Opinion: NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 20 Series is a mistake

NVIDIA unveiled the new RTX 20 Series to much hype and fanfare. A week ago, I had written about my pessimistic predictions. Sadly, I seem to have been right on most counts.

The only difference is, they didn't release the Titan RTX, and did not postpone the 2080 Ti. This is something they have done forever - release xx80, Titan together; then xx80 Ti 6 months later. Not this time. However, this might not actually be a good thing. More on that later.

While I got most of the specifications spot on, I may have overestimated the performance. That was the other disappointment, there were literally no architectural improvements announced over Volta.

As expected, it was all about Raytracing. But there's no way this will be performant. Indeed, a 2080 Ti seems to be good for only 1080/30 at Shadow of the Tomb Raider; whilst turning the Raytracing stuff off will surely get it close to 4K/60. It's just not worth it today, and pretty much a non-factor. The fact that they went overboard with the RTX hype simply tells you they have a dud on their hands.

The "starts at" pricing seems to be bogus as well, given all FE and partner cards announced are well above. Haven't seen a 2080 Ti for under $1150, or a 2080 for $800.

Given all of this, this may be the first generation ever which has worse performance/$ value versus the previous generation. You can get a GTX 1080 for $450 now. There's no way the $500 (realistically, $550-$600) RTX 2070 will be much faster. In fact, seeing there are no architectural improvements, it would end up being similar performance. The high-end is even more ludicrous. There's no way a GTX 2080 is going to beat a 1080 Ti by much, if at all, and for more money!

Getting back to why there was no Titan, and the Ti model came unprecedentedly early? It's simple, they are far too late with Turing. AMD is going to 7nm - which has a massive improvement over the 12/16nm generation - by the end of the year. Now, we don't know if AMD's first 7nm GPU - Vega 20 - ends up on the desktop. It's most likely just going to be a Instinct machine learning product. But we know sure as hell Navi is coming in 2019. And a mid-range 7nm Navi is going to beat the 12nm 2080 with half the die size. (Yes, that's how important process shrinks are) NVIDIA is not going to let that pass, they will have 7nm products next year, for sure. The 20 Series is nothing but a late cashgrab by a complacent company who thinks they can con the unsuspecting customer base.

My recommendation to everyone would be - wait for the reviews on 20th September. Otherwise, I can now say it's safe to buy a 10 Series or RX 500/Vega if you get a good price. Probably the best thing that can happen now is not the 20 Series, but seeing 10 Series or Vega/500 Series cards at a lower price. If you get a GTX 1080 for $450, or a RX 580 for $200, don't hesitate. You won't get a better value till 2019.