Nvidia RTX 2000 Series

[Malaphax]

Try and contain the giga-rays to one thread please.  I'll edit this post later on with better info. 

Launch date is September 20 2018.  Pre-orders are available.  Pricing is wack.  Founders editions supposedly have higher clocks than stock cards and AIBs are expensive as hell.  Here's a chart shamelessly stolen from Videocardz
https://videocardz.com/77498/nvidia-announces-geforce-rtx-2080-ti-rtx-2080-and-rtx-2070

We have no benchmarks currently and just a gigarays of hype. 

I will say I'm actually blown away by the current support that various games are throwing at Nvidia.  In no particular order here's some of the games supporting ray-tracing elements that will be launching in the "near" future. 

• Assetto Corsa Competizione
• Atomic Heart - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HQvnrdnrfA
• Battlefield V - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5XTmF14MjM
• Control - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI7wLXrul7w
• Enlisted
• Justice
• JX3
• MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries
• Metro Exodus - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NsdM1VS5u8
• ProjectDH
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ew9g98jm7w

All of these are supporting some element of ray tracing and there's an additional list of games supporting Nvidia's new "Deep Learning Super Sampling."  Here's a link where I got some of this info from:
https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/nvidia-rtx-platform-brings-realtime-ray-tracing-and-ai-to-barrage-of-blockbuster-games-20180820-00653

From a consumer standpoint, I'm expecting to bend over and have my asshole excavated by the pricing on these cards.  It looks like I'll be spending more on this generation than I ever have before, and it might even be the most expensive computer component I've ever purchased (currently that's $800 for my monitor). 
From a technology standpoint, I need to see benchmarks but the RTX stuff looks like way more than a simple marketing gimmick.  Nvidia brought some astounding demos for games that will be releasing in 2-8 months, and considering many of these games use different engines it seems like the RTX shadows/lighting is very simple to use middleware / tech. 
I also have a feeling Nvidia has finally reached a peak in terms of product differentiation.  I don't think AMD has anything close to this level of ray-tracing performance and might be in some deep shit for this product generation.  They may be better off going for a bargain alternative strategy, because otherwise they're going to be up against some tough competition. 

Edit - added the atomic heart RTX demo. 

[kuhla]

Right at this moment, I have a hard time seeing myself dropping 600+ for a 2080. I'm curious to see what the 2070 brings to the table.

[Jedi2155]

I probably will not be buying a card until holiday or post-holiday rush sales. Definitely going to wait out the storm. For reference:

 

Quote

Model	Launch	Launch price (USD)
		MSRP
GeForce GTX 1070 Ti	November 2, 2017	$449
GeForce GTX 1080	May 27, 2016	$549
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti	March 10, 2017	$699

 

[Malaphax]

I hope that works out for you, I'm not so sure we're going to see prices drops this holiday season.  I've looked at a few price history charts and while you can find a few examples of wild swings like this MSI 1080, most of the time they look much more like EVGA 1080 or Asus 1080.
when you look at the price data over the last 18 months in aggregate it's actually pretty flat overall, just some nonsense in early 2018 when the crypto rush hit. 
1080 -

1080ti -

I think if you're willing to buy from any AIB partner you might be able to find a deal near the holidays but if you're looking for something specific it might be hard. 

On the other hand we've heard straight from Nvidia that they believe cryptocurrency miners won't be buying these cards.  They reported that last quarter they made ~$100M in sales to miners and expect this coming quarter to be ~$10M or less.  Considering the state of the crypto market I'm inclined to agree with them.  So at least we won't be competing with the miners, but I have a feeling most of the AIB partners will be sharing in the greed with Nvidia and charging some very high prices for the near future. 

Above all I'm waiting for benchmarks.  Even if the 2000 series performs substantially better than the 1000 series, I will probably exercise some prudence when looking for a new card.  I'll have to weigh the high current prices vs what I might recover selling my used 1080 when making my decision. 

[Malaphax]

Some people are wondering why prices are fucky and it's partially due to vendors not being given much any lead time on pricing.  Not to mention as Nvidia has moved to a 2 fan open air cooling solution, most vendors are suddenly pushing for large 3 fan open coolers.  Even AIBs that used to stick mostly to 2 fans (EVGA, MSI) are now pulling out 3 fan designs.  They may use this as a little bit of an excuse to up their margins and charge at or above the founder's edition card prices. 

Out of curiosity I did look back at older 1080 & 1080ti reviews and checked card/cooling performance from MSI, Gigabyte and Asus to see if there was any major differences.  They're all very close on temperatures, but the MSI did pull ahead on acoustics.  The new Asus 2000 series cards are using an even thicker cooling solution (2.7slot vs 2.5) and Gigabyte hasn't announced their very top end Auros line yet but I assume the cooler will be similar.  Almost all cards have the possibility of coil whine, some of the reviews I saw mentioned nearly every 1080ti had slight coil whine. 

I know when I purchased my 1080 I looked for the Gigabyte card's specifically because of the high overclock and the quiet and efficient cooler.  I think this time around I'm more willing to see if there are any AIBs that have sales or are available at reasonable prices, looks like product differentiation is going to be minimal this generation. 

[Jedi2155]

I paid ~$611 for my EVGA FTW ACX 3.0 card at the 4 month mark. Your graph doesn't show the funkyness and limited availability of the 1080 release which was in 2016, not 2017 when your chart starts. The 1080 Ti price isn't representative of a new architecture release (10 series, in 2016) plus it was a much higher priced card. It took  3-4 months for a decent deal (May Launch, August/Sept. deals and availability). There was no demand for crypto at the time.

At a minimum we need a 2 month lead time due to limited availability between the initial rush and mass availability. This is combined with the holiday buying season where demand typically spikes although same could be said for summer PC builds, its hard to determine which is a bigger market. Earliest minimal cost availability is black Friday, and latest is February IMHO unless AMD pulls a rabbit out of its hat.

[Malaphax]

Full reviews arrive on September 14th 2018. 

There's also a new info about overclocking features being pushed out through AIB partner programs like EVGA's Precision X1 and possibly rolled into the Nvidia Experience software as well. 
Supposedly the 2000 series has much more overclocking headroom than the 1000 series, but we get to wait a few weeks before we find out. 

https://videocardz.com/77696/exclusive-nvidia-geforce-rtx-2080-ti-editors-day-leaks

[kuhla]

"Turing Custom: A Quick Look At Upcoming GeForce RTX 2080 Ti & 2080 Cards"

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13268/custom-geforce-rtx-2080-quick-look

I do NOT like this trend. I'm seeing a lot of cards >2 slots wide. I really wish companies would stick to spec height and spec width.

[Malaphax]

While I understand your frustration, I'm mostly happy with this trend.  GPUs have gone from noisy blower fans to double/triple open style cooling.  They've also gotten substantially quieter even at full load.  While it might gall you that they're now 3 slot wide solutions and they often exceed the height restrictions for expansion slots (which I have much more of an issue with), they've done this because cooling these high TDP cards is tough without bolting on a huge cooling array. 
If you're so constrained by space that you need to keep within a 2 slot solution then buy the reference style card or a card with an integrated watercooling solution. 
I also think we're seeing a bigger progression towards these 3 slot cooling solutions because 99% of people don't bother with SLI and are less worried about these space constraints.  I'm sure there's an upper limit, probably 3 slots is about it before we run into substantial issues with card sag (already a bit of a thing). 

I'd rather have a GPU that runs under 40dba at full load that happens to be a huge 3 slot solution that doesn't meet the height spec, than have a 2 slot solution that's substantially noisier. 

[kuhla]

Blower flan coolers for the last couple of years have not been bad. I actually feel that the reference design should have stuck with a blower but, regardless of that, for this generation Nvidia has fully conceded the point that open-design is superior for both noise and gpu cooling performance and so they have made that their reference cooler while retaining a normal 2-slot width (and I'm guessing retaining spec height too).

They claimed on stage that, despite the fact that this is a huge and power hungry card, it is going to be quieter than last gen's reference card. To me that means that the 2-fan-2-slot-open-design is going to be sufficient to cool it down.

What I'm seeing the AIB partners makes me thing this is just up-the-ante made-for-gamers garbage with 32423 phase VRM, out of spec height, ridiculous width, as many fans as they can cram, RBG all the things. Half of them will probably have issues with temperature throttling, or maybe instability with their factory overclocks or what have you.

EVGA last generation is actually both a good and bad example of this. Some of their top 1080 cards had a custom VRM setups and 2-fan-2-slot-open-design that was quieter, cooler and clocked higher than reference design but pretty much retained all the dimensions.

[Malaphax]

You're absolutely right that EVGA tends to play it safe, in fact I wouldn't be entirely surprised if EVGA was at least partially the basis for Nvidia's new reference design cooler. 

The issue I have is that even though EVGA's cards did fit all the dimensions for a 2 slot solution, they also weren't very impressive compared to any other AIB cooling solution.  It's hard to match a 3x fan solution with a thicker heatsink when you're playing by the rules.  I used to look at Asus' offering and think "sweet jesus why the hell would anybody buy something that big and ugly looking" but looking at thermals and noise it becomes clear rather quickly that there is a reason for their design.  I start to have some issues with cards that exceed the slot height dramatically, but even then I'm willing to make that compromise if it results in better thermal and acoustic performance.  My own 1080 is goddamn massive and exceeds both height and width of a two slot design, but it's also incredibly quiet even at full load. 

I think EVGA will still offer a 2 fan solution for their lower end that will meet the two slot requirement.  If you're interested in keeping within spec, you'll have the reference design to choose from as well. 
I'd rather have AIB's go a bit crazier with their specs, I'm less interested in the rainbow vomit RGB options available on anything computer related.  At least Asus' offering looks about as plain as it can get for a $800+ GPU. 

[kuhla]

inb4 this is the new norm

 

[kuhla]

https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/gpu_displays/msi_rtx_gaming_x_trio_2080_and_2080_ti_preview/2
8-pin + 8-pin + 6-pin
jesus....

[Malaphax]

[Malaphax]

Looks like reviews are hitting.  At least in this test the 2080 was roughly the same performance as the 1080ti, which is rather disappointing. 

https://wccftech.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-2080-ti-and-rtx-2080-review/

https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/geforce_rtx_2080_founders_review,1.html

EDIT: Big list of reviews here
https://videocardz.com/78054/nvidia-geforce-rtx-2080-ti-rtx-2080-review-roundup

[kuhla]

29 minutes ago, Malaphax said:

Looks like reviews are hitting.  At least in this test the 2080 was roughly the same performance as the 1080ti, which is rather disappointing.

I thought that was we were expecting........... ? Yeah, from this graph that was leaked last week-ish

[Malaphax]

I have multiple problems with that graph you posted but I'll shelve that for now.  Here's an accurate summary of why I'm less than thrilled. 

From PCPer: https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/NVIDIA-GeForce-RTX-2080-and-RTX-2080-Ti-Review/Sound-Testing-Pricing-and-Avai

Quote

Overall, the RTX 20-series launch is a bit conflicting. While we see massive performance gains of 30-40% for the RTX 2080 Ti when comparing it to NVIDIA's previous flagship GTX 1080 Ti card, the RTX 2080 is a different story.

Struggling in most scenarios to beat the GTX 1080 Ti (and failing in some cases), the RTX 2080 doesn't provide the same sort of performance leap we saw coming from the GTX 980 Ti to the GTX 1080. We had previously measured a roughly 20% performance increase going from the previous generation Ti product to the mainstream "80" GPU with the 900-series to 1000-series transition, but now we have to move to the 2080 Ti to see that same sort of performance increase within the RTX lineup. This very well could explain why NVIDIA decided to lead with their RTX 2080 Ti this time, instead of waiting the traditional 6-9 months.

My concern is two fold.  Nvidia is charging more, the performance TODAY without DLSS and raytracing is pretty meh compared to the 1080ti at 1440p and 4k resolutions.  Considering Nvidia is desperately trying to offload stock of the old 1080 & 1080ti's, I'd be far more inclined to tell people to buy a 1080ti today and give this generation a skip.  I'm sure DLSS will eventually boost the visual performance in games that eventually implement it, and I'm also sure raytracing will look amazing (but probably cut performance in half) on games that implement that.  My issue is that as a consumer looking at these reviews TODAY, the 2080 is a joke and the 2080ti is just goddamn expensive. 

Additionally, I have a really nasty feeling that the 2080ti being launched now is the only thing saving every review site from lambasting the 2080 performance.  Beyond that, I still think that Nvidia will double dip and release a mid-cycle product in ~9 months and call it the 2080tiS or some other crap.  I doubt they're going to completely give up on a mid-cycle release and wait it out for the 3000 series. 

I also saw a ton of rumors about "massive overclocking headroom" on these cards, the automatic overclock managed a grand total of 3% and even manual overclocks are only pulling 8% over stock founder's edition performance. 

Initially before I saw benchmarks I was thinking a 2080 might be expensive but worth it, now after seeing reviews I'm more inclined to say fuck it and sit on my 1080 until I see big price drops (doubtful that's going to happen anytime soon, especially with the new trump tariffs) or until the next nvidia release comes out.  Considering I jumped on the 1080 release as soon as AIB cards were available, that says quite a bit about how much my mood has shifted. 
If there had been similar performance increase from the 2080 over the 1080ti that was found from the previous generational leap, I would probably bite the bullet and buy one of these cards.  But how the hell do you justify buying a 2080ti especially when they're basically priced like titan cards at $1,200+

Sidenote - from a financial analyst standpoint, I'm actually moderately concerned for Nvidia, I don't know if they're going to be able to move as many units of the new 2000 series through the close of this year.  Normally Nvidia profits see a nice bump when they release a new GPU line, but with the higher prices and only moderate performance increases, I'm not sure if the Nvidia marketing department can drive the sales numbers I was initially expecting.  I'm also expecting the new trump tariffs to really shit on demand, normally the die hard fans buy cards in the first few months and they'll be hit with 10% tariffs, but if these tariffs stay in place, they go up to 25% in 2019 which could make these cards so expensive that demand just dries up. 

[T1no]

i think its also dumb that on top of the performance stuff; the price that nvidia announce on the stage is pretty much non existant.

its not even 50 dollar different were talking about ~200 dollars.

i dont remember having this kind of price gap on last generations.

[kuhla]

I think the discussion would be pretty different if the pricing was more like 2080ti @ $599, 2080 @ $499, 2070 @ $399. That would line up better with historical pricing for launches. Used 1080ti are going for around $500 right now. I dunno.

[Malaphax]

@T1no
Last generation Nvidia did their founder's edition for a $100 price premium on the 1080 and had about 1 month of exclusivity.  Then the AIBs released all their custom cards.  This generation they dropped the one month exclusivity and the AIB cards get to launch at the same time.  The AIBs see no reason to drop their prices under what Nvidia themselves is charging, especially since they're offering arguably better cards.  There's also this article about how they're binning better silicon for the AIBs.  They'd rather cash in on the initial rush from hardcore buyers and see if they can pump up their revenues than try and fight down at the actual MSRP.  Not to mention most cards last gen that were at MSRP were the basic blower design, but now that Nvidia uses an open cooler design the AIBs aren't interested in releasing bottom barrel 2000 series cards, they'd rather bump the price up to the founder's edition with better cooling components.  On top of which, while there is no crypto-mining market the AIBs and Nvidia both made a fat chunk of change off of that nonsense while it was running, and they probably enjoyed charging over MSRP

I'm not sure of this yet, but I don't know how custom the PCBs are for some of these AIB cards, I think right now they're just better cooling on a standard PCB. 

Either way, I think this is Nvidia price gouging as hard as they can, and frankly AMD can't really do shit to compete with them.  Even if the new Vega cards outperform a 2080 (I would lose my shit if they beat a 2080ti) at a lower price, they still have to compete with the marketing machine of nvidia pushing ray tracing and DLSS as better visual quality over what AMD can offer. 

[Jedi2155]

As I currently don't play any games (other than EVE), that can take advantage of the cards, I don't see myself upgrading as much as I'd like to. I'd need a killer title to justify spending that much coin on a new card. 

Thats the #1 reasoning against it, as Battlefield 5 was kinda of lackluster to me. If you had a reasonable use case though, I'd say wait at most 3-6 months because if AMD doesn't respond, I could see a similar scenario to the 10 series where prices basically stay'd put at or above MSRP almost the entire life of the cards. Nvidia simply doesn't have competing gigarays.

[Malaphax]

I wanted to briefly mention the RTX 2070, which is essentially a minor performance increase over the 1080 and a major increase in price.  I know this comes as no surprise but the value proposition of these 2000 series cards is abysmal. 

Also I wanted to again bring up the fact that these cards still do not have a single title with raytracing or DLSS enabled.  The closest is a final fantasy 15 DEMO that some sites have used to test DLSS. 
I realize that the chicken/egg argument forces Nvidia to pushout hardware so that games will take advantage of these new features, but any hype I personally had for the 2000 series is in the toilet.  I'm also expecting that when January 1st rolls around and the new tariff rate of 25% comes into effect we'll see yet another price increase on these cards, none of which are selling anywhere near MSRP.  This is a goddamn mess of a launch, I'm not sure what type of unit sales Nvidia is seeing but from a consumer standpoint I hope they're really low. 

[kuhla]

The best value proposition I have seen lately is to sell a 1080 and buy a used 1080 Ti if someone really needs a few more FPS

[Jedi2155]

On 10/17/2018 at 2:51 PM, kuhla said:

The best value proposition I have seen lately is to sell a 1080 and buy a used 1080 Ti if someone really needs a few more FPS

That actually sounds like a great proposition.

[kuhla]

3 hours ago, Jedi2155 said:

That actually sounds like a great proposition.

2080Ti at $999. 2080 at $699. You can find multiple used 1080Ti for around $500 and (ignoring the new features) it's awfully close to the 2080 performance at most resolutions. You can sell a 1080 for around $300. So a 25-30% increase for $200-ish? That is not cheap but it is better value than a 2080/2080Ti right now especially if someone is coming from a 1080 (like we all are).