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

[tikral1982]

Well... I actually did go crazy and preordered a 2080Ti FE right after Jen's keynote. I've been wondering whether I was right to do so or not until... I came across nvidia's sales conditions:

• 
  * on preorders, the payment is confirmed, but money actually leaves your account only when the product gets shipped
  * shipping is announced for September 20th
  * NDA's on benchmarks & reviews run until September 14th
  * pre-orders can be cancelled easily before shipping

So... That looks pretty much like a win-win to me. wait for the reviews to be available and cancel the preorder if they are a deception. Best case: You'll be among the first people to get your own 2080, worst case, you'll cancel it.

 

[ed.paasch]

Everyone who has ever built a PC knows that (most expensive Intel CPU) plus (most expensive Nvidia graphics) equals best performance. Arguing over i5 versus Ryzen 5 or GTX 1060 compared to RX 580 is like arguing over who should be in 6th place instead of 8th place. Who cares? If you want to play the latest games at the highest frame rates with the best rendering quality, listen to Avram and beat the rush by pre-ordering your RTX 2080 ti now. You will also want to make sure to get your Z390 motherboard and i9 9900K chip pre-ordered. It's like Reese Bobby says, "If you're not first, you're last." If you are OK with mediocre then just get a Vega 64.

 

[steveg]

Wow. Respectfully.....this article does not seem to fit into the Tom's Hardware persona. "The time you spend waiting and complaining about it being overpriced is time you could be gaming with the most realistic user experience available." Really? You sound like a shill for NVidia. I come to this site for real world performance stats and technical perspectives. This is the antitheses of that. Additionally, all manufacturers rely on new introductions to grow. Margins ARE higher on new products. Its just the way it is.

 

[SkyBill40]

It's stories such as this one that get negative connotation added to your name. While the intention may not be to shill... this is exactly what a shill piece would look like if the intent were to write one.

I say this as an Nvidia supporter and owner of their cards dating back to the AGP slot days. Stick to delivering factual and unbiased information and leave the shill stuff to the manufacturers.

 

[Mousemonkey]

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.

I didn't write the article mate.

 

[jf4rr3ll]

This boils down to being an NVIDIA ad.

11 titles in the pipe for two years, that's more than half the useful life of a GPU.

The market is flooded with 1080s which are 50% less but perform 10-30% slower

Nvidia abused consumers during the crypto boom and those mining cards aren't moving either. Now you want the same consumers you bailed on for 2 years to cover the distance? Pass

This cards a stop gap and I hope it fails.

Shame on Tom's Editor selling his credibility.

 

[islandwalker]

To all those who are suggesting bias, I would like to kindly point out that a) the opinions expressed by any one writer (even the EiC) don’t represent the opinions of TH editorial as a whole and b) we also published more than one story giving the opposite advice and complaining about the price hikes.
Avram was just trying to make the case for the other side, and for not delaying an opportunity to get a front-row seat as the next stage of gaming realism unfolds. That may not be the smart choice for everyone, but if stock remains low and prices continue to spike (as has happened several times in the last couple decades with graphics card launches), there will likely be plenty of people who wished they clicked that order button sooner.
The overwhelming response of comments suggesting people at least wait and see what the independent benchmark results are is a sound one, and proof that our community is still very good at steering people in the right direction. Proceeding with caution with untested products that cost several hundred dollars is often a smart move, and one I’m happy to see the community arguing strongly for.

But disagreeing with an argument doesn’t warrant the ad hominem attacks and baseless accusations that a few people posted. We’re all here for the love of tech. Thanks for taking the time to chime in with your advice.

 

[nixfu.nixfu]

Raytracing is marking bullcrap. 99% of Nvidia's customers want to know how many more frames per second they will get in their FPS shooting games, and instead NVidia shows people some shadows and reflections. Most pro gamers turn all that off anyway.

It is VERY fishy to me and smells like a total distraction and bs.

 

[JamesSneed]

Guess whos reviews of these cards im not reading..... If you are so biased to recommend them before any reviews are out you are certainly to biased to do a proper review that I trust.

 

[Avus]

This sounds like Nvidia commercial...

 

[canadianvice]

I sure hope that Toms isn't paying much for this kind of freelance work.

"Look at me! I can be a journalist too!"

Edit: Oh. Wow. Editor in Chief. That's disappointing.

 

[AlistairAB]

According to nVidia's slides, Shadow of the Tomb Raider is 33 percent faster with the RTX 2080 vs the GTX 1080 at 4k resolution. According to HardwareUnboxed's 1080 ti review, the 1080 ti was 28 percent faster at 4k vs the GTX 1080 in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Assuming that scaling with Rise of the Tomb Raider is similar to Shadow of the Tomb Raider:

1.33/1.28 = 4%. Yes if you actually try to understand nVidia's slides, you have the 2080 outperforming the 1080 ti by 4 percent in Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 4k.

Since the EVGA 1080 ti is $900 in Canada, and the EVGA 2080 is $1100 currently (because the Founder's Edition markup applies to partner cards, not the fake MSRP) you too can pay 22 percent more money, for 4 percent more performance!

Maybe next time Tom's should actually try to understand why people are upset. I think they mistakenly thought that it is a standard out of proportion internet controversy, without trying to understand why nVidia enthusiasts like me are so upset. This is the first time instead of getting free performance improvements every generation, nVidia actually had the gall to release cards that have worse perf/dollar in the same price category and expect people to be happy about it? They should have hired HardwareUnboxed to do their pre-release coverage and been honest with people instead of manipulative.

4 percent more performance in the same category for 22 percent more money for Shadow of the Tomb Raider doesn't impress me much...

 

[none12345]

Is toms suffering from split personality disorder? Yesterday there was an article entitled "Why You Shouldn’t Buy Nvidia’s RTX 20-Series Graphics Cards (Yet)" and now today its "Just Buy It: Why Nvidia RTX GPUs Are Worth the Money".

No one should preorder these cards until benchmarks come out. Then if you want to preorder go for it. Preordering a product sight unseen is bullshit.

Nvidia's whole presentation is a bit fishy. There is zero data telling you how good these cards really are. All they are saying is its the next great thing since sliced bread and you should buy it now!!!!!

If you look at the cards hardware specs, they will be about 15-20% faster then the equivalent 10 series in CURRENT games, for 25-40% more money.....umm ok how is that a good deal again? This would be the first series i can remember where performance/$ will go down instead of up.

Oh wait right ray tracing. Its the first time real time ray tracing....EXCEPT ITS NOT. Real time ray tracing has been possible forever. I know because back when i was learning to program i wrote a primitive real time ray tracer. And it worked, in real time on a 16mhz 386 processor before 3d gpus even existed. It was real time ray tracing, but quality sucked. "real time" means absolutely nothing unless we know how much ray tracing is actually going on and at what quality. We do not know, because nvidia said nothing about how much is actually ray traced in what game.

The best report we've gotten so far is about 30-40fps at 1080p, and if that's what the 2080ti can do....no thanks, if i had a 2080ti and had to drop to 1080p at 30 fps....i would turn ray tracing off.

The only other data we have is 2 charts from nvidia. One comparing 10 series to 20 series with the 10 series scaled to 1, and some vague 2s in there for the 20 series, but it says nothing about what graphics settings were used. And another showing fps numbers in certain games, again does not say what resolution and what graphics settings were used. Without know what settings were used, those numbers are absolutely meaningless.

Buying the first 'real time ray tracing card' for any kind of forward looking future proofing would be a HUGE mistake. These cards look to be not fast enough to really enable real time ray tracing at acceptable frame rates. The first gen of tech will almost certainly not be future proof, you will be buying another card. Especially with 7nm cards less then a year away, which will very likely be twice as fast.

To tell anyone to 'just buy it' without any kind of real benchmarks is absurd.

To be crystal clear, im not saying the 20 series will suck. Im saying, wait for benchmarks.

 

[J_E_D_70]

It clearly says opinion. That is all.

 

[Valaska]

Everyone who has ever built a PC knows that (most expensive Intel CPU) plus (most expensive Nvidia graphics) equals best performance. Arguing over i5 versus Ryzen 5 or GTX 1060 compared to RX 580 is like arguing over who should be in 6th place instead of 8th place. Who cares? If you want to play the latest games at the highest frame rates with the best rendering quality, listen to Avram and beat the rush by pre-ordering your RTX 2080 ti now. You will also want to make sure to get your Z390 motherboard and i9 9900K chip pre-ordered. It's like Reese Bobby says, "If you're not first, you're last." If you are OK with mediocre then just get a Vega 64.

Erm, not anymore? Phenom II X4 performed vastly better than any Intel offering at the time and AMD had the CPU edge until Deneb fell behind in performance. AMD was the better performer for GPU's over Nvidia during 5850-R290x all of the AMD cards outperformed Nvidia's offerings.

I think you're falling into the hype train or the "mindshare" that Nvidia and Intel have gotten. Most people ignore the actual performance and just label either as better because they are more... expensive, and that OEM's stock them because of massive payoffs both Intel and Nvidia are capable of paying.

Right now you can't go "Oh oho ho I5 vs Ryzen 5!?" because the Ryzen 5 is... vastly more capable? R5 2600x, for instance, can allow you to handle a lot of workstation tasks, applications, and essentially handle anything. The R5 1600x won so many awards because not only was it more affordable it was just simply more practical, there were nearly zero games where the R5 (or i5 for that matter) would actually throttle, but if you want to get into any sort of editing/streaming the Ryzen series is just the outright better of the two.

As a person who both games, and is an independent game developer, the Ryzen Series is by far the better part. I am waiting for the R7 3XXXX or R7 4XXXX to get my final CPU, but there was no other choice than the R5 2600x other than the R7 2700x this release. Intel doesn't even offer an alternative that comes close to the versatility or the future proofing as more and more games are finally moving to multithreading which will make them... even better? Funny enough that move was spurred on by Intel's recent announcement!

Now on the GPU front right now, AMD has nothing to show. Vega 56 and 64 are good cards, and technically better for HDR monitors because Pascal is... frankly, crap (loses 15% performance on HDR colour ranges, look it up!) but the 1080ti is a much more cost-effective performance band so there's no real competition. If the 56 and 64 were at their MSRP they'd be perfectly good solutions... but they aren't and there's no point in arguing possibilities.

But calling the Vega 64 mediocre? That's laughable... It's a powerhouse when it comes to HDR and a lot of applications and tasks. Did it translate the best as a gaming GPU? No. But should you but an RTX? Bwaahaha, no, that much expense to play games at 30-40FPS on 4k with no confirmed performance uplift in sub 4k.You're literally telling people to buy into what could end up being another Nvidia gimmick card, heavily overpriced. It's best to wait out to see what AMD's answer is, or to at least wait for the ti's to come out and see if Nvidia brings the prices down to something sensible.

 

[newsonline5000000]

Guys , Tomshardware get paid now for advertising products . I noticed that long ago from their response to any one in forums/Articles who critic the prices . they jump in to justify it , including moderators.

Thats why I get my Critical information from other sites and use Toms hardware only for news . thats all.

They get paid ..

look at this rubbish ,

First : it is worth buying ,

and then

Dont wait for price drop it is not likely to drop soon ,

and then the bottom line

Quote :

If you can possibly afford one of the RTX cards -- even if it's not the most expensive model -- there's plenty of reasons to pull the trigger now. The time you spend waiting and complaining about it being overpriced is time you could be gaming with the most realistic user experience available.

hahaha even the most insisting insurance company agent wont push it that hard ...

shame on you Tomshardware you are not like I knew you 10 years ago.

 

[Ionlydothis]

Even if this is the future, you're always stupid to buy the first cards that bring the future. They NEVER last very long and the few games that ran perfectly won't look very good compared to the future ones that will shame them and can't be run on your card.

Couple that with Nvidia jumping the shark, eating and crapping it out to feed us and have US thank THEM for charging so much... Yeah. You're an idiot if you buy these cards. No matter how old your current gpu is.

 

[Apple Troll Master]

You should be ashamed to publish this article. You are a hardware review site, but basically saying don't wait for our review, just buy it. What the hell is the purpose of Tom's Hardware then? Close it down. We don't need you.

You took the words right out of my keyboard.

 

[kcgoat26]

this is becoming the norm, tell them anything here in america and they will believe it. there was a time when this was true,but now everything is take advantage and get paid the all mighty dollar. and the humans and company's that do this they can actualy live with them selves . we have become the GREATEST THIRD WORLD COUNTRY IN THE WORLD

 

[knives77]

A tech site.... advocating pre-orders on an untested product.... you just showed me and everyone with a brain who also read where your integrity lies... Good Job

 

[knives77]

Avram Piltch you just advocated a preorder for an untested product... Thank you for showing me where your integrity is ...its none existent

 

[Gh0stWalker]

I recently bought a GTX 1080Ti, for AUD$1100... I am very happy with it, though I do remember saying to myself that the next gen is bound to be just around the corner. I blame eBay and amazon, if I were to blame anyone, because they knew that the next gen was imminent and chose to benefit the supplier rather than the customer. Surprise! I am still very happy with the card, though... One thing that surprises me is the shock/awe at the prices - compare what you get from a top end GPU, to what you get from a top end CPU that costs more... If I were Nvidia, I would invert the motherboard and have the CPU as a co-processor for the GPU/AIU/DLU, with the Nvidia cpu feeding from the fast RAM of the GPU, and using the AI and DL capabilities of the GPU to do the speculative/predictive clever cpu accelerations that have been the devils playground of late. Why the screaming about the price of an entire GPU when it less than the cost of a mid range CPU that is arguably generations behind in technology and capability? GPU's are Turing complete? So why not just emulate the CPU on the GPU? Has that been done?

 

[ploidz]

Thanks for the advice, but I'd rather wait and see, then buy the more improved later cards. Seeing as my current card is still sitting pretty vs a ray trace hog feature that may cause me to play in 1080p at a fps target of 60fps makes me think this tech has a loong way to go.

 

[dorianh94]

Ray tracing is irrelevant to me, I care about pure performance...which is still a mystery concerning new RTX cards. Until they're launched and tested, it's a no go. I do agree that it makes sense to buy newer tech when you're upgrading, but this might not be the case. It remains to be seen.

 

[daymd54]

This is a joke right? I will never be the first to buy new hardware again!! ITS A WASTE OF MONEY. This is coming from a person who bought his first computer in 1978, An Altair, Who bought the first Pentium, which had to be returned, the first Maxwell 480 that over-heats. The only FIRST I am happy with is a CORE TWO QUAD EXTREME. I will listen to Derek not someone who shouldn't work for a REVIEW site.