This Seems Rushed... - GeForce RTX Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
2,169 words · ~10 min read
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Plastic is still on here.
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So, RTX pre-orders are apparently going gangbusters.
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And I get it.
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Some of you out there have had literally two years
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to save your pennies and frankly,
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not a lot of exciting PC hardware to buy in the interim.
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But come on, giving away your money
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without seeing any performance data
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is a bad way to make purchase decisions.
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Besides, making matters worse
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is that the marquee feature of the RTX series,
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real-time ray tracing, is basically MIA today.
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So, all we're left with is how much the GeForce 20 series
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improves performance over last gen
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in traditionally rendered games
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and some discussion about NVIDIA's
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generally bass-ackwards approach to this launch.
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Speaking of bass-ackwards, not using a VPN.
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Do you have privacy?
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Do you have an internet access VPN yet?
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If not, go get it at the link below.
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And if you do, well, go get it anyway.
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Makes a great gift.
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Give the gift of internet security.
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So, before we start,
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there's a term that you need to understand, rasterization.
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Without getting too deep into it,
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your graphics card uses this technique
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to turn a three-dimensional scene
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into a flat 2D plane of pixels,
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similar to a photo, many times per second.
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Since the days of wireframe and flat polygons,
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we've added lighting, textures, post-processing,
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and more to the pipeline,
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but they all still only apply to the screen space
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versus the whole scene's world space.
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TLDR, rendering a game today isn't fundamentally different
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from how Star Fox was rendered on the Super Nintendo in 1993.
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Ray tracing, meanwhile, is fundamentally different.
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So, it's a simulation of light interacting,
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with the world space,
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acting sort of like an eyeball in reverse.
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So, instead of rays of light coming in,
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rays are actually cast out from the camera position,
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where your screen is,
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and then everything is calculated from there.
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The more rays you have,
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and the more times those rays are allowed to interact
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or bounce around the scene,
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the more detail you get.
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And it's a superior method in every way to rasterization,
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except for one, speed.
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Up until now, ray tracing has only been available
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in rendering software that can take hours
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or even over a day to complete a single frame
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on a high-end workstation.
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So, how the heck, then, is NVIDIA pumping out
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many frames per second using this tech?
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Well, the new enthusiast-tier Turing architecture cards,
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the 2080 and the 2080 Ti,
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include what they're calling RT cores,
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which, for RTX-enabled games,
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render a simplified ray-traced scene in parallel
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with the standard CUDA cores raster rendering.
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So, the result is a traditionally rendered scene
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with ray-traced lighting, occlusion, and reflections.
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So, that hybrid rendering, as NVIDIA calls it,
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gives you a lot of the benefits of ray tracing
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without the massive computational cost.
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So, you can use a lot of the benefits of ray tracing, without the massive computational cost.
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So, that's the way it's done.
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and without game developers needing
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to completely re-engineer their game engines.
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And there's more.
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The Titan V's Tensor cores are back as well.
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For GeForce, these are being leveraged
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for NVIDIA's new deep learning super sample anti-aliasing,
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which NVIDIA claims can achieve near 64X super sampling
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with less performance impact than traditional AA,
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which they've achieved by pre-training data sets
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for each supported game,
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and then pushing those results out via driver updates.
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There is a catch though.
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Just like RTX real-time ray tracing,
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it has to be supported on a game by game basis.
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So now you know.
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But knowing is only half of the battle.
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We also need to see it,
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which unfortunately is easier said than done
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because we could have the most epic test benches
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in the world,
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like this one I have here in front of me right now.
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Then I got my finger stuck, ow.
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Anyway, there are no actual RTX games to test.
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So we can't very well measure its performance
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versus non-RTX then, can we?
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Well, we'll get back to that in a minute.
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First, let's have a look at some normal gaming results.
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And you know what?
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They are pretty good.
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All across the board,
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the 2080 Ti averages in the high 50s or higher.
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And remember guys,
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the 4K Ultra with the 2080 seeming to be content
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with the traditional,
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let's meet the performance
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of the previous generation Ti card level of performance.
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Frankly, all of this is a massive relief
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given NVIDIA's refusal to talk
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about traditional gaming performance in their keynote.
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As for productivity,
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well, we were a little disappointed
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when Blender refused to run on the new cards.
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Compute capability 7.5 doesn't have a kernel yet,
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but if the rest of these results are anything to go by,
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it's gonna be good.
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Cause these numbers just crush the 1000 series cards.
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And the 2080 even manages to match AMD's Vega 64
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in Luxray's OpenCL rendering.
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That was a huge gap to bridge.
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So Turing GPUs are gonna make really good workstation cards.
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I can't wait to get my hands
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on the Quadro versions of these guys.
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So overall then,
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the 2080 performs kind of like a 1080 Ti, cool.
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And the 2080 Ti performs kind of
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like a Titan V, a much more expensive niche product.
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Also cool, well, sort of cool.
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All this performance comes at a cost.
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And I'm not just talking
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about the much higher price tags than last gen.
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Now the manufacturing process has shrunk 25%
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from 16 nanometer to 12 nanometer,
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but with over 50% more transistors.
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So that means massive dies
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with higher overall power draw and thermals.
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Hence,
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the 2080 Ti is gonna be a great product,
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not to mention extremely like shockingly heavy,
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twin fan vapor chamber cooler and the beefy power delivery
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on the Founders Edition designs this time around.
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You guys should let us know, by the way,
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if you want us to dive into overclocking these cards
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in a future video in the comments below.
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Speaking of future video,
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surprisingly, NVENC got an update.
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So text is now more readable
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and there's less blocking than the 1080 Ti.
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It looks very similar to,
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if not better than X264 on the fast preset.
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So it looks like game streamers
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or anyone else who relies on high quality stream capture,
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no longer needs to choose between quality and speed.
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And there's other cool features baked on board as well.
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Like the new VR link connector that handles both power
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and high resolution video over a single USB type C cable
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for VR headsets.
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All right then.
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So what about DLSS?
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And where are the RTX on, RTX off comparisons?
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Well, that's actually a really good question.
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So Battlefield V was delayed until late November.
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Shadow of the Tomb Raider,
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which is out and is an RTX title,
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is apparently getting the functionality added
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in a post-release patch.
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But that's it then, right?
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Wrong.
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We weren't gonna give up on you guys that easy.
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So we reached out to a developer directly
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with a game in the works,
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that supports both technologies.
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And they graciously agreed to come over
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and show off their beta exclusively for you guys.
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Originally they did anyway.
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So this is where showing off our shiny new hardware ends
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and the criticism begins.
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So they were forced to bail.
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They couldn't give us any details,
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but if you wanna know what I think,
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I think it's that NVIDIA and more accurately RTX,
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they're not ready yet.
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I mean, to put the rushed last minute nature
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of this launch in perspective,
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we got our card and its driver at around noon on Friday,
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the 14th of September.
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This video goes up early in the morning on the 19th.
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That is at best 2.7 working days
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to evaluate the biggest graphics card launch in two years.
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And other publications that we've spoken with have confirmed
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that they were in a similar boat.
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So like, what are they doing?
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Is this someone high up in the chain
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having an executive moment?
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Is this them not wanting us to spend much time
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digging into these things?
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What purpose is served by rushing this launch?
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I mean, the thing too to consider is that it's not like AMD
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has anything to compete with the 1080 TI,
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let alone its successor.
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So I guess this is open letter to NVIDIA time.
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Guys, people ordered this thing
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on a promise and yeah, it's early days.
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Maybe things aren't quite polished yet.
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I get it, but you're clearly not ready to deliver.
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And frankly, this is the kind of
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that gives PC gaming a bad name.
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Shiny badges on the sides of boxes that at best
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are supported by a small handful of games
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or at worst flat out don't do anything.
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And that's what RTX is today.
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It doesn't do anything.
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So that's what I have to say, guys.
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I can't benchmark goals.
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I can't review future potential.
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I mean, honestly, given your track record,
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RTX will probably be pretty cool,
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but this whole situation is a ridiculous self-pwn here.
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Like outside of hopeless fan boys, when they buy something,
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people expect it to actually do what it says on the tin,
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or they expect to...
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at least be able to get a glimpse of what they're getting
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that hasn't been run through your own PR department.
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As it stands right now,
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the only tangible things that we can show our viewers,
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which are your customers,
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are the very much curated NVIDIA special DLSS build
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of the Final Fantasy 15 benchmark,
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and then a couple of ray tracing demos
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that tell us nothing about the real world
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before and after performance impact.
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I mean, we can stare at them,
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which is like, wow, such excite.
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So like, it looks like it works,
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and maybe this is what these features will look like
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in actual games, but who can say for sure
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when we can only test in a tightly controlled environment?
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So you're letting us run benchmarks,
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but you're still making it really hard
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to recommend this thing for the function
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that is right in the name of the product,
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because nobody without a speak about it
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and we'll cut off your balls NDA,
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actually knows how well RTX works.
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So bottom line for you, the viewer then,
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these cards are strong performers,
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and that's really good both for them
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and for the upcoming lower end Turing cards
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that won't have RT or tensor cores,
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but we can't draw a real conclusion
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because this review is incomplete,
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just like the RTX 2000 series.
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But you know what's not incomplete?
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Thermaltake.
12:18
Thermaltake's 20th anniversary.
12:19
It's like complete, which is why they're celebrating
12:21
with their level 20 case series.
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They've got four case styles to choose from,
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the VT, the XT, the GT,
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and an updated version
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of their triple chambered full tower case.
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They've all got a sleek modern design
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with rounded front corners and tempered glass.
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They've all got ample room for cable management
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and radiator mounts for water cooling,
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and they also feature USB type C connections.
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Check out the link to get yours now
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at the link in the video description.
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Check out the link to get, whatever.
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Check out the link to get yours.
12:46
It's down below.
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You know where it is.
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So thanks for watching, guys.
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If you disliked this video, then you can hit that button.
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But if it was awesome, you can hit like, get subscribed,
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or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff
12:56
we featured at the link in the video description.
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But we're not gonna go full on go buy it.
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How much of your life do you wanna look back on
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and not have had ray tracing?
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Because the reality of it is, whether you buy it today
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or you buy it in two weeks,
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it's gonna be the same amount of time
13:10
because you don't have it yet,
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even if you own the hardware.
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Anyway, also linked in the description is our merch store,
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which has cool shirts like this one
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and our community forum, which you should totally join.
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It's like infuriating, you know?
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It's like when you get like,
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it's like when you buy a new CPU,
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but the motherboard was out of stock
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and you're just like, this does nothing.
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This does nothing until I have the rest of the pieces.