[smacktoward]

It comes down to whether you think RTX/raytracing will go from being a novelty to being a Must Have within the next few years. If it doesn’t, the 1660 would be the right choice, you’ll save some money now and can always get RTX in your next card if it makes sense then. On the other hand, if it does, getting the 2060 today will spare you having to buy a new card sooner than you normally would just to get RTX support.

[skohan]

But arguably, the 2060 is already the wrong card for the future of ray tracing. This current batch of cards are barely able to handle the limited ray-tracing features in the few fames its available in: i.e. one-bounce global illumination to a single light-source or reflections or ray-traced shadows.

If ray tracing does become increasingly relevant, this batch of cards (and especially the 2060 at the bottom) are likely to become dated rather quickly. Also as with any bleeding-edge technology, you're paying an early-adopter premium for something which is likely to see relatively large inter-generation improvements.

[swinglock]

If ray tracing becomes widespread in games, my bet is you'll need a new card to run that ray tracing with a good enough visual fidelity and high performance anyway. This is just the first generation.

I think of RTX like the first Oculus Rift. You shouldn't buy it to be future proof, it will be anything but, you buy it only because you're an enthusiast that want to play with the latest tech early and plans to upgrade before it breaks or become obsolete anyway.

[andybak]

Being fair - the Rift hasn't been superceded and there's not really anything imminent that would make it obsolete. So someone buying it on release has had a pretty good run.

Obviously - this is partly because of VR uptake being slower than some expected but I use a Rift daily and it still does it's job admirably.

[swinglock]

I'm talking about what the first version that consumers could buy, that a colleague brought to work in 2013 I think. It had a low resolution.

[andybak]

The first consumer Rift is the same one currently being sold.

You might mean the DK1 - which wasn't generally available to non-developers but I don't think there were any stringent checks in place over who was a developer.