonder about the objectivity and motivation behind every other article you read on tom's....which I used to think was a reliable source.

 

[jrasero23]

My initial reaction was pretty much the same as everyone else.

"Hardware review site says don't wait for hardware reviews, buy now."

Then I sat back for a second and thought about it. I still disagree with the sentiment in general. But, I do sort of reach a similar conclusion. Just, for completely different reasons.

If you bought a 1080ti the moment it came out, you had the fastest consumer (ignoring Titan here) GPU in existence, and you've had it for over 2 years now. Until RTX cards ship at the end of September, you still have the fastest card. So while it's never going to win the value proposition, from the perspective of wanting the latest and greatest it's had one of the longest reigns of any modern GPU.

Looking ahead to future generations, the release cadence has definitely slowed. I'd be pretty surprised if AMD can match a 2080ti anytime soon. The next process shrink doesn't seem likely until at least 2020. And Nvidia probably won't do more than a refresh in the next year. So given all that, in terms of longevity (such as it is at the bleeding edge) if you always want the fastest card then the 2080ti is likely to be top of the heap for quite some time. If that's your criteria then waiting isn't going to serve any useful purpose.

But for everyone else who actually cares about value, of course wait for reviews and benchmarks. Who knows, maybe it'll be like adaptive refresh. It doesn't improve fps at all, but people seem to like it nonetheless because it can make games look/feel better. And Freesync, G-Sync certainly don't get the kind of hate we've seen directed at Ray-Tracing so far.

Yeah essentially bragging rights which I am 100% okay with. Is it financially the best choice no, but AMD for the foreseeable future will not be able to put out anything close to this. IMO you can say the same thing about the Titan V a card that basically 99% of gamers don't need but I have seem plenty of them buy one heck even two just to show off their system. Fine with me, I am not your daddy telling you how to spend your money.

fundamentally I will keep saying this over and over, people are 100% pissed off at the prices, not ray tracing, not the unknown performances, since IMO there is more than enough tech in the new RTX line to warrant a new gen. Even if Nvdiia gave us true X6 better than Pascal on traditional games which would be unreal, people would still balk at the prices since they are more than previous generations and psychologically we are hitting that $1000 barrier. We saw this with the iPhone X folks. Nvidia is simply redefining what a top tier GPU should cost and we don't like it.

 

[cothilian]

This article reads like a payed ad for luxury items. Trying to create fake demand out of thin air. Did Nvidia slip you a bribe or why are you trying to increase demand for an untested and unproven bleeding edge tech item? RTX could turn out to be just as sucessful as 3DTV. Do you think anyone regrets not paying $5000 for a 3DTV back in 2010?

 

[Jim90]

"While we don't have final benchmark results, the new features and enhanced performance of the Turing cards make them worth buying now, even at sky-high prices."

- REALLY!!!
Buy before real and thorough benchmarks are released?? with the knowledge of e.g. new Tomb Raider, RT ON, <<60 fps 'issue' - AT 1080p (confirmed), etc etc

A long standing and well received review site as Tom's pushing out the above - which I'm sure all other staff will agree - goes against every instinct in your reader base.

I think we'd all benefit from knowing the real truth behind this article...to know if NVIDIA supported this publication, as is certainly implied.