I can get a good deal on an RX 6800 XT, or pay more for an RTX 2080 Ti. This is a big purchase for me, and I need the card to last around five years without an upgrade.
I've heard the 6000 series might stop getting drivers for new games. Would that stop new games from working, and which card makes more sense for the long term?
At those prices, I'd lean toward the 6800 XT. It's generally faster in conventional rendering and has more video memory than the 2080 Ti, which gives it some breathing room as games get more demanding.
That doesn't guarantee five years of playing every new release at high settings, though. Plan on turning settings or resolution down over time, and check benchmarks for the kinds of games and resolution you actually want to play.
Driver support ending doesn't mean games suddenly stop launching. An existing driver can still run many later releases. The catch is that you may miss game-specific fixes and optimizations, and a future game could have a compatibility problem that never gets fixed for your card.
Both cards currently receive drivers, but I wouldn't assume either will get updates for the full five years. Check the manufacturer's current support information before buying, and treat the end date as uncertain unless they've announced one.
There is also a features tradeoff. The 2080 Ti supports Nvidia's DLSS upscaling, while the 6800 XT has the advantage in raw performance and memory capacity. Check which upscaling options are available on each card in the games you care about rather than assuming every version of a feature works on every generation.
If a newer card fits the budget, compare it too. An RX 9060 XT with 16 GB was suggested as an alternative, though it may cost more than your deal allows. A newer card might have a longer support runway, but that alone doesn't make it worth stretching past what you can afford.
Answers are reviewed before publication.
_loosely~misplaced_9:
So even without a new driver for each game, it could still work, just with more risk of problems?
Pruitt:
Right. It's not an automatic cutoff, but there's no guarantee a particular future game will run properly either.