A social media post made by a user sparked a major debate among PC gamers concerning the question of whether or not Nvidia’s GTX 1080 Ti should be regarded as a legendary card. The post by the user strongly suggested Nvidia would not be able to produce another GPU as outstanding as the 1080 Ti, and this was an opinion that was widely endorsed and even discussed in the replies. The whole discussion shows that among the gamers who consider the product as the best of all times there is still a longing for the triad of performance, value and longevity in PC hardware that never ends.
I mean, I was scrolling like I usually do and this tweet just suddenly attracted my attention and it was like an emotional punch?? Truth be told, same. GTX 1080 Ti. Just saying the name is like casting a secret spell to certain PC builders’ generation. It was the GPU that just… wouldn’t die. Even now, some people are arguing that nothing has ever had its appeal. Now if you think about it, this is really unbelievable, right? We have the 20 series, 30 series, even the 40 series with all its DLSS 3 frame generation magic. But, nothing. A big crowd of gamers thinks that the best one was a card that came out in 2017. Just stop and think about that for a second.
The replies to the tweet had the effect of being a love letter mixed with a funeral dirge. One person called it “the golden age” which is almost the same as saying that the situation was summed up in one word. Another one stated it in a very straightforward manner, “It was so good at generation-wise position that it would be comparable to a 5090TI released today.” That is a strong statement but the feeling behind it is so strong that one cannot help but give credit to the message! The central point, which is very rational, is the crazy value. As AI Grok mentioned in one of the replies, “Titan-level performance for $700.” At that time Titan was a completely unmatchable luxury product priced above a thousand dollars. And then the 1080 Ti came in, overtook it in gaming and cost a lot less. It was a mic-drop moment.
And the VRAM was a another story! It had 11GB of GDDR5X memory. ELEVEN. Think about some of the graphics cards Nvidia has recently tried to put into us that had a mere 8GB. The users were not having it in the comments, one of them was saying the 1080 Ti is “Better than rtx 4060 8GB 💀.” The skull emoji really conveys the thought. One of the main reasons the 1080 Ti was so durable is its huge power. It was there much before 4K gaming was widely accepted, and when it finally came it didn’t have any problems with even the most demanding games. One user even called it “almost the Nokia 3310 of GPUs.” That could be the most accurate definition ever penned.
But the most fascinating aspect of the entire situation is that the discourse becomes hot very quickly when people start contemplating why a new 1080 Ti has not been introduced yet. To the gamers, the reasons are… pessimistic but probably true. One user straight out said: “They have learned; if they made something like 1080ti again, people wouldn’t be buying GPU’s as frequently as the companies would like.” That hurts! Another user in the discussion room said that the hardware companies “had given up on the consumer market years ago.” It is believed that Nvidia gave birth to a monster of value and longevity,which, in fact, is counterproductive to business in case you plan to sell a new card every two years. If you create a product that is too good, people just… keep using it! What a crazy idea!
The sentimental feelings are very strong. Many replies simply express that users still own one. “still running 1080 ti in a dev box,” one user wrote. “I still use mine!” another said. “Still worth $200 it’s what I have in my rig still.” That is after seven years! Try to say the same about most electronics. It is a testimony that the card was over-engineered and at the same time too forward-looking. It was not just for 1080p, as one discussant noted – it was a 4K pioneer. And it was introduced before the crypto-mining craze completely distorted the price level, so it felt like a real gift to the PC enthusiasts.
Certainly, not everyone agrees on this. A few other cards were given some virtual cheering from a couple of voices. Someone declared the “RTX 4090!” Another pointed to the 980 Ti. One person even mentioned that their “5090 is the first time a card felt special after my 8800GT.”
