Which OS?
How long do you plan on using it for?
It's possible that Pascal may continue to have active updated drivers another 2.5-3 years but unknown what will get broken and never fixed...
Don't worry about ray tracing when buying a card unless you are developing for it especially for those cards. It's not worth the $ but if you must have it then don't get a 1080.

https://endoflife.date/nvidia-gpu

As always, OS will be Win 10 Pro.

Cheers,

Is this for a newer machine with which you're playing newer games? Or is this for a somewhat older build to play older games? I'd go for the 2080 the price difference will be negligible, and the extra performance is nice insurance to upgrade eye candy.

Do you plan to play (or care about) any older PhysX titles with PhysX enabled and/or GameWorks titles such as those of the Batman Arkham series? I was and am shocked... shocked how poorly they play with PhysX enabled on the RX 7900 XTX (and of course GameWorks is not available at all if you're playing Arkham Knight); we're talking dips into the 20s. Sacred 2 Fallen Angel is another one. (Workarounds exist of course, but only with PhysX practically disabled or removed). Most games like Castlevania Lord of Shadows are fine but just be aware if you decide not to travel the Nvidia route. I thought CPU speeds in this age would pick up the slack, but I couldn't have been more wrong.

Well, No older than 8 years old games up to current games released in 2022 before raytracing craze.

I still can get GTX 1080 and RTX 2080 and run in two machines if I come across any issues using RTX 2080.

Cheers,

I'm still on a gtx 1080 for my main machine (alongside i7 9700) and it broadly still plays everything fine at high details. Though I'm very firmly still playing at 1920x1080 (or smaller - often 1680x1050 for games that benefit from playing in a window with maps/guides open).

But.

I really wouldn't be buying one now; it's simply too old and too many generations behind. That does leave the problem of what to replace it with... and there simply isn't anything in the current lineup that matches it for affordability (I bought it used at 18 months old for £150. Try getting anything like that now... it is just impossible).

I've always been a "buy a upper end card for £150 about 18 months after release" person... and that is going all the way back to the Diamond Stealth 3d 2000 and Voodoo 1 pairing from new. You just can't do that these days thanks to the crypto and now AI idiocy. We're trying to source A100 and H100 cards at work for scientific computing and most of our suppliers are quoting 12 month lead times on them... no discounts... and money up front to reserve them. The market has gone insane.... and despite what everyone says about prices falling, we are still seeing the impact on the consumer level from a few years ago - I can't see it going back to the 'good old days'.

I can't help with this too, yet what's the reasons not to have 1080? Even I'm playing at 1080p which my monitor' resolution supports.

Is there any aka "vintage" pre-"ray tracing" games that still works with RTX 2080?

Cheers,