THE CRUNCH
Nvidia’s Turing GPUs arrived eight years ago, promising a new era of realism that has taken time to mature. The GeForce RTX 2080 and 2080 Ti led the charge, but the feature that defined the generation, real-time ray tracing, was initially thin on the ground. Despite CEO Jensen Huang’s hype that ray tracing would open a “new golden age of gaming,” many gamers were sceptical of the performance impact and the lack of RT
Early showcases included Battlefield V, Metro Exodus, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, but the feature was often a gimmick rather than a necessity. The RTX 2080 Founders Edition launched at $799, a notable premium over the $699 price of competing models from AIB partners, while the flagship RTX 2080 Ti carried a hefty $1,200 price tag that was deemed out of reach for most.
Eight years on, the technology has matured significantly, with DLSS and better optimisation making ray tracing accessible to mainstream gamers. The legacy of the RTX 20 series is that it planted the seed for a visual standard now adopted by consoles and mobile devices, even if the initial reception was mixed. The arrival of the RTX 3070 later offered similar performance to the original $1,200 flagship at a much more palatable price point.