The NVIDIA Turing GPU Architecture Deep Dive: Prelude to GeForce RTX
by Nate Oh on September 14, 2018 12:30 PM ESTClosing Thoughts
With a tagline like ‘Graphics Reinvented’, NVIDIA is certainly not straying from putting Turing in the most revolutionary limelight as possible. In that sense, NVIDIA is choosing to compare Turing to Pascal rather than Volta for every possible circumstance, especially for gaming. This decision is certainly not unfounded because for consumers, the Turing-based GeForce 20-series succeeds the Pascal-based GeForce 10-series. However, this can give the impression that because Turing is so different from Pascal, it warrants dissimilar comparisons like RTX-OPS metrics or gaming performance uplifts with DLSS or raytracing enabled.
The situation becomes a little more muddled because of several reasons:
- The pricing and availability of the RTX 20-series means that on a purely market segmentation level, it does not directly replace Pascal gaming products
- As gaming-focused cards, the major new features (RT cores, tensor cores, advanced shading) of the RTX 20-series do not operate out-of-the-box in games, are specific to select games, and
- The burden of communication is on the developers to educate consumers on the details of specific raytracing effects or use of AI-accelerated denoisers
These aren’t points that necessarily need to define Turing, except that NVIDIA has pushed the envelope by going all-in with marketing and branding. For their part, NVIDIA will have an continously updated list of games with RTX platform support.
On one hand, Turing seems like a possible solution to the gaming/compute architecture divergence. It seems less likely now that NVIDIA would backtrack into a more standard design for maximum rasterization performance, though obviously that remains to be seen with how the product fares. In any case, as most silicon design firms hvae leapfrogging design teams, the major decisions are likely not to move too far to the fixed function side, if only because the greatest strength of GPUs in compute is its programmability and versatility.
Looking back at ray tracing, it seems that even if it isn't immediately practical, there would still be a seeding effect to be gained via enthusiasts and certain gamers, which would work well with higher-profile AAA games. As we move into next week, it appears that the GeForce RTX 20-series is definitely one of the more nuanced graphics products, with both caveats and potential.
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Yojimbo - Saturday, September 15, 2018 - link
The sites I look at put $649 2013 dollars at about $700 today. They use the CPI, the Consumer Price Index. That is the standard way to compare values over consumer goods and cost of living in general between different years where the CPI has been recorded. I have no idea where the numbers in your chart have come from. For instance, by the CPI, the 7800 GTX 512, which was released in 2005, is about $840 in 2018 dollars, and $825 in 2017 dollars, far more than the $783 listed in your chart.Note that if you have a steady 2% inflation per year over 13 years you get a 29% increase in prices.
Yojimbo - Saturday, September 15, 2018 - link
And besides, your chart, even with the wrong numbers, doesn't show what you claim to show. The 780, the 280, the 8800 GTX, and the 7800 GTX all have launch prices around the RTX 2080, even though the RTX 2080 has a bigger die than any of them.eddman - Saturday, September 15, 2018 - link
Yes it does. 2080 Ti is the most expensive geforce launch card. It's not my job, as a buyer, to dig up die sizes or even care about them. I only care about performance/price ratios which these cards are terrible at.eddman - Saturday, September 15, 2018 - link
... they are terrible because the price/performance ratio hasn't improved in any substantial way. 1080 Ti offered ~70% performance increase over 980 Ti for just ~8% higher launch MSRP.Yojimbo - Saturday, September 15, 2018 - link
OK, so when GM produced the Hummer that's directly comparable to their Suburban because they were both SUVs. It's not your job to be an intelligent creature and realize that the Hummer opened up a new market segment. Instead, spend your energy resenting GM. You can do what you want but that doesn't make it rational.eddman - Sunday, September 16, 2018 - link
... except a Hummer is a Hummer and a Suburban is a Suburban. They are not part of the same lineup. Also, a car is not a video card.2080 Ti directly follows 1080 Ti based on the naming. It's not my fault they did it. They could've named it 2090 Ti if they really meant it to be a different product category, but they didn't so based on common branding logic 2080 Ti is the successor to 1080 Ti and therefore it is not out-of-the-ordinary to expect close pricing.
Rational? What I wrote is completely rational. It is you who is trying to somehow make it look that a ~42% price jump for a 40%-45% performance increase in regular rasterized games is ok. It is not. This is probably the worst generational price/performance ratio vs. the old gen I've seen.
eddman - Sunday, September 16, 2018 - link
... unless they plan on releasing GTX 2080 Ti/2080 at lower prices, but given the potential confusion that it might cause, probably not.0ldman79 - Sunday, September 16, 2018 - link
Oddly enough, going by that comparison the H2 is built on the same platform as the Suburban.Killmorefor - Sunday, September 16, 2018 - link
That chart is pretty accurate, but would benefit from a 3D showing price drops after the next gen introduction. The chart apples, and but does not show the price jump before the chart started, nor the current jump for the next gen the OP has very good point.markiz - Monday, September 17, 2018 - link
Yeah, so what?I don't understand.. If the price is too high, they will not sell much.