Immediately, after many months of leaks, rumors, and hypothesis, Nvidia lastly formally revealed its subsequent era of graphics playing cards, the RTX 4000 sequence. Whereas new graphics upgrades are welcome—the RTX 3000 sequence is now over two years outdated—Nvidia’s determination to cost huge premiums for the new-generation GPUs, in addition to participating in arguably misleading naming practices, just isn’t going over nicely with many PC lovers.
The brand new data got here from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote tackle on the firm’s three-day GTC 2022 occasion, which it payments because the “#1 AI developer convention.” Huang debuted not simply the 24GB RTX 4090 (paper-launching on October 12 for $1599) but in addition a 16GB RTX 4080 ($1199) and a 12GB RTX 4080 ($899), each due in November. As well as, the corporate revealed a variety of new options and applied sciences the brand new GPUs will take pleasure in, together with DLSS 3.0, a brand new performance-enhancing tech referred to as Shader Execution Reordering, and normal twin NVENC encoders that help next-gen video codec AV1.
Tom’s {Hardware} has a helpful roundup of the recognized specs.
Costs apart, the whole lot sounds strong, proper? Streamers and video of us have been clamoring for merchandise with strong AV1 help. DLSS 3.0 sounds prefer it’ll make the already very compelling DLSS 2.0 know-how even higher at working performance-intensive video games at increased resolutions and framerates. There’s now a ray-traced model of Portal. Regardless of rumors, RTX 4090 runs on lower than 500 watts. And Nvidia is claiming, throughout varied benchmarks, 2x to even 4x efficiency uplift over the last-generation playing cards. (In fact, take these numbers with a grain of salt till exterior of us can put RTX 4000 GPUs by way of their paces.) After two years of accelerating efficiency stagnation, it’s at the least good to see ahead motion once more.
These costs, although. Oof, these costs.
“What the fuck? 899 for a 4080 12G, which must be a 4070? 1200 for 4080 16G, so $500 greater than final gen xx80. These costs are loopy,” lamented one Redditor.
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Stated one other, “The costs are downright insulting. They’re attempting to promote you a 4070 rebranded as a 4080 for 900$ lmao.”
One commenter appeared again to 2018’s GeForce 10-series to pinpoint why in the present day’s costs felt so exorbitant.
And the final two gens have been already out of fucking management, even at MSRP. For years, the x70 was $329, the x80 was $499, the x80 Ti was $700, and the prosumer grade one (Titan, x90, and many others) was $1,199. With the 20 sequence, they bumped the entire costs a complete fucking tier, and it seems to be like they’re doing it once more.
Certainly, in 2018, Nvidia attracted criticism for pricing its then-new RTX 20-series playing cards a full “tier” increased than the earlier 10-series playing cards had value. For instance, the RTX 2070 value nearly as a lot because the prior high-end GTX 1080, regardless of being much less of a flagship card. Immediately we’re seeing the same tier-jumping phenomenon take form.
The MSRP of the 10GB RTX 3080 Founder’s Version—assuming you might discover one, throughout the crypto-mining hell of the final two years—was $699. Now Nvidia’s revealed a 16GB RTX 4080, which many observers take to be the closest to a real 3080 successor, for a whopping $1199—a rise of $500.
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However what concerning the 12GB RTX 4080 at $899? The catch, sadly, is that it seems to be a considerably lower-performing half, primarily a complete totally different card altogether. In case you refer again to the Tom’s {Hardware} specs, the lower-end RTX 4080 makes use of a unique, lesser die (“AD104,” with solely 7,680 shader cores) than the 16GB RTX 4080 (“AD103,” with 9,728 cores).
And it’s the identical story throughout each spec: It’s simple to make the argument that the 12GB RTX 4080 seems to be a “4080” in title solely, therefore varied onlookers suggesting that “RTX 4070” can be a extra “sincere” designation. In fact, even then its MSRP is $899, which is $400 greater than the RTX 3070’s unique MSRP of $499. Positive, two years is a very long time, and we’re within the midst of report inflation. However even taking that under consideration, it actually appears like Nvidia is constant to starve what simply 5 years in the past had been a extra vibrant GPU market which had compelling choices throughout a variety of value factors.
As well as, RTX 4000-series costs will seemingly be even harsher exterior of the US. For instance, Nvidia Italy product pages record the RTX 4090 at 1,979€, and the 2 RTX 3080s at 1,479€ and 1,109€, respectively.
“VAT apart, these costs aren’t inexpensive in Europe. The wages listed here are considerably decrease and with the rising prices of electrical energy, I simply can’t see the 40 sequence promoting nicely right here,” stated a Redditor. “They marketed the tech to companies all through 99% of the stream which additional reveals their lack of religion within the gaming market.”
“Principally each foreign money has weakened towards the USD, most of them between 10-30%, so it’s gonna be much more costly. The 4090 actually prices $2100 retail in Japan,” stated one other.
These have been thought-about scalping costs lower than a 12 months in the past.
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It’s additionally value remembering that in the present day’s introduced MSRPs solely cowl Nvidia’s personal card releases, such because the RTX 3000-series’ Founder’s Version merchandise. RTX 4000-series playing cards from third-party AIB (add-in board) distributors like Asus and MSI will usually value extra. Final week, famous Nvidia AIB vendor EVGA shocked onlookers when it introduced its determination to cease making Nvidia graphics playing cards.
When requested for remark, an Nvidia spokesperson stated,
The value level of RTX 4090 begins at $1599. As compared, the launch value of the RTX 3090 Ti, which the RTX 4090 now replaces, was $1,999.
The RTX 4080 16GB is 3x the efficiency of the RTX 3080 Ti on next-gen content material like Cyberpunk with RT Overdrive mode or Racer RTX—for a similar value of $1199. And the RTX 4080 12GB at $899, is 3x the efficiency of the RTX 3080 12GB for $100 much less. RTX 3080 10GB continues to be an unbelievable worth and we’ll proceed to supply it in our lineup.
That’s a technique to have a look at it. And as that final line implies, Nvidia’s new playing cards will really be competing with its two-year-old RTX 3000-series merchandise, which the corporate is extensively rumored to have a big surplus of now that the crypto GPU-mining craze has (quickly?) subsided. Solely as of not too long ago, after two years of outrageously inflated, scarcity-induced pricing, are you able to simply purchase RTX 3000-series playing cards for near MSRP. With RTX 3080s nonetheless beginning at a steep $699, it’s arduous to think about a state of affairs by which Nvidia would willingly value the brand new RTX 4000-series playing cards wherever nearer to Earth.
So Nvidia has its viewpoint. However viewing occasions from the patron facet, it actually appears like the prices of fanatic PC gaming are persevering with to skyrocket, and at a time when the prices of nearly the whole lot else are, too. I hope there may be some type of reduction on the horizon, as a result of because the one Redditor put it, “I really like PC gaming, however I can’t fucking afford to be part of it anymore.”
