Getting RTX 2080 vs 1080TI

[Orisinger]

Hey everyone

I currently have one EVGA 1080ti, and I'm considering getting a second, or maybe a third GPU.
From what I understand - the 2080 RTX is SLIGHTLY better than 1080TI, yet the it has less VRAM.

In my case - unless I'm buying used 1080TI from Amazon, it is incredibly difficult for me to get NEW ones because of money and importing issues.
RTX 2080s on the other hand are cheaper easier to get.

- - - -

Is it worth sticking with the 1080TI's even if they're used ones?
Will the 2080 get significantly better than the 1080TI in the future? (what about NV-Link? is it going to be RTX exclusive only?)

Your help will be most appreciated!

[frankmci]

We recently had to make a similar decision and went with a few more 1080 TIs. Now that the used market has returned to something close to sanity, we got several identical units in a single lot via EBay. We generally do not put any of our production work on the bleeding edge, so sticking with the tried and true 1080s for another year or two made more sense. As you mentioned, the VRAM was part of the decision. Sure, the new out of core memory feature is nice, but in my experience it can still lead to some instability, and we have to push around some pretty big data sets.

This keeps driver issues to a minimum as well, with pretty much every machine in the shop running some combination of single or double 10xx cards. If it was my personal machine, I don't think I'd try running two different generations of cards together, at least for rendering. Even setting one gen for monitors and the other for Octane, to my mind, is just asking for weird driver issues down the line. In the long run, what's your time worth? If you end up spending two days chasing down some strange conflict, you've probably blown any savings in money or render time.

That's just my opinion in the Sea of Internet Uncertainty.

[LOVEXMEDIA]

I have 4 1080ti's in my setup, 1 as my main and 3 to render. I would say getting one of the new RTX cards is worth the investment after OTOY releases an update that finally takes advantage of the RT cores. Buying one before that is not really worth it "new market" tax. I've head whispers that with the RT cores running in parallel to aid in rendering is a drastic difference in comparison to running without them so saving your dollars if possible could potentially see you getting a 2080ti that could work and aid your current 1080ti or by itself if the render times are better. Assuming the improvement of the RT cores is as amazing as rumored.

If I may be bold and mentioned that I am planing on picking up 2 x RTX Titans this year as my long term render solution consider with the NVlink I could effectively have 48GB ish of headroom and all the power I could ever need but again that is assuming that the RT cores are as beastly as rumored.

What ever you end up going with I wish you luck!