What's legendary about the 1080? It's a smaller 980ti on a much smaller node.
Less energy usage, more vram, faster in games (see https://www.pc-kombo.com/us/benchmark/games/gpu/compare?ids%...).
But it is even more about timing. Nvidia shifted to RTX afterwards, opting to go for raytracing and upscaling instead of making strictly faster cards. Which made the last GTX cards very competitive for regular usage, raising its status.
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Less energy usage, more vram, faster in games (see https://www.pc-kombo.com/us/benchmark/games/gpu/compare?ids%...).
But it is even more about timing. Nvidia shifted to RTX afterwards, opting to go for raytracing and upscaling instead of making strictly faster cards. Which made the last GTX cards very competitive for regular usage, raising its status.