Let me put it another way; I'm on the fence about going with this one or wait - can't do both (might not even want to do the 2nd if the price for the additional memory is mental). Whichever I go with, I'm not in a hurry right now and can wait another few months of need be.
Before I get called a conspiracy theorist again....
1. These cards are cheap for a few reasons.
Namely, they want to look like the good guys.
They want to see what AMD has.
They want to know what the consoles can do.
They don't know the answers to that yet, so you can assume this is a tentative "test the waters" launch. As such it is not the only launch of Ampere you will see.
2. They have restricted the VRAM to make sure that if they do indeed beat AMD that they will get you back for their refresh, or Super cards, or whatever else they decide to milk out of Ampere. This is a historical proven fact, then never just release one set of cards per gen unless AMD are totally dead in the water. Fact is they weren't, and Navi forced Nvidia to release better cards and screw over every one.
3. Going back to the good guys? I can bet you everything I own if AMD fail they will go
straight back to being assholes. The higher VRAM cards will come out at much higher prices. Remember - Nvidia don't do anything nice for any one. They never have and they never will.
So what I am saying is? don't be fooled. 10gb VRAM is less than the 11 we have already ! think about it. The only way to be safe? go to the £1300 card.
Look, I have gone through this on other forums. I was called mad. However, what I do have is 6 years experience in the most cut throat sales business I have ever had the misfortune to be in. It was an American company, and they used to train us on ripping people off. Seriously it amounted to no more than that.
They call it "rail roading" or "linear higher sales". The way they do it? well basically on the TV right they advertise this product "risk free" (there is your first catch out, people think it is free IT IS NOT). You call in and you find out it's $70. On automatic shipment/debit every 60 days. You can not just buy it once, unless you buy 6 of them for $400 as a one time shipment. This is called an upsale. And, the script says that at every attempt they make to buy the cheaper one you tell them why they shouldn't, and only use it as a fall back. If you don't sell the $400 one? no extra comission.
So when Nvidia design their product stack they use the exact same dirty tricks they were taught in marketing school. It's exactly the same stuff we used to get "trained" to do.
So they basically start leading you to the more expensive products by cutting back the cheaper ones. When you question it you say "Hmm, maybe I should go for the 3080?" or "Hmm, maybe I should just get the best one I can".
And that is what it is designed to do. Those selling their 2080Ti? if they buy this "cheap"* 3080? they will be back. Why? as it's not even spec for spec for what they have already. And Nvidia know this. They know that next gen titles (NOTE - NEXT GEN NOT LIKE ANYTHING WE HAVE NOW!) are going to pig on VRAM more so than ever before, because they are all going to be 4k games and PC gamers demand higher resolution textures and all of the eye candy. Which all eats VRAM.
*So the first thing out of your mouth when watching that Nvidia video (don't lie, I said it too !) was "Holy crap they are cheap !!!!!". They are not. They are just cheaper than Turing, and if you study the stack you will see how any one with a 2080Ti really should buy a 3090. As basically the 3080 is under specced (only on VRAM).
They're not cheap though. They are just Pascal prices. On a lousy node, that guzzle voltage.