Part of this is true... but then you have the beautiful situation where that 3060ti is endowed with a measly 8GB and you still find yourself cutting back on textures and whatnot to not stutter through your content. Like you say there is ample core power in current and last gen cards. Turing much the same really.
You could indeed also get an RDNA2 midrange card to have the VRAM. But the 3060ti is a horrible example of midrange progress, its a card that effectively regressed in how long it'll last in the midrange compared to say a Pascal or Turing alternative with similar VRAM but a much less powerful core. So even in the midrange, on Nvidia, you do have adverse effects besides even price, which result in reduced usable lifespan before you're cutting down settings that noticeably hit IQ.
The bottom line remains: on Nvidia, you are paying the RT price on the entire stack. The last cards avoiding that issue are the 16 series - not exactly midrange by todays standards.
IMHO the midrange has definitely not improved in any way shape or form, past the 1060 6GB. It has regressed. Perf/$ gen to gen barely moves forward or is in fact worse; VRAM relative to core power got fár worse and cache doesn't alleviate that in most cases; and absolute pricing also just went up.
I'm honestly trying to find a nice purchase now in the midrange of last several generations. Its just not there. Every single Nvidia card is handicapped in some way or another at its given price point and stack position. Coming from a 1080, it seems the only cards I can look at are 6800 (-XT) or 3080 10GB, the latter being sub optimal just the same - and a whoppin 320W TDP. And then I'm still looking not at 450-500 (reasonable range imho) but 600+ EUR.
Seriously man, I need a full bucket of cognitive dissonance to see improvement here over the last two generations...
I also dare your GF to run Darktide @ 1440p on a 3060ti. Gonna be a fun sub 60 FPS experience... You're going to have to use FSR/DLSS as well to get decent frames. Please stop selling nonsense. And this isn't anything special either, its just a UE4 game.
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