Putting AI/ML aside, I have a question for graphics experts or/and gamers: what is the practical [1] ceiling of the current champion, the 1080ti? I was under impression that that card already was much more than most people needed. In other words, is the new generation only useful for 4K gaming?
[1] By "practical" I mean on 1440p@144Hz monitors.
VR, for one, is going to (eventually) have insane resolution and performance requirements: a flat 90 to 120fps with perhaps 4K resolution for each eye.
Even my regular 1080 has trouble with a few current-gen games.
It doesn't have to be that bad. If they can get foveated rendering to work (rendering only the part you're looking at in the highest resolution), it will dramatically cut the performance requirements.
I'm currently running a 1070ti on a 1440p@144Hz monitor and I can maintain a solid 110-120 in AAA games that aren't pieces of shit (looking at you, PUBG) while on medium-high settings.
The 1080ti is still definitely more than you need for 1440p@144hz, as long as you're willing to mess with the settings. There are so many settings that eat performance for very little visual benefit, so if you're dead set on running every graphical setting at the highest, then you probably won't always hit 144hz at 1440p with a 1080ti.
IMHO you're correct, the new generation is right now only useful for 4k gaming. In a year or two after the full 20xx range is out, newer games with better graphics will be out and my 1070ti will probably no longer give the performance I want at 1440p.
Current cards can't cope with 4K@144Hz. May be new ones will be able to.
I'm waiting for AMD to release newer cards and for upstream to support FreeSync on Linux. No point in buying high refresh rate / high resolution monitor until then.
I run far cry 5, wolfenstein 2, battlefield 1 and overwatch ultra-maxed out at 4k 60fps pretty consistently with a 4.8ghz 7700k, 1080ti thats also a bit overclocked as well.
I think the purpose of this card is less to allow for an upgrade to 4k (the boost in speed for raster stuff is pretty trivial), but rather to enable the switch to ray tracing as a rendering tech. So you should see a visual improvement in your gaming at the same resolution/hz, rather than an increase in res/hz.
For me, it's around ~45-50fps@4k for a good set of games, and often ~100-120fps@144hz for me.
1000$ is a steep price for the 2080TI, although depending on the 2080 performance it might be the only card which can and will continue to reliably hit 60fps@4k.
Not upping ram with such a huge price increase is absolutely absurd.
You can easily push the 1080 Ti to its limit with 4K or 21:9 1440p (3440x1440). It's an incredible card, but it only feels overpowered at 1080p or maybe 16:9 1440p.
[1] By "practical" I mean on 1440p@144Hz monitors.