..."classic performance"?
Is this seriously some kind of bull%$&% marketing drivel nVidia is trying to ram down our throats or something? It's not "classic" it's just plain raster. You don't need to invent new words for it and frankly no matter how much they try and push this the average gamer just doesn't care about raytracing. The problem with it is raster already got really really good over the last two decades at faking it coupled with the hairworks tier performance issues that even 3 whole generations deep nVidia has not yet overcome, to such a degree they tried shilling an upscaler as "a FeatureTM not a bug" when we all know nobody would be using upscalers at all or even talking about them if the hardware was good enough to run things natively (and I still won't take anything seriously that starts talking about non-native, it's literally saying "I can't actually do it").
What matters now is the race to 4k144hz affordability. Because this was the dream last generation, was playing things at 4k, which even raster RT-off Cyberpunk 2077 pushed the highest end hardware, and 4k panels cost too much. Even on release 4k60 panels were expensive af when 3080 and 6800XT hit. So it became more about having an affordable 4k panel, and getting cheaper and more affordable cards.
Thanks to nuVidia that didn't happen. The cost of 4k monitors dropped to the point where most people could easily afford them, no longer being like $600 for a 4k75hz we now have $300 monitors that are fairly decent. You can easily get a 4k144hz monitor now.
A year ago this is what everybody was talking about, not "4k RT" we already saw that, instead it was "oh wow I wonder if I can game on a 4k monitor with a 7700XT or 4070!" That clearly was thinking about mostly raster, and maybe super smudgy upscaling RT at best. Which to be fair, you could've done on lots of older games anyway with a 6800XT, so in fairness, 4k gaming already was a reality with the 1080ti, which iirc comparable 5700XT and 2070super can play Witcher 3 all ultra 4k60, sure. But we didn't have 4k144 before, and the buzz is that was the reality.
Instead the reality is epic disappointment as there's been no new uplift, just telescoping the halo range out which is why nuvidia dropped prices on its higher end, because these are largely just re-brands of their high end RTX 3000 series, with a halo range pushed out further with equally higher TDP, and at tremendous cost. That's the literal definition of stagnation right here. So there's nothing new and nothing to be excited about because it costs at least as much if not more and consumes more power.
True. If they would've used TSMC 6N I wouldn't have minded 15% less performance for 30% less price, as an example.
I feel like they'll consider subscription-based performance, in the coming years

You buy a RTX 5050 and for a measly 50 $ / month you can turn it into a RTX 5070
They have already attempted doing this with bull---- like Stadia etc. the major tech companies all have been trying to move to subscription models for ages now with even M$ Outlook being entirely online b.s. than actually downloading an application or installing Microsoft Works off disc. This is mainly because it's not just more lucrative but more reliable, you want to hook someone on heroin so they keep coming back, not just buy them a brick. "It won't kill you though" idk nvidia's working on killing you in a housefire with 3090s and 4090s

So this isn't really something new, and they've been trying to find a way to do it for many years now where "you'll own nothing and be happy" and you're basically just renting GPU utilization from some server farm. This is why people like Jensen LOVED the mining craze, it just wasn't reliable as they hoped.
It comes down to economic models and yeah I'm f'ing jaded it's basically turning into every last thing people warned me "the commies will do this nightmare to you!" and instead I find it's the Capitalists doing it. Like I don't trust or like Valve simply based off their model, and the fact I don't own my games. I was blessed enough Poland exists, so at least I can mainly buy games from GOG, but they don't carry every game yet. Meanwhile the sh--ier companies are all trying to move to always-online b.s., they've been trying to move to subscription based services for AGES now. Like you remember that RealID b.s. with Blizzard? Well, they've been trying to find a way to get WoW-like online gaming, everyone has, it's not just about the lootbox gambling which itself if you look into it computer phones/tablets have had gambling cartels trying to suck people into that, which really the phone-slots aren't a lot different from all the farmville crap they put on there anyway. It's because they want steady and reliable returns, nobody wants to make something actually enjoyable outside a few devs, the companies themselves want addicts and a revenue stream, not a series of purchases.
I could go on about this one for ages but basically in my lifetime it's gone from the promise of machines being there to free us to them literally being tools to enslave us. I'm not even just talking about the nonstop GPS tracking, social media all that stuff of the last 10+ years, the worst being phones, I mean the entire "IoT" and locked down creepy infrastructure being specifically designed to take as much power and ownership out of the user's hands as possible and deliver it squarely into the shareholder's. So, yes, nVidia has literally been trying to find a way of pulling that off, and I'm beginning to wonder if them artificially pricing GPUs so skyhigh since Pascal (they did this every year with Pascal, Turing, and Ampere, this has f---ing NOTHING to do with inflation) they can eventually push the overton window to such an extent that "renting GPUs" becomes some terrible thing absolutely monstrously disingenuous tech bloggers hail nVidia as some saviors of gaming because they're now offering "cheap" GPU rental service, and in fact I could write word for word what these insipid c---s will say. "Oh but you'll replace your GPU anyway!" "It's so much cheaper on a day by day basis than to buy one!" "but you'll be saved the depreciating cost and nVidia absorbs it, isn't that charitable of them!" "it's really cheaper this way we promise!" "just look at those GPU prices!"
You can screenshot this, I swear to God I can write the exact talking points right this very minute to where nVidia's shills will come out pandering to gamers born in 2019 about how great this is that nobody owns a GPU anymore and why would you it costs $3000 anyway.