Morning all I bought an EVGA 1080ti hybrid just over 2 months ago and so it is still eligible for EVGA's step up program. I've not done the precise calculations but it looks like it'd end up costing me about £400 for a 2080 ti and I'd like people's thoughts on whether it's worth it or not. From what I can tell looking at reviews these would be the pros and cons. I'm running a 3440x1440 display btw Pros Somewhere between 20% & 50% faster in games at my resolution (going between most reviews results for 2560x1440 and 4k and tweaktown's 3440x1440 results) Ray tracing for future proofing (?) I purchased an extended warranty for the 1080ti and this would transfer to the 2080ti Cons Hotter, noisier card (the step up program only applies to the base models in EVGA's line up - no overclocked models or anything else) £400 What would you do in my position? Cheers GK
The issue for me is that your step up offer will expire before any RTX/DLSS titles are available for review and testing. That's putting you in a bit of a gambling position. Take the card as a regular video card without the ray tracing, and it's the standard ~30% generational jump. If that's worth £400 to you, then go for it. If the 1080Ti is handling your resolution and games just fine and you're happy with your lot, bank the cash. Your call George!
+ If you need the raster performance and the 1080Ti doesn't quite cut it, then it's the only game in town (unless you want to sell both kidneys and some excess limbs for a Quadro RTX). + If you're developing games, then you're going to want to get on the raytracing train. It's not going to go away, and even if you only ship with raster shading just having RT available for the BAM! RAYCAST CUBEMAPS FOR EVERY OCCASION IN AN INSTANT! capability is going to be a big workflow speedup. + If you use VR, then you're going to want raytraced shading, as screen-space effects are hopelessly broken for VR and will be due to the mathematics of all current VR HMDs (rendering is rectilinear, rectilinear optics have been abandoned or good reason to the view is not rectilinear). + If you want to play with deep-learning and want those tasty Tensor cores, then it's less than half the price of GV100 even in the Titan V. - If you are not hurting for performance, and are of the opinion that games look good enough now and need no improvement other than faster framerates, then that £400 could be better spent elsewhere. - If you want to wait and see how much raytracing (and DLSS, though that already performs as advertised when implemented) are adopted in practice before buying, then prices for the GeForce RTX cards are unlikely to go up in the meantime. If it weren't for Step-Up giving a guaranteed inflated resale value my advice would easily be to wait for supply to exceed demand again and for implementation of the new RTX functions in games in the wild. In the worst case, you could probably resell the 2080Ti and buy a second hand 1080Ti again and work out about break even, as I'd expect 1080Ti prices to drop faster than 2080Ti prices will.
The main concern I have right now is what these cards will do when fully loaded to the hilt. They are hot now, but that is only loading them up without the tensor cores. I remember ages ago the devs of the new Metro game said that basically their forthcoming Metro game (forget the exact name of it now) was a "GPU cooker" or something along those lines. I also remember Kaapstad telling me that the cooler on the Titan V was completely insufficient and that it really needed water to shine. It was like 25% faster, but it was throttling like mad and could have been 40% faster under water. Then, if it is not a blower cooler, you have the problem of it dumping all of that scorching hot air in your case. I dunno man... Personally I wouldn't, but I guess if you have the cash and don't mind putting up with all of the caveats then it's worth it. But I certainly would not do it for the RT part. Mostly because even the 2080Ti is not enough to drive RT games above 1080p now, and that won't get better only worse. It is like being in the embryo stages of 4k gaming all over again, and I don't think it is worth throwing thousands of pounds at until it can be done without all of the niggles. I love RT I think it is incredible but I am not buying into it yet. £1200 is well within the "investment" type of cost and we all know that GPUs are about the worst investment you can make. When the "Titan XP" or "1080Ti" for 4k variant of the RT cards come out? sure, I will have no problem paying for it (even that much).
TU102 pretty much hits the reticle limit. The Quadro RTX 8000 has an extra few SMs (4, or just over 5% more) but that's about it. There is no 'TU100' sitting on an interposer flanked by HBM, and there likely will not be: GV100 already fulfils that demand for Deep Learning, and Turing lacks FP64 for HPC.
A hypothetical Titan Turing might just end up being a higher clocked version rather than having any hw difference... Either way, bring on 2019 and the inevitable Turing shrink (unless Tsmc pulls a GloFo at the last second). As for the Evga thing, for £400 I'd bite the bullet and upgrade.
I have no plans to upgrade to a 2080 Ti - If it was £699 - then I may bite, but £1200 is a joke - You could get a whole PC for that... Anyway, nothing is lagging at 4K in games with a 1080 Ti, so I just don't see the point... But then I am tempted to drop £1K on a Fanatec DD1... Where that will be money well spent ina long term investment.
For less than a bag of sand I got a 50" 4k TV, Xbox Scorpio, 1tb drive, external shell for drive (it becomes part of the console) as well as 12 games, a new controller and a half decent headset. So when I see a single GPU costing £1200 it's a little bit odd. Since I stepped off of the "upgrade train" I've been amazed at just what I can buy with the same sort of chunks of cash. For example I bought a set of headphones for £450 (down from £750) and I have worn them every day for at least 8 hours since. I'm lucky to use my GPU once a month with gaming being as stale as it is. I'm not quite sure yet if Nvidia really are taking the p**s as much as it seems they are, or, if they are trying to make Pascal look "cheap" so they can get over RRP from two years ago for their old tech that they stupidly made too much of because they were too slow. Either way? I am not rewarding them for making mistakes. And I am not rewarding them for AMD being crap either. What I have (T XP) runs the very few PC games I even want to play at more than acceptable levels.
Thanks for all the thoughts chaps and sorry for the late reply - daughter is unwell and we've been in and out of hospital - home now for a few hours before back in again later I'll have a more detailed look over the replies and then make my decision - the step up application form doesn't open for the 2080ti until the official Nvidia availability date (27th) so I've got a little while to make up my mind.
I paid £675 for it. About 3 months after launch. And besides, I always ignore the price any way as it's just a 1080Ti with a little bit more VRAM and 5% better performance. I wasn't happy about that price, BTW. It was literally at the airless snowy peak of what I would pay for a GPU. I still thought it was ridiculous then. I was digging through my mags the other day (Custom PC and some others) and a 4890 was about £200 at launch. The top end GTX 280 with a honking great die was £270. The 4870 (the gamer's choice) was about £180 and the 4850 was about £120. And was pretty much a top end GPU depending on your res. So pray tell how, in a few short years, we have gone from that to £1200. I'm sorry, and I accept inflation exists, but that's a pretty hefty old bit of inflation going on there. I would love to be starry eyed about Turing, but with the amount of crap Nvidia are throwing in my face I can't see very well.
Nvidia has almost a total monopoly on the high end. They can charge whatever the **** they feel like because of that.
A good few years prior to that 4890 was the 8800 Ultra launching at well north of $800. Plus that GTX 280 launch price was £450, not £270, before inflation. Rose tinted goggles for "it was cheaper in my day" generally turn out to be "I was willing to spend less in my day". ::EDIT:: Ah, here's the chart I was after:
It's always been Nvidia charging stupendous amounts for GPUs, though. There was barely anything between the 4870 and the GTX 280. And they were top end cards. The only reason Nvidia had that price on the 8800u was 1. For silly people who didn't know how to volt mod their GTX and 2. because the 3000 series Radeons were crap. Yes, AMD charged around £500 for the Fury X but at least you got the first HBM ever and a liquid cooler. It's not about what I am willing to spend, as I have been around long enough and had enough hardware to prove beyond any certainty that I clearly don't care. However, I want something in return for my cash and all I have gotten over the past 10 years or more is console "ports". That only really sunk in when I bought my XB1X and realised "hey, these games look almost as good as the PC versions !!". Any way none of this really matters, tbh. Mostly because most of those who would want these cards literally can't afford them and that's that. The higher you price these things the smaller the market will become. I still think it's mostly a ruse to push you toward Pascal, though. Clearly Rich was right (Bindi) and they are stuck holding the baby. I just find it funny how they can use their new cards to make the old ones worth more cash though. Mind you, people fall for it I guess.
Cheers bud. She's on the mend now - a mystery infection knocked her for 6 but a few days' IV antibiotics and then a few more days antibiotics at home seem to have shifted it. I'm still on the fence about this. I had almost decided that I would go ahead with the step up until earlier I looked into shipping my existing card to EVGA and as far as I can tell I would be responsible for the costs associated in sending the card to them and insured post to another country (Germany I think it is) would seem to cost a small fortune (the cheapest I found is over £60) Has anyone here had actual experience of the step up program? How did you ship the card to them? GK
Me either. I bought a refurb XFX XXX for £220. That may have been their "for ten minutes" launch price, but AMD (well, ATI, then) soon LOLed at that with their £200something 4890.
You will probably need to ship to Germany, *if* they didn't set up shop in the U.K (which I am sure they did? recently). If you want a firm answer you would need to post on OCUK, where I believe a couple of their reps hang out (sometimes).
