Jayztwocents had a short recently where he talked about the RTX 2080 ti being one of the worst GPUs of all time. His argument was simple. Basically, it normalized 4 figure GPU prices, despite it not being that good.
I agree wholeheartedly, but I'll go further, the RTX 2000 series was bad IN GENERAL for these reasons.
Seriously, with Pascal, we had a really reasonable GPU stack. $110 for a 1050, $140 for a 1050 ti, $200-250 for a 1060 depending on model, $380 for 1070, $600 for 1080, $700 for 1080 ti. Remember when the top end card was $700? Pepperidge farms remembers. Even worse, remember when $700 GPUs were only for the people who were rich and would throw insane money at GPUs? Seriously, there's a reason the real star of the series was the GTX 1060 6 GB, it was the best price/performance, and it was reasonable. You got tons of value for $250. It was half as good as the $700 card. It was the best price/performance just about for the whole series, and while 1050 ti and 1070 were solid options too, with more budget oriented consumers getting the 1050 ti which had similar longevity, and more allfluent but still midrange buyers going for the 1070, there was something that pleased everyone.
With the 2000 series, this is what happened to the product stack:
RTX 2060- $350
RTX 2070- $500
RTX 2080- $700
RTX 2080 ti- $1000
And I'm gonna be honest, I thought $350 for a 2060 was highway robbery at the time. That was almost as much as the 1070. And it only performed like a 1080. So really, the boost we got from Turing wasn't that good, although jayz mentioned that. Everything was RTX gud, and for most gamers it wasnt even worth it. The tech was very immature, hell, it still is almost a decade later. And you might be wondering, wait, what about the sub $300 market? EXACTLY. Well, to be fair, we got cards, we got the 1650 and 1660/1660 ti at the old prices, but yeah. Those cards were so weak they couldnt even support RT. And then RT and all that AI crap required specialized hardware on the card where it wasnt worth putting it on lower end models than the 2060. So anything below that just...wouldnt support anything that would eventually require RTX. They didnt even have enough VRAM since nvidia strangely regressed to some degree with turing with the 2060 only getting 6 GB, and the 50 cards being stuck at 4, and yeah. So they died off. Never mind the 470 had 8 GB for $200 back in 2016. Ridiculous, utterly ridiculous.
And yeah. Look at the market since. The 3000 series and 6000 series sucked because neither catered to the sub $300 market AT ALL. The 3060 and 6600 were both $330 with their bigger brothers (3060 ti/6600 XT) being $380-400. COVID basically jacked things up like is happening now where you were paying $400 for a 1050 ti at one point (another reason I say dont buy now if you dont have to). The 3050 and 6500 XT at $200-250 were a joke. And I swear, the only reason the RX 6000 series became as "legendary as I glaze it as now is because they couldnt sell cards when the bubble popped and suddenly they had to sell 6600s for like $200 and 6650 XTs for $250 just to move them. So eventually the market corrected itself, but it took a bubble painfully popping to do it (again, a huge reason you shouldnt buy now).
And yeah, that's the best the market ever got. In 2023, we got the 7600 for $250 and the 4060 for $300 and that's the lowest end either company supported. At least they reached the old 1060/580 style pricing, but now at the lowest end, with that budget market basically being ewaste. It became uneconomical to make lower end cards than that in part because all this new tech everyone was chasing required specialized hardware, which drove up costs of the whole thing.
And the 5000/9000 series initially followed similar pricing. The 5050 was $250, same as the 3050, it was a joke. The 5060 was $300 but then the ti models were around $400. The 9060 XT was $300 with the 16 GB one for $350, and then RAMpocalypse happened where now you're spending $330-400 for a fricking low end card again, this time like a 5050 or 7600, with the 5060 being like $450 and the 9060 XT reaching over $500 for the 16 GB model. It's a joke. It really is a joke.
A lot of people will say "oh it's inflation." This crap started in 2018, and most price increases since then are because the industry has suffered several severe demand induced crises from COVID and crypto, and then AI, and yeah. Us gamers have been getting screwed.
Anyway, I just wanted to agree with jayz on this one. the RTX 2000 series IS one of the most infamous GPU series of all times for me BECAUSE it normalized this crap. Worst part is, this isn't the first time nvidia pulled this crap. Back when I got into gaming Nvidia was similarly expensive but at least AMD/ATI was cheap. And when Nvidia tried this kinda pricing scheme with the 200 series back in like 2009, AMD hard countered them on pricing, forcing them to bring it down out of the stratosphere. That aint happening these days, at least not as much. AMD seems more interested in competing with the high end now, while only competing down to that $200-300 price range when the market is bad for them and they can't move units, and taking advantage of the same crises to push expensive cards. Still better than nvidia, but make no mistake, AMD isnt our friend here.
Honestly, if I didnt have so much reluctance to embrace intel due to their quirkiness, I'd be glazing them so hard now. Although even they're getting more expensive too, slowly but surely. It sucks. This whole market sucks. But yeah, I do blame Nvidia's greed first and foremost. And now, it's not just "inflation" that did this, it was Nvidia explicitly taking advantage of market conditions (and in some cases engineering them) to maximize profits, even if it makes gaming more unaffordable for people.
I miss 2016 and before when $500-700 GPUs were for rich people, most people bought $200 GPUs, and even $100 GPUs were viable for budget buyers. I miss when I bought the HD 5850 for like $260 only to get the 4th strongest single GPU in the world at the time (seriously, only the 5870, 470, and 480 were better, and yes, the 295 and 5970 existed but those were DUAL GPUs, SLI/crossfire driven monstrosities with absurd price tags and almost no one actually bought them but the hardcore enthusiast crowd). Seriously, why are we suddenly okay with $300 GPUs being the bare minimum to run games? Jesus Christ this market is broken. And the idiots on forums who defend this are just as ridiculous as the whole situation is. This is why I always say, no, the problem isnt just the top 1% or 0.1%, it's the top 20% in general. Their insane purchasing power is driving up costs for everyone else, and we need to tax the #### out of them to bring prices down for everyone else.
But yeah, I digress I guess.
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