Why You Shouldn’t Buy Nvidia’s RTX 20-Series Graphics Cards (Yet)

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Battlefield 5 and the new Lara Croft game is a great push into the main stream. I can't remember if they are using NVidia's RTX APIs, or M$'s Ray Tracing API. That can make a big difference for future compatibility. NVidia and AMD really need to cut down on proprietary add ons, it just hurts the end user. PhysX and a dedicated PhysX card, I believe, is still a great idea. Same with other items such as Hair Works. And it would definitely help with NVidia's oversupply issue of the 10 series cards. But if they had opened it up to AMD, it would have become more main stream, covering more games. That could mean more GPU sales, including lower end cards for dedicated PhysX, Hair Works, etc.
The lack of benchmarks is rather surprising. I watched the NVidia release on Facebook, and I caught right away that any comparisons that were used were only talking about Ray Tracing. I also noticed a couple of 'hick ups' in the games they demoed, it wasn't as smooth as they were claiming. That could easily be just a matter of their hardware set up for the big screen, etc. But, again, since there are no benchmarks released, especially from Tom'sHardware, and now this article to suggest not buying right away, I definitely don't see the need to upgrade my two 1080ti's in SLI.
 
I'm also willing to bet TomsHardware has at least one each of these cards, and have benchmark results, but stuck behind an NDA until a later date, maybe the release date.
 
At those prices, they could have at least offered a few free games with these new GPUs, especially those games that offer Ray Tracing support. You know, make us feel like we're at least getting our moneys worth.
 
Until I see normal DX12 (ie not ray tracing) benchmarks, none of this matters. If it is as big a jump as the 10 series was over the 9 it could be worth it. Either way an extra month to save $100 is a no brainer. Wait for the benchmarks.
 
I think they just adopted the pricing of the crypto-priced cards. Granted the price makes more sense considering the next generation tech and overall better performance the 2080ti is still way over priced but the others a more or less justified.
 
..for those of us 3D CG art enthusiasts (OK, I know, we're a small niche) really not worth it. The most important feature for CG rendering is VRAM as that dictates how large a scene can be held in video memory for GPU rendering. Once it exceeds the available VRAM the process either crashes or dumps to the much slower CPU and System Memory (dependent on the render engine). For the extra cost having the same memory specs is a letdown although I had serious reservations about the claims and speculation on some sites of a 16 GB GeForce card being released. Nvidia learned a lesson back in the Maxwell days when they released the 5,000$ M6000 and 999$ Titan X, both with the same specs and performance (a year later they increased the memory of the M6000 to 24 GB while keeping the price the same).

Furthermore, the "NVLink" bridges for the GeForce 20xx series seem nothing more than a souped up version SLI (and is even configured the same) with just faster transfer rates at nearly double the cost of the old SLI bridges. Sorry, no memory pooling/stacking as some had hoped and some tech sites touted would be the case.

So as usual, if you need more VRAM for the job, you still have to shell out the big Zlotys for a Quadro (which with their more expensive version of NVLink do support memory pooling/stacking).

Hoping my Megabucks lottery ticket comes through tonight, 96 GB of VRAM would be so sweet.
 
...I remember when the original MSRP for the 1070 was 379$. They were available for a short time again at 389$ in the Nvidia store when the mining craze began to tank but no longer as they are only taking pre-orders for the 20xx series now.

Best I can find now are a few at Newegg for 399$ and the lowest price for the Ti version around 445$ - 450$
 
Doesn't seem like a good idea right now. We are on the cusp of going into 7nm making any monolithic 14nm die moot. I guess if you are nVidia you are looking at another year before you start releasing 7nm GPUs, you need something to filler. Buying a monolithic die with no benchmarks and pre-orders has always been a bad idea.
 
Derek I just wanted to tell you thank you for a well written piece and to let you know I will gladly follow you in an uprising against the editor-in-fool Avram after his insane article where he literally insults you in the 2nd paragraph.
 
THIS article is makes sense. Avram's article does not. With no benchmarks and high price I'll probably get a 1080 Ti. Ray tracing isn't mainstream just yet. It could be years before games I play game that support it if ever.
 
AMD's libraries as open source and available for everyone to use and optimise for.

Nvidia's libraries are proprietary, closed source and black-box (apart from a few specific cases.)

 
The MSRPs are all messed up, you are comparing apples to oranges. For example, the GTX 1070 MSRP started at $379.99 non-FE and $449.99 FE. Meanwhile, your graph only cites the $499.99 non-FE price, which would reflect a $120.00 price difference from the non-FE MSRP of the GTX 1070 to the non-FE MSRP of the RTX 2070, and not the $50.00 price difference you mentioned. The FE to FE generation to generation price difference is even worse at $150.00. This error is repeated with the GTX 1080 which retailed for $499.99 non-FE not being compared to the $599.99 non-FE price of the RTX 2080 (although this time the FE to FE pricing is at least accurate, even if it is not explicitly mentioned), and a similar issue is also repeated with the GTX 1080 Ti portion, the $699.99 non-FE price is accurate, but the $699.99 price was also shared with FE cards, thusly meaning you should compare the $699.99 FE pricing separately to the $1,199.99 FE pricing of the RTX 2080 Ti.
 
^+1, when comparing MSRP between 10 and 20 series cards, the most sensible thing to do would be to compare FE to FE, and/or non-FE to non-FE.

Non-FE/FE prices:

1070 $380/$450
2070 $500/$600
1080 $600/$700 (at launch)
2080 $700/$800
1080 Ti $700/$700
2080 Ti $1000/$1200

Cost increase of 20 series vs 10 series launch MSRP (non-FE/FE):
X070 $120/$150
X080 $100/$100
X080 Ti $300/$500
 

This one is $379 ($359 after MIR):

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127951

Though it does feel strange celebrating a GPU finally returning back to its launch price, after > 25 months on the market.
 
Very weak argument... No one knows how fast RTX 20 series GPU will run. Besides, new cards will always be faster than previous gen. Not to mention, Ray Tracing will be new industry standard.
 
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