We are still waiting too much for Nvidia's Turing promises

Gamers and high-end PC enthusiasts are the kind of consumers most companies dream about: a group of people who want to spend thousands of dollars on performance gear. And two years after the very good Nvidia series 10 cards, an AMD Vega response to the Vega, which failed to significantly advance performance per dollar, and withstood a madness of price focused on cryptography, those consumers eager to discover something new.

But we are more than two months away from the launch of Turing, and Nvidia does not have much to say, except for a trio of high-priced cards that do not arrive at the stores on the promised date. . prices.

When Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang, announced for the first time his Turing architecture, rich in artificial intelligence cores and real-time ray tracing capabilities, he called the latter "the Holy Grail of our industry." ". It was definitely a hyperbolic attitude. expect from most major product launches – but also credible. The demonstrations presented by Nvidia promised a real-time level of visual realism that had previously been seen only in pre-released cinematics or CGI Hollywood masterpieces from studios such as Pixar.

Now, Nvidia is selling its own Founders Edition cards at the promised prices, which is good. However, at the initial launch of RTX, the company posted a slide showing third-party 2080 Ti cards starting at $ 999, 2080 cards at $ 699 and RTX 2070 cards at $ 499.

A quick glance at Newegg and Amazon tells us that most RTX 2080 cards are priced higher than Premium Founders (North of US $ 800 in the US and GBP 600 in the UK). United Kingdom), or barely $ 700. The same is generally true for third-party RTX 2080 Ti cards, if you can find them in stock. As we wrote on the official launch day of the RTX 2070, third-party variants of this card were not yet available for sale. And Nvidia's product page featured a "Notify me" button for its $ 599 (£ 549) variant, which should arrive on October 17th, as promised. But recent history tells us that it is extremely unlikely to see a 2070 card come close to its promised starting price of $ 499.

Of course, card scarcity and inflated prices are nothing new for graphics card launches. I remember paying about 30 dollars (22.74 pounds sterling) instead of MSRP for my ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT in the weeks following its launch in mid-2007. But a $ 30 bonus is much easier to tolerate than $ 100 or more.

And high card prices are particularly difficult for consumers (and reviewers) when RTX's most popular features, ray tracing and artificial intelligence-assisted super sampling (DLSS), can not be used. still be tested definitively because games that support these features for the moment.

S & # 39; waiting Battlefield V in November, and although Shadow of the Tomb Raider is available, there is no official word on the release date of its ray tracing duties. So, although Microsoft released its DirectX Raytracing API during the recent October update, RTX buyers – or potential buyers – end up with a modest list of games promised for ray tracing and the DLSS, and no clear indication of the quality of the new cards will work with games with these future features.

As our own Chris Angelini asked in his RTX 2070 exam: "Will ray tracing make enough difference to require a graphic upgrade?" This is certainly not an issue that reviewers should ask to create three cards in a graphics card line launch, especially one arriving more than two years after its predecessor. And rather than AMD's competition, it's still these top-of-the-line, 10-generation cards from the previous generation that are the main argument against Nvidia's expensive new RTX cards. Once again, let's go to our esteemed EiC emissary for his expert analysis:

"So what about the poor reception of Turing-based graphics cards? It is a three-part interaction of obsolete technology that can not yet be used, comparisons with many Pascal-based maps, and a (negative) perception of the resulting value. Over the past generations, Nvidia has offered us more performance at a comparable or even better price.

This time, the company is mainly competing with its own cards with MSRP, which shows a lack of competition. GeForce RTX 2070 is basically a step aside for those who previously watched the GeForce GTX 1080. GeForce RTX 2080 is a step aside for those who own a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. Only the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti stands out as an unmatched winner among people who were previously willing to shell out $ 1,200 for Titan-class frame rates. Buy Pascal or buy Turing; Nvidia wins anyway. "

This last bit is of course essential. If Nvidia would probably be happier if consumers opted for one of her last cards, she was making money both ways. And without a competing range from AMD – which is not expected at least until the arrival of its Navi charts at 7 nm by 2019 – Nvidia has little incentive to lower its prices .

While it's impossible to say how well RTX cards are selling, it's clear that they are, as evidenced by the RTX 2080 Ti's inconsistent availability of $ 1,200 and more and the fact that the RTX 2080 thirds are still sold at more than 100 dollars. above the starting MSRP of Nvidia.

It is understandable that low availability and high prices hinder (and in some cases anger) enthusiasts accustomed to having more energy to the pixel. But at least there are (for the moment at least) many GTX 1080 and GTX 1080 T available for those who do not want to pay more for untested features such as ray tracing and DLSS.

The biggest problem is why Nvidia is actually too promising and underperforming with its RTX range – at least here at the beginning of Turing card availability. Of course, the company will rightly say that it has no control over the price of third party cards or when developers offer new games or updates. But in the absence of new high end AMD cards on the market, the reason why Nvidia launched these cards is not clear, instead of waiting a few months. And of course, she could have sold her own Founders Edition cards at slightly lower prices, pushing her third party partners to be competitive.

We are sure to see more of some attractive games with ray tracing and DLSS features by 2019. By then, the stock of 10 cards in the series may be out of stock and we will be able to evaluate the RTX cards on their new key. features.

Until then, many companies looking for value in the high-end card market will likely continue to search for older cards – or wait to see what AMD can offer with Navi. Even if Navi only creates sufficient competition to lower the price of today's Turing offerings, it will be a boon for Nvidia's sales figures. Hopefully more RTX cards in the hands of consumers will also encourage more game developers to use features that take advantage of the uniqueness of Nvidia's Turing hardware.

Note: As in all our editorials, the opinions expressed here belong to the writer and not to Tom's Hardware team.