The latest major progress steps in graphics technology have been tessellation, 4K and ray tracing. When tessellation came out very few top end cards could run it on High at top resolution with >60fps framerates. If you wanted the latest feature you had to pay for a top end card, and even then it was the refresh or next generation that gave you good performance.
Many of you upgraded to a 1440p or 4k +/- >100Hz monitor prior to ray tracing being introduced. If you remember far enough back Nvidia released a ray tracing demo with the 580 or 680 series that took literally minutes to render 1 frame. Now they introduce a new technique with a fair portion of the silicon dedicated to ray tracing to help allow hybrid rendering of things that previously have stood in the way of progressing toward photo realism (shadows, real time lighting and reflections). Many of you were disappointed that on launch the 2000 series could not render the ray traced effects at >60fps on your chosen resolution (>1080p) except on the ~£1000 2080Ti and therefore dubbed the 2000 series a failure at ray tracing.
If you are still on a 1080p monitor and are not interested in ray tracing, then you can buy a 1060 for <£200 (low end) and still game at 60fps on high settings on most games. 5-10 years ago this would not have been possible.
If you have upgraded to a 1440p /4k or >100Hz monitor you have been waiting for cards that can deliver high fps at these resolutions which the higher end 1000 series largely could. The 2000 series are only slightly better at this (a disappointment) but are SIGNIFICANTLY better if you turn on ray tracing. The 2060 Super now can run 60fps on High settings with ray tracing at 1080p, the 2070 Super can do this at 1440p and the 2080 Super will probably be able to do the same at 4k. This is a major step up from the last gen cards. Looking at upcoming games such as Control, Modern Warfare, Cyberpunk2077 and others the raytracing effects will finally be pushing us towards more immersive graphics rather than just higher fps or resolution.
This is what PC gaming versus consoles always meant to me at least: pushing the boundaries of new technologies. And allowing people who wanted to spend more (SLi / **80 Ti cards) the luxury of running at higher resolution or Ultra settings than the rest.
I agree the prices were artificially high on the 2000 series at launch but there was always the option to just buy the 1000 series if you really didn't want ray tracing. And if you still don't care wait until the next series of 3000 cards once most games include it and you can appreciate the benefits.
As to those saying these Super cards are what should have been launched a year ago, I imagine that the fact they were selling 2080 Tu104 chips with 2 SMs disabled was due to yields of perfect chips being low - only now are there enough to be set aside for the 2080 Super (which finally has all 48 SMs enabled). The top end card of the smaller and cheaper Tu106 chip (the 2070) still did have all 36 SMs enabled hence needing to move to the Tu104 for the 2070 Super. It also explains why the had to have have another, larger chip (the Tu102) for the 2080Ti. If they could have sold a fully enabled, faster 2080 at launch as a Ti I think that would have made more profit than a bigger more expensive chip. They went with the Tu102 as they needed a card for the new top end end (4k >60fps) that could ALSO do ray tracing at these settings and this was the only way.
In summary: the problem is that there have been 3 concurrent demands on new GPUs in the last few years since the last major step up (tessellation): higher resolutions, higher fps targets and now ray tracing effects. Whilst many of you were expecting linear performance increases each generation for the first 2 of these challenges (resolution and fps), Nvidia instead decided they could finally achieve something they have been trying for years: to allow real time ray traced effects in games. They dedicated a significant amount of silicon on each chip to RT which will not improve fps at a given resolution AT ALL unless Ray tracing is enabled. You are paying for this at the higher price point if you want this new tech. Yields at launch meant they gave the best they had at that time (the 2080, 2070 and 2080Ti with the "budget" 2060) but they were trying to price them as high as possible in view of their poor financial results after the mining craze collapsed. The new Super series are the result of better chip yields and are better at each price point, especially at ray tracing than the launch cards. That, combined with even worse financial results following the 2000 series launch is why we are now getting better prices. I believe that ray tracing is the most significant step forward in graphics tech in years and in the next 12 months we will see the benefits in many major games.
