Could the 2080 Ti be a good value after all?

[Midnitewolf]

I was doing a bit of research and came up with a rather startling revelation.  It seems like spending $1000+ for a 2080 Ti might actually make financial sense after all.

 

What I found was that is seems like the mid-range $400-$500 GPUs I usually build my systems with tend to increase in performance by roughly 25-30% every 3 years.  I say 3 years because for me at least, this generally is about the maximum life cycle I get out of the $400-$500 priced mid-ranged card I tend to buy.  So for me I would end up buying something like a 2070 Super for $500 now  and then upgrade the GPU at the 2-3 year mark spending another $500 give or take.  However, right now the 2080 Ti is roughly 25-30% better performance than a 2070 Super.  This seems to indicated that spending $1000 today on a 2080 Ti would give me the same 25% performance boost today, that I would have to wait 2-3 years to get by buying a lesser card today and upgrading down the road.  Unless I am missing something, wouldn't spending $1000 for a 2080 ti and being able to take advantage of the extra performance it offers today make more sense than spending $500 now on a 2070 Super then upgrading 2-3 years down the road to get that same 25% boost in performance? 

 

If this thinking is correct, then the price to performance ratio value proposition of the 2080 Ti changes pretty dramatically due to the fact that while your spending twice as much for the card now, your also getting twice the longevity and you can take advantage of the extra performance immediately.  

 

What are your thoughts?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Juular]

You're missing the changes in support for new technologies. Namely, all focus in the gamedev now seems to be on raytracing technologies, with AMD & Intel releasing their raytracing capable GPUs next year and nVidia polishing their own tech, even PS5 seems to have raytracing capability so we can expect it to become mainstream in a few years. Now RTX2080 Ti isn't exactly slow in today's raytracing games but it might be outspaced by next generation significantly.

[jones177]

For your case yes. For my case no.

 

I am a typical 2080 ti user. 

To me they last as long as the next release of a better card.

If a more powerful card came out tomorrow I would buy it.

[Constantin]

4 minutes ago, Juular said:

it might be outspaced by next generation significantly.

That is for sure, in an acceleration rate!

[Jrasero]

best value financially no way but yeah a RTX 2070 Super or even 5700 XT are $400-$500 and are just a GTX 1080 Ti but with better tech.  The kicker for me is that the RTX 2080 Ti is really the perfect 3440x1440 high refresh card and really the only true 4K 60+ FPS card out there and that is how I personally justify it.  Also it is the only RTX card that showed somewhat of a generational performance increase like you said at 25%-30%

 

Here is the thing whether it's $1000 or $1200+ and no matter how you and your wallet personally feel about the RTX 2080 Ti being a good value, the fact remains Nividia's top consumer Pascal card in the GTX 1080 Ti card launched at at $700.  Not An Apple fan did a great video recently and he explains the $500 increase for the RTX 2080 Ti based on the fact that people bought Titans is droves at $1200 even though it was basically a minimally faster $700 GTX 1080 Ti.  I agree with this and idea that Nvidia saw an opportunity to price the RTX 2080 Ti at that $1200 mark

Yes the RTX 2080 Ti is a great card just not a great value compared to Pascal

Quote

"To me they last as long as the next release of a better card.

If a more powerful card came out tomorrow I would buy it."

  I also fall into this camp so yeah it sort of doesn't matter 

[Midnitewolf]

1 hour ago, Jrasero said:

 

 

Here is the thing whether it's $1000 or $1200+ and no matter how you and your wallet personally feel about the RTX 2080 Ti being a good value, the fact remains Nividia's top consumer Pascal card in the GTX 1080 Ti card launched at at $700.  Not An Apple fan did a great video recently and he explains the $500 increase for the RTX 2080 Ti based on the fact that people bought Titans is droves at $1200 even though it was basically a minimally faster $700 GTX 1080 Ti.  I agree with this and idea that Nvidia saw an opportunity to price the RTX 2080 Ti at that $1200 mark

 

 Oh I agree with you here.  I am still cursing myself for not buying the 1080ti instead of the Vega 56 I ended up with.  It would have only cost me like $300 more and I wouldn't be having this debate about a GPU upgrade as the 1080ti would still be plenty for my current and near future needs in most cases.  I didn't make that jump because at the time I thought paying $700 for a GPU was pretty ridiculous.  Of course I wasn't expecting them to increase the prices of the next generation of Nvidia cards by an additional 30% either.  The lack of competition really screwed us over on this one.  But now we face a reality of massively overpriced video cards, if we want anything higher end that is.

 

The thing is, the 2070 Super is overpriced as well so whether I buy a 2070 Super or a 2080 Ti, I am still paying 20-30% more than I should be <sigh> so which makes the most sense in the long run.  I guess for my situation it really kind of  comes down to if I believe there will be some ground breaking advancement happen with GPUs within the next 3 years or not.  

[Jrasero]

4 hours ago, Midnitewolf said:

 Oh I agree with you here.  I am still cursing myself for not buying the 1080ti instead of the Vega 56 I ended up with.  It would have only cost me like $300 more and I wouldn't be having this debate about a GPU upgrade as the 1080ti would still be plenty for my current and near future needs in most cases.  I didn't make that jump because at the time I thought paying $700 for a GPU was pretty ridiculous.  Of course I wasn't expecting them to increase the prices of the next generation of Nvidia cards by an additional 30% either.  The lack of competition really screwed us over on this one.  But now we face a reality of massively overpriced video cards, if we want anything higher end that is.

 

The thing is, the 2070 Super is overpriced as well so whether I buy a 2070 Super or a 2080 Ti, I am still paying 20-30% more than I should be <sigh> so which makes the most sense in the long run.  I guess for my situation it really kind of  comes down to if I believe there will be some ground breaking advancement happen with GPUs within the next 3 years or not.  

If you can wait honestly next gen AMD and especially Nvidia due to 7nm will provide big increases from what I can tell.  But all of this is 6-8 months maybe?

 

If you had to buy now and are team green $500 for essentially a GTX 1080 Ti but with Ray Tracing doesn't sound amazing but still is a really great 1440P card.  If you have the budget a RTX 2080 Ti is an amazing card.  I am thinking the RTX 2080 Ti Super is real and that will push the RTX 2080 Ti to $1000 and the Super to $1200.  

[Midnitewolf]

On 12/6/2019 at 5:09 PM, Jrasero said:

If you can wait honestly next gen AMD and especially Nvidia due to 7nm will provide big increases from what I can tell.  But all of this is 6-8 months maybe?

 

If you had to buy now and are team green $500 for essentially a GTX 1080 Ti but with Ray Tracing doesn't sound amazing but still is a really great 1440P card.  If you have the budget a RTX 2080 Ti is an amazing card.  I am thinking the RTX 2080 Ti Super is real and that will push the RTX 2080 Ti to $1000 and the Super to $1200.  

Yeah I am still deciding.  I have about $1000 in my budget so could actually buy a low end 2080 Ti and might very well just bite the bullet and get one but when you consider that the 2080 Ti is already almost 18 months old and will likely be superseded or replaced with the next generation in 6-8 months, likely by something similarly priced, it almost seems a waste of money.  Also buying a $400-$500 card with the intention of replacing it in 6-8 month seems like a waste as well.  I am just not sure I am going to be happy with my Vega 56 in games like RDR2 or Metro Exodus, both games I have been holding off on buying until I performed my system upgrade. 

[Mark Kaine]

On 12/6/2019 at 5:19 PM, Midnitewolf said:

I was doing a bit of research and came up with a rather startling revelation.  It seems like spending $1000+ for a 2080 Ti might actually make financial sense after all.

 

What I found was that is seems like the mid-range $400-$500 GPUs I usually build my systems with tend to increase in performance by roughly 25-30% every 3 years.  I say 3 years because for me at least, this generally is about the maximum life cycle I get out of the $400-$500 priced mid-ranged card I tend to buy.  So for me I would end up buying something like a 2070 Super for $500 now  and then upgrade the GPU at the 2-3 year mark spending another $500 give or take.  However, right now the 2080 Ti is roughly 25-30% better performance than a 2070 Super.  This seems to indicated that spending $1000 today on a 2080 Ti would give me the same 25% performance boost today, that I would have to wait 2-3 years to get by buying a lesser card today and upgrading down the road.  Unless I am missing something, wouldn't spending $1000 for a 2080 ti and being able to take advantage of the extra performance it offers today make more sense than spending $500 now on a 2070 Super then upgrading 2-3 years down the road to get that same 25% boost in performance? 

 

If this thinking is correct, then the price to performance ratio value proposition of the 2080 Ti changes pretty dramatically due to the fact that while your spending twice as much for the card now, your also getting twice the longevity and you can take advantage of the extra performance immediately.  

 

What are your thoughts?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My thoughts are that you will buy a 7nm NVIDIA in 2 years at the latest (at $500-1000)

 

Don't believe me?  Bookmark this thread.

[Midnitewolf]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

My thoughts are that you will buy a 7nm NVIDIA in 2 years at the latest (at $500-1000)

 

Don't believe me?  Bookmark this thread.

It's possible I won't deny.  Still I have to be honest and say that if I would have sprung for a 1080ti instead of the Vega 56 I ended up with, which at the time would have cost me about $300 more, I doubt I would be having this discussion right now especially since that 1080 Ti would be getting me around 2070 Super levels of performance and there is no way I could justify $1000 on a new card at those levels.  I could easily squeeze another year out of a 1080 ti but the Vega 56 is starting to get a big long in the tooth and struggling to stay above 60 fps on the higher settings with the more demanding titles.   It is about the point where I have to start turning down settings to medium on the titles I am interested in playnig that I start looking for a new GPU and if a new GPU alone won't cut it, then a full system upgrade.  

[xg32]

On 12/6/2019 at 8:19 AM, Midnitewolf said:

I was doing a bit of research and came up with a rather startling revelation.  It seems like spending $1000+ for a 2080 Ti might actually make financial sense after all.

 

What I found was that is seems like the mid-range $400-$500 GPUs I usually build my systems with tend to increase in performance by roughly 25-30% every 3 years.  I say 3 years because for me at least, this generally is about the maximum life cycle I get out of the $400-$500 priced mid-ranged card I tend to buy.  So for me I would end up buying something like a 2070 Super for $500 now  and then upgrade the GPU at the 2-3 year mark spending another $500 give or take.  However, right now the 2080 Ti is roughly 25-30% better performance than a 2070 Super.  This seems to indicated that spending $1000 today on a 2080 Ti would give me the same 25% performance boost today, that I would have to wait 2-3 years to get by buying a lesser card today and upgrading down the road.  Unless I am missing something, wouldn't spending $1000 for a 2080 ti and being able to take advantage of the extra performance it offers today make more sense than spending $500 now on a 2070 Super then upgrading 2-3 years down the road to get that same 25% boost in performance? 

 

If this thinking is correct, then the price to performance ratio value proposition of the 2080 Ti changes pretty dramatically due to the fact that while your spending twice as much for the card now, your also getting twice the longevity and you can take advantage of the extra performance immediately.  

 

What are your thoughts?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

it makes financial sense if it's inside the budget of the build and/or if you just want the fastest card, but in terms of fps/$ it'll always cost more at the top end, that's just business. You won't actually end up spending less by buying a 2080 ti, cause chances are you'll just buy a 3080 ti when it comes out, even if you sell the 2080 ti back at the right time you'll at least end up spending a bit more than going with mid-range. 

 

Honestly, if you are asking these questions, just go with a the fastest single card if you can afford it, for the peace of mind. I refrain to call it better value though. Still, wait for 2080 ti super. the vanilla Ti is over a year old.

 

I expect next gen/3080 ti to be about 1500usd though, so just be prepared before you go down the rabbit hole, it could also lead to similar purchases in monitors and audio equipment 

 

2019/2020 is a bit different, as the rumors are scarlett and ps5 will be 4k/60 capable, so i'd either not build anything at all, go with a 3400G budget build, or go all out, anything mid range doesn't make sense to me if it's gonna be equal to a console in 2020, if you are going for a 500usd gpu, wait til after the ps5 comes out and how it shakes out.

 

On a side note, i'm starting to see RTX cards having an array of minor problems after year+ on reddit and these forums. It's still just mass produced consumer grade electronics. Think twice, but if you can afford it....take the plunge.

[Midnitewolf]

14 hours ago, xg32 said:

it makes financial sense if it's inside the budget of the build and/or if you just want the fastest card, but in terms of fps/$ it'll always cost more at the top end, that's just business. You won't actually end up spending less by buying a 2080 ti, cause chances are you'll just buy a 3080 ti when it comes out, even if you sell the 2080 ti back at the right time you'll at least end up spending a bit more than going with mid-range. 

 

Honestly, if you are asking these questions, just go with a the fastest single card if you can afford it, for the peace of mind. I refrain to call it better value though. Still, wait for 2080 ti super. the vanilla Ti is over a year old.

 

I expect next gen/3080 ti to be about 1500usd though, so just be prepared before you go down the rabbit hole, it could also lead to similar purchases in monitors and audio equipment 

 

2019/2020 is a bit different, as the rumors are scarlett and ps5 will be 4k/60 capable, so i'd either not build anything at all, go with a 3400G budget build, or go all out, anything mid range doesn't make sense to me if it's gonna be equal to a console in 2020, if you are going for a 500usd gpu, wait til after the ps5 comes out and how it shakes out.

 

On a side note, i'm starting to see RTX cards having an array of minor problems after year+ on reddit and these forums. It's still just mass produced consumer grade electronics. Think twice, but if you can afford it....take the plunge.

Yeah that is my concern about the 3080 ti as well.  The value of the 1080 ti stems from how much the next generation 2080 ti sky rocketed up in price, well outside of reason. I mean it went from $750 to $1000+ generation to generation which is a bit unreasonable.  I am hoping however that considering how well the 5700 series is doing at the mid range, that AMD's high end cards will actually be able to compete with a 2080 ti and do it $100+ cheaper.  If this occurs, Nvidia won't be able to over charge for the 3000 series like that could with the 2000 series and we might see them dial back the pricing to a more reasonable level.  However, if the 3080ti came out at $1300, that would make the 2080 ti an even better value, similar to how the 1080 ti ended up being an incredible value despite its initial pricing.

 

As far as the 2080 ti's value, it just surprised me that when I did that actual math and took out the human factor, that from a $$$ standpoint, you weren't really losing money on opting to spend $1000 on a GPU, providing your intention was to stretch out replacing the GPU until it was absolute necessary.  I mean on the surface, your paying roughly a 200% price premium for 30% great performance.  That doesn't sound all that great.  It is not until you consider that if you buy a $500 card today and replaced it with another $500 card 3 years down the road, that you would only be equaling the performance of the $1000 card you could have bought today all the while taking advantage of all that performance from day one, rather than having to wait 3 years to get there.  This is presuming that your video card will last 3 years but I would hazard to guess most 2080 ti's will likely last at least 3 years.  Then if you consider that you might still be able to sell your 2080 ti for $100+ 3 years down the road, that value only gets better.

 

I guess my point is that all the value discussions around the 2080 ti say its not worth its cost unless money is no object and you simply want the best but in reality, buying a 2080 ti is no worse of a decision from a value perspective than buying a 2070 Super.   From a dollar for dollar and longevity perspective, their cost is relatively equal. 

[xg32]

3 hours ago, Midnitewolf said:

Yeah that is my concern about the 3080 ti as well.  The value of the 1080 ti stems from how much the next generation 2080 ti sky rocketed up in price, well outside of reason. I mean it went from $750 to $1000+ generation to generation which is a bit unreasonable.  I am hoping however that considering how well the 5700 series is doing at the mid range, that AMD's high end cards will actually be able to compete with a 2080 ti and do it $100+ cheaper.  If this occurs, Nvidia won't be able to over charge for the 3000 series like that could with the 2000 series and we might see them dial back the pricing to a more reasonable level.  However, if the 3080ti came out at $1300, that would make the 2080 ti an even better value, similar to how the 1080 ti ended up being an incredible value despite its initial pricing.

 

As far as the 2080 ti's value, it just surprised me that when I did that actual math and took out the human factor, that from a $$$ standpoint, you weren't really losing money on opting to spend $1000 on a GPU, providing your intention was to stretch out replacing the GPU until it was absolute necessary.  I mean on the surface, your paying roughly a 200% price premium for 30% great performance.  That doesn't sound all that great.  It is not until you consider that if you buy a $500 card today and replaced it with another $500 card 3 years down the road, that you would only be equaling the performance of the $1000 card you could have bought today all the while taking advantage of all that performance from day one, rather than having to wait 3 years to get there.  This is presuming that your video card will last 3 years but I would hazard to guess most 2080 ti's will likely last at least 3 years.  Then if you consider that you might still be able to sell your 2080 ti for $100+ 3 years down the road, that value only gets better.

 

I guess my point is that all the value discussions around the 2080 ti say its not worth its cost unless money is no object and you simply want the best but in reality, buying a 2080 ti is no worse of a decision from a value perspective than buying a 2070 Super.   From a dollar for dollar and longevity perspective, their cost is relatively equal. 

it's not too bad if you can sell the Ti GPUs at the right time, the 980 ti really only lost its value after the 5700 came out, so the retention is there for say a 1080ti/2080ti, i think to maximize the value you have to sell the gpu back before you upgrade, or use it for a REALLY long time. I'd say it's not as bad as most people think. I think the 6 most recent builds i've done for myself/friends/others were 1080 ti x3/2080 ti x1/2060S (900 budget)/1660S (750 budget), all 3 of the 1080 ti owners have said that the 2080 ti isn't good enough of an upgrade, I still think it's one of the best buys in recent years. However it could fall off a cliff in resale value in 2020 for reasons mentioned in the last post.

 

As for the reasons not to get a 2080 ti atm:

 

it's over a year old

 

There was a post on reddit estimating the cost of a 2080 ti to nvidia, and it was close to 500usd, mostly due to the tensor cores and ridiculous die size, the yields aren't really getting better. The 2xxx->3xxx jump could end up being like fermi->kapler, huge, they will shrink that die.

 

RTX isn't really getting off the ground, the current form of RTX is just so inefficient, like first gen AA, physics, god rays all over again, there's bound to be a more efficient solution that's tailored for future gens, The tensor cores could end up obsolete.

 

Consoles in november 2020 

 

It's logical that next gen will come out before the consoles.

 

Waiting is normally a bad idea imho, but for the above reasons, if you have a decent gpu atm, i'd wait for the 3080 ti.

 

Fun thoughts

[Midnitewolf]

3 hours ago, xg32 said:

it's not too bad if you can sell the Ti GPUs at the right time, the 980 ti really only lost its value after the 5700 came out, so the retention is there for say a 1080ti/2080ti, i think to maximize the value you have to sell the gpu back before you upgrade, or use it for a REALLY long time. I'd say it's not as bad as most people think. I think the 6 most recent builds i've done for myself/friends/others were 1080 ti x3/2080 ti x1/2060S (900 budget)/1660S (750 budget), all 3 of the 1080 ti owners have said that the 2080 ti isn't good enough of an upgrade, I still think it's one of the best buys in recent years. However it could fall off a cliff in resale value in 2020 for reasons mentioned in the last post.

 

As for the reasons not to get a 2080 ti atm:

 

it's over a year old

 

There was a post on reddit estimating the cost of a 2080 ti to nvidia, and it was close to 500usd, mostly due to the tensor cores and ridiculous die size, the yields aren't really getting better. The 2xxx->3xxx jump could end up being like fermi->kapler, huge, they will shrink that die.

 

RTX isn't really getting off the ground, the current form of RTX is just so inefficient, like first gen AA, physics, god rays all over again, there's bound to be a more efficient solution that's tailored for future gens, The tensor cores could end up obsolete.

 

Consoles in november 2020 

 

It's logical that next gen will come out before the consoles.

 

Waiting is normally a bad idea imho, but for the above reasons, if you have a decent gpu atm, i'd wait for the 3080 ti.

 

Fun thoughts

I pretty much agree with you 100% though I am not sold on consoles obsoleting computers for gaming as I doubt $600 of console hardware is going to outperform $2000 of computer hardware.  Honestly I feel streaming services like Stadia are what is going to obsolete gaming computers AND maybe even consoles but I think we have maybe 1-2 more generations of gaming PC (3-6 years) before that becomes a real challenger.

 

As far as waiting, I think I am with you as well.  While I was surprised to find that the 2080 ti a bad a value as I original thought, with the next gen only 6-8 months away, if you can wait on a GPU purchase, I think you probably should.