Did you know your 2060 6GB is a direct match to the 1080 with 8GB in core performance? That right there is a writing on the wall: already GPUs moved to a tigher fit the moment RT got introduced. And the 2060 was effectively one of the best offers in the (early) Turing stack as well. That was the first time perf/dollar came to a near complete standstill over 2 years of time between gens. In the meantime, it couldn't, can't and will never do any kind of meaningful RT. Although, fair's fair, x60 was never endowed with VRAM to last it longer than 3-4 years. But that reduction right there is a painful one. The same thing happened with 3080 10GB. Trimmed down below par. The 1080 I have now is getting long in the tooth, too. But I'm still pushing 3440x1440 on it, see games exceed 6GB VRAM, and they run well; especially with FSR. Small difference: the latter card is now reaching the age of 6~6,5 years.
TL DR-your expectations weren't wrong, but you did buy the wrong card to do it with. When you're looking to last 4+ years with a GPU, you want VRAM headroom, and enough bandwidth. The exact thing Nvidia is cutting down since Turing.
That's in a nutshell what has been happening across the Nvidia stack at large. Today, we see a 4090 that on release struggles already on two notable games; Cyberpunk at full tilt and Portal, the latter being a horribly simplified full path traced application, after all, its geometry and texture simplicity offers major optimization chances. We're like those donkeys chasing the carrot. We'll never eat it, but we'll sniff it from time to time if only we keep running to the latest greatest. I've never been a donkey like that, it just doesn't feel right to me. I feel like being taken for a ride.
Innovation, progress, I guess so, all I see is pretty limited progress for three generations worth of innovation... for an extreme performance cost. Even with DLSS3 on the FPS gets a factor 4-5 worse in Portal. Without DLSS3, its a factor 20 worse or even more. Is it a better game for it? I'm really not seeing it tbh...
Its worth questioning this push.