What "technical limit" allows the 2060/2070/2080 to work but not the 2080TI, as in the case of BF5 @ 1440p?
But the forum was telling us RTX would become much more viable when combined with DLSS. Now we're being told such a combination is a "special case"?
Really? You're not at all surprised at the BF5 example above?
Many low end cards can't play high resolutions and/or high settings in newer games at a good framerate. Should these features also be disabled when nVidia decides to?
It's painfully obvious what's really going on here:
- Either DLSS is more of performance hit than we're led to believe, and nVidia is masking it by cherry-picking the allowable use cases.
- Or certain combinations of GPU/RTX/DLSS/resolution don't show enough of a difference between the cards to justify their exorbitant cost differences, so nVidia simply disables the "bad" combos so they can't be benchmarked.
So even if you have an overpriced Turding and the game supports DLSS/RTX, you
still have to have nVidia's "blessing" before they allow it, with absolutely no ability to discern what will happen in future games and future hardware. The next DLSS/RTX game may not even allow it at your resolution, and you've paid $1200 for the "privilege" of finding this out.
Where does it say on the GPU box "DLSS/RTX will be arbitrarily restricted at nVidia's discretion"?
While I basically agree with the gist of this perspective, I think it would be better received without the 'Turding' and more aggressive ways of telling people how negatively you view this lineup and features. Now I am a relative newcomer at only 2006, and I am far from a mod or even telling you how to go about things, just sharing my perspective.
Indeed I do think that DLSS is particularly disappointing. Envisioning an alternative design which spent 0% of the transistor budget on Tensor (seemingly about a quarter of the die, if our rough estimates hold water), it would have been possible at the same price point or less even (less R&D on Tensor altogether?) to have made a GPU lineup with up to 33% increased performance, using standard design and the RTX cores. Or, skipping RT AND Tensor, creating something roughly double the performance or approaching that, assuming they could feed such a monster enough bandwidth.
Following this logic further, a standard design could have led to dramatic performance increases and reasonable prices with a more balanced approach in die sizes. RTX 2080ti would be half the die size or so with no tensor/RT, and on down the lineup. If they cut the size 25% in combination with cutting RT and Tensor, the lineup could have been something like this in their 12nm lineup :
GT 1150 4GB ~= 1050ti for $89
GTX 1150ti 4GB ~= GTX1060 3-6GB for about $169
GTX 1160 6GB ~= GTX1070ti for $249
GTX 1170 8GB ~= GTX1080OC for $349
GTX 1180 12GB ~= GTX1080ti+ for $459
GTX 1180ti 16GB ~= 1080ti+45% for $699
Then save the RTX features for pro cards for a few generations to really get the tech truly refined, while charging stunning ASPs for those VCs and various IPO innovators that are sinking into DL/AI, etc. Once a good time was seen to start merging with GTX and consumer levels, boom, look at it then.
I don't feel Nvidia is being greedy or evil here, but looking at the sales, performance, pricing, and effective reality of RTX/Tensor for the average PC gamer, it looks just incredibly underwhelming and overpriced. We just saw a 2+ year window of 10xx series finding homes with many gamers, and there is nearly zero reason for any of them to buy RTX unless they can afford the 2080ti, as every other performance level was already met by the products they bought, at prices that are basically the same. IOW, say a 1080ti buyer @ $699 wants to buy another card for $700. Nothing available makes sense to do so. Same with basically every level, there is nothing available for what they paid that offers any reason to do so this time.
Worse, with Vega 7 hitting like a damp squib, there is nothing compelling from the competition either.
There remains a massive market that wants compelling options from $150, $200, $250, and $300 ranges. Failing to bring good options to these customers is truly missing the boat.