But in the here and now, there is the sense that a lot of what Turing offers will only manifest in the future. There'll be no ray traced games available at the RTX launch and even DLSS gaming may take a little time to arrive. So in that sense, it's perfectly understandable if you decide to hold back on a purchase. That said, we fully understand that this may prove challenging when GTX 1080 Ti remains competitive in traditional 3D rendering, and when prices on that card may well tumble. When RTX pricing already looks extreme, a cut-price 1080 Ti could just prove too tempting.
And pricing clearly is a genuine issue here. We've called the RTX 2080 a notional successor to the GTX 1080 in this review because while there is an architectural lineage there (it's the tier-two processor, it has a 256-bit bus etc), pricing essentially makes it even more expensive than the last-gen GTX 1080 Ti. And certainly in the modern era, that's unprecedented. But equally, the cost of making the product has clearly risen significantly - just in terms of die size alone, before we factor in GDDR6 memory and the much higher quality chassis and thermal solution. And this takes place in an era where flagship phones routinely see price increases - and even Xbox One X pushed the envelope uncomfortably in terms of its price-point. The pace of technological evolution is slowing, and prices are rising.
Deciding whether to invest so much money in a high-end GPU requires careful thought then - particularly when the new Ti product is priced at what used to be Titan money. What I can say is this: in the short term, Pascal products are still superb and the potential of Turing is only just beginning to be tapped into. Questions remain over the take-up of key features, but I suspect we'll be a lot more knowledgeable about ray tracing and DLSS support within the next few months. In the here and now, the pricing is clearly going to be a sticking point for many, but the fact is that Nvidia is the first firm to step up with a vision for the future of games technology, providing hardware that hands in results that nothing else on the market can produce - and I can't wait to see what kind of results we get in the coming months and years.
