"REAL-TIME"
Everything that I read said "realtime"..Even the Nvidia website today still has multiple instances of "Realtime raytracing" performed by dedicated cores.
Nobody expected real-time to mean at lower-res (1080p is not acceptable at even half of this card's price-point) or at below 30 fps (which is also unacceptable for people that buy higher end cards) .
Choppy is not equal to real-time.
"DEDICATED"
There's nothing dedicated about those cores unless by "dedicated" they mean they are dedicating themselves to harming performance!
1080p is a step backwards.
30FPS is a step backwards.
50% performance hit (making a card (that costs over $1200) effectively perform like a card that costs $300) is unacceptable.
Charging people more than twice as much than the previous generation is capitalism at it's worst. If they keep driving prices up like this we'll all be screwed (even those that can currently afford it).
I've never been a fanboy of anything as I like to buy the best regardless of who made it but this is my last time buying anything Nvidia.
Just because no-one has competed with them, that shouldn't allow them to deceive, overcharge and exploit their customers and their position that much! I feel really ripped off! Sorry for the rant.
I entirely agree with parts of your rant (these prices are beyond absurd, and are frankly an insult to customers - as was 10XX series pricing above the 1070), but you seem desperately in need of a "read before you buy" lesson.
-There was plenty of press coverage going into the choppiness of Nvidia's demos and how this didn't bode well for actual performance of a first-generation product like this - particularly given how real-time ray tracing (regardless of resolution) hasn't been possible outside of massive render farms up until now. There were analyses of resolution and video frame rate demonstrating clearly that the video demos were 1080p at below 60fps. You seem to have made your purchase decision based solely on Nvidia's advertising. A hint: advertisers aren't neutral arbiters of truth. They're (only) interested in selling you stuff. Period. So, if you want to avoid being screwed over, wait for third-party reviews, and stick to trustworthy sources for said reviews, not "influencers" and other paid shills. And if you keep reading breathless articles praising this new and revolutionary technology that's going to enhance your games 9999999x, revive the dog you had when you were a kid and make you a millionaire just by existing, stop reading, go somewhere else, and scratch the source in question off the "trustworthy sources" list. Trustworthy journalists don't write like that.
-"Real time (rendering/ray-tracing)" means nothing more than frames being displayed immediately as they're rendered, as opposed to pre-rendering and displaying in sequence later. Of course, in practice, any form of effective real-time rendering requires a rendering output rate quick enough to maintain visual fluidity - for which there are many standards; 15fps for old cartoons, 24fps for film, 30fps for console games (usually) and 60fps (or more) for anything fast-paced. Nvidia are not wrong when saying that they're doing real-time ray traced rendering - it just doesn't live up to the standards of current gamers in terms of frame rate or resolution. This means that the tech isn't ready for prime time, but not that it isn't real-time. And what do sensible people do with tech that isn't ready for prime time? Either let it mature before buying, or buy it knowing that it's going to suck, but suck in a new and innovative way, and one that you can afford to waste money on.
-"Dedicated hardware" means the hardware is meant for a single (or single group of) job(s). Are you suggesting the RT cores either don't exist, or are used for other things than processing ray tracing? 'Cause there's nothing to indicate either of the two. Having dedicated hardware doesn't automatically imply that said hardware is
good enough. You seem to think "dedicated hardware" means something entirely different than what it actually means.
Were you ripped off? Price wise? Sure. Absolutely. Nvidia is price gouging, this is beyond any doubt. In terms of Nvidia overpromising? Possibly. This is first-gen tech, with one single implementation in real life. It may well improve, but it's pretty much a given that it'll suck to begin with. The thing is, nobody has
ever mentioned this improving performance, though, nor was the necessary drop in resolution a surprise to anyone paying attention.
Don't be gullible. Wait for reviews. Spend your money wisely, and get
proven, not promised, value for money. Don't pay people for making grandiose promises. That's how all the failed Kickstarted games, game consoles, and other gaming-related vaporware were funded, after all.