I tried to buy Nvidia's $60,000 gaming machine and couldn't
Commentary: Not just because I can't afford it. But also because I can't afford it.
Nvidia is such a tease. Every time the company's CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang gives a speech, he spends an hour on stage telling everybody why the company's new consumer-grade product is garbage compared to what he has behind closed doors.
Huang will stand there, mocking us with his awesome leather jacket, and show off the raw power of Nvidia's research-level GPUs and supercomputer Nvidia Tesla architecture. We'll be treated to a gorgeous video of photo-realistic stormtroopers -- a Star Wars video game ray-traced in real time -- only to be told it's not for us. It's the power of Nvidia's DGX Station. It's the future of video game graphics, and we can't buy it. Ever.
Today, Huang changed that trend. No longer will gamers have to settle for low-end consumer-grade graphics. Nvidia's CEO just announced that it would be selling a new, revolutionary game console with FOUR supercomputer Nvidia Tesla V100 GPUs. Photo-realistic graphics for just $60,000 -- or 3,000 easy payments of just $19.95.
OK, Nvidia, OK. My wife will kill me, but I'm in. There's a phone number: 1-889-789-2080. Let's do this.
"This number has been disconnected or is no longer in service."
Huang. Don't do this to me.
Sadly, it's not a real game console. It's Nvidia's standard presentation format -- a showcase of the technological achievements it's made on high end equipment and how those innovations are being filtered down to the consumer level card. The DGX Station and its Star Wars demo aren't new, but still serve as a good jumping off point for the real-time ray-tracing technology it's baking into what it is announcing today: the Nvidia RTX 2080.
That graphics card probably isn't going to bring real-time photo-realism to average gamers any time soon, but it is going to use the same ray-tracing technology to render realistic shadows, natural light and authentic reflections in real-time -- which can instantly make any game look much more realistic.
It's no $60,000 gaming supercomputer, but fine, Huang. I'll take it.