Not happy with the Founders' Edition pricing? Day-zero GeForce board partners get their...

[LemmingOverlrd]

Why it matters: You usually have to wait a month or more for add-in board manufacturers to catch up with Nvidia. This time, it turns out, third party cards are ready for sale, right on day zero.

One thing that really shined through Nvidia's RTX presentation at Gamescom today was the complete and utter gag-order on AIB partner launches. Maybe Nvidia was tired of the leaks, or maybe they are trying to make a quick buck on the GeForce RTX 20 series, but the truth is the world was told Nvidia was pitching one price and practicing another.

Founders' Edition cards have become a staple of Nvidia launches. The company holds an exclusive of sorts on the first month, and later on the Add-in Board (AIB) partners get to do their own thing over the reference designs. This time, however, it seems that the partners have been ready for launch from day zero.

Asus

Asus has a reputation to uphold. It is one of the most prestigious and reliable motherboard and graphics card brands available on the market. Their ROG brand is a symbol of gaming goodness. But, you know this is coming, expect to pay top dollar for any high-end gear Asus puts out there... and the RTX 2080 is no exception.

Prices in the US range from $839 for the RTX 2080 to a stunning $1,209.99. Check them out on Amazon and Newegg.

• Asus GeForce RTX 2080 8GB ROG STRIX OC Gaming
• Asus GeForce RTX 2080 O8G Dual-fan OC Edition
• Asus GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11G Turbo Edition
• Asus GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB DUAL OC

EVGA

EVGA has been an age-old partner of Nvidia's. Time and again, they've delivered OC versions of Nvidia cards with a software ecosystem to match the warranties. Check them out on Amazon and Newegg.

• EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 8GB XC Gaming
• EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 8GB XC ULTRA Gaming
• EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB XC Gaming
• EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB XC ULTRA Gaming

Gigabyte

Gigabyte is a relatively recent player in the "gamer" market. The launch of the Aorus line saw to it shoring up its reputation, but so far only the G1 Gaming and WindForce series have earned RTX 2080 SKUs. Gigabyte is the only partner to announce an RTX 2070 card. Check them out on Amazon and Newegg.

• GeForce RTX 2070 Gaming OC 8G
• GeForce RTX 2080 Gaming OC 8G
• GeForce RTX 2080 WindForce OC 8G
• GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Gaming OC 11G
• GeForce RTX 2080 Ti WindForce OC 11G

Inno3D

Inno3D is not close to the brand recognition of some brands, but it perhaps the one which takes greater liberty in customizing their cards. The iChill series of cards is based on stock watercooling which allows them to overclock above and beyond.

• iChill GeForce RTX 2080 TI Black
• Inno3D GeForce RTX 2080 TI Gaming OC
• Inno3D GeForce RTX 2080 Gaming OC
• Inno3D GeForce RTX 2080 TI Twin X2
• Inno3D GeForce RTX 2080 Twin X2
• Inno3D GeForce RTX 2080 Jet

MSI

MSI is a budget gamers' delight. Their cards stand up to inspection and deliver the promised performance, but, somehow, MSI manages to stay below the average selling price. Always a good option for gamers in a pinch. Check them out on Amazon and Newegg.

• MSI GeForce RTX 2080 8GB DUKE OC
• MSI GeForce RTX 2080 8GB Gaming X TRIO
• MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB Gaming X TRIO
• MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB DUKE OC

Palit

Palit Microsystems (also known as Gainward, in Europe) sells highly-tweaked graphics cards with serious cooling. While they do not delve into exotic cooling, it is common to see solid cooling solutions and gamer-oriented features.

• Palit GeForce RTX 2080 8GB GamingPro
• Palit GeForce RTX 2080 8GB GamingPro OC
• Palit GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB GamingPro
• Palit GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB GamingPro OC

PNY

While discreet, PNY's XLR8 series cards have long guaranteed out-of-the-box overclocks that put their cards above the norm. They aren't usually too pricey, either. Check them out on Newegg.

• PNY GeForce RTX 2080 XLR8 Gaming Overclocked Edition
• PNY GeForce RTX 2080 Ti XLR8 Gaming Overclocked Edition

Zotac

The masters of mini, Zotac specializes in sticking complex electronics in small footprints. When it's not doing that, it's simply delivering their highly-OC'ed AMP! cards. Check them out on Amazon and Newegg.

• Zotac GeForce RTX 2080 8GB Blower
• Zotac GeForce RTX 2080 8GB AMP! Edition
• Zotac GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB Triple Fan
• Zotac GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB AMP! Edition

We are aware other long-time Nvidia partners, such as Galaxy (KFA2), have not yet announced their products, but given the availability date of September 20th, their announcements should be imminent. Stay tuned.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/76055-not-happy-founders-edition-pricing-day-zero-geforce.html

 

[Evernessince]

Comparing those boxes to some of my 10xx series and 9xx series boxes, it looks like Nvidia is mandating their GeForce branding on the side of the box take up more space. In addition, the AIB partner name appears to be restricted in font size. For the 10xx series and 9xx series, the AIB partner name was allowed to be fairly big on the box. For my EVGA 980 ti and 980 boxes the EVGA logo almost takes up the entire space.

It's just interesting to note as Nvidia demands more control over the AIBs.

 

[fps4ever]

Price is ridiculous on these new cards. This is the kind of crap companies pull when you don't have competition on the high end. No thank you.

 

[senketsu]

$1,630. to $1,750. without tax at my local retailer (preorder).
Must be cause we use the Canadian peso, uhm, dollar.
I will have to pass

 

[Boilerhog146]

Obviously, the Gag order was applied as to not skewer sales of all the 10 series cards that are sitting in the channel, sell off as many as they could ,before the announcement of 20 series ,that's just good business.Dirty but GOOD.

 

[ImmenseBrick]

If the 2080ti was around $900cad I would buy. My issue is why would the AIB price their gpu less than nvidia founders? Basically the “$1000” usd is meaningless and it’s actually 1200. Yup it’s what $1500-$1700 Canadian rupees for a gpu? Get out of here nvidia, you are drunk. They just lost a sale as I’ll just buy nothing now.

 

[OcelotRex]

Price is ridiculous on these new cards. This is the kind of crap companies pull when you don't have competition on the high end. No thank you.

Interesting - if the competing companies product is orders of magnitudes less powerful than these new cards why should the pricing not reflect that?

 

[Buhaj]

I'll pass. My $400 PS4 Pro is good enough.

 

[ForgottenLegion]

They've priced out most enthusiasts of being able to get the top end gaming card. A shame really. They won't be getting my money either.

STRIX 1080 Ti, live long and prosper.

 

[300Hitter]

Add me to the pass list. Guess I'll go buy that 1080 now that prices are where they should always have been.

 

[texasrattler]

If the 2080ti was around $900cad I would buy. My issue is why would the AIB price their gpu less than nvidia founders? Basically the “$1000” usd is meaningless and it’s actually 1200. Yup it’s what $1500-$1700 Canadian rupees for a gpu? Get out of here nvidia, you are drunk. They just lost a sale as I’ll just buy nothing now.

nvidia don't control what a partner wants to sell the card at. nvidia set the price n use their reference cards as standard but if a partner wants to or chooses to sell their card cheaper or higher it has nothing to do with nvidia.

 

[ImmenseBrick]

I'll pass. My $400 PS4 Pro is good enough.

I know right? I mean I love my Pc, don't get me wrong, the high FPS, the tweaks and res adjustments etc are all better than a ps4 pro, What I will say is I just finished god of war on ps4 pro and while I wanted a bit higher resolution at times the game was both very very and gorgeous. And I traded old ps4 and got the pro with a game for around 300 cad. This versus a 1600 cad gpu that gives me more frames....

nvidia don't control what a partner wants to sell the card at. nvidia set the price n use their reference cards as standard but if a partner wants to or chooses to sell their card cheaper or higher it has nothing to do with nvidia.

My point is it makes the MSRP fairly useless, NVidia says starting from X price but then no one follows it making it moot. Now, I will say I'm sure in a few months when more cards from AIBS are out they will hopefully have some junk blower style ones at the msrp. Anyway, very expensive cards for pre-order with no real performance information. Seems a bit sketchy to me but we will see.

 

[robb213]

I was excited to see what's coming out but so far it doesn't appear that we'll have a much more powerful card in general. Wouldn't mind being wrong though.

I think the only chance of me ever picking one up, even a lower end model, is if we could use that card for ray-tracing tasks only--sort of like how you can specify another Nvidia GPU to handle all PhysX related workloads. I havn't seen this brought up at all and it sounds pretty neat if it were possible.

 

[Stingy McDuck]

Comparing those boxes to some of my 10xx series and 9xx series boxes, it looks like Nvidia is mandating their GeForce branding on the side of the box take up more space. In addition, the AIB partner name appears to be restricted in font size. For the 10xx series and 9xx series, the AIB partner name was allowed to be fairly big on the box. For my EVGA 980 ti and 980 boxes the EVGA logo almost takes up the entire space.

It's just interesting to note as Nvidia demands more control over the AIBs.

They really want that "RTX" to pop out of the box.

 

[Evernessince]

I was excited to see what's coming out but so far it doesn't appear that we'll have a much more powerful card in general. Wouldn't mind being wrong though.

I think the only chance of me ever picking one up, even a lower end model, is if we could use that card for ray-tracing tasks only--sort of like how you can specify another Nvidia GPU to handle all PhysX related workloads. I havn't seen this brought up at all and it sounds pretty neat if it were possible.

Even if they did release that capability, I wouldn't recommend using the lower end cards to do that. We are getting beta benchmarks showing the RTX 2080 Ti struggling at 1080p 30FPS when Ray Tracing is on. The lower end cards have less RT cores meaning less ray tracing performance. You essentially would be looking at 720p 30 FPS if the recent beta benchmarks are anything to go by.

PhysX could be run on all the CUDA cores while Ray Tracing can only run on the limited number of RT cores.

 

[robb213]

Even if they did release that capability, I wouldn't recommend using the lower end cards to do that. We are getting beta benchmarks showing the RTX 2080 Ti struggling at 1080p 30FPS when Ray Tracing is on. The lower end cards have less RT cores meaning less ray tracing performance. You essentially would be looking at 720p 30 FPS if the recent beta benchmarks are anything to go by.

PhysX could be run on all the CUDA cores while Ray Tracing can only run on the limited number of RT cores.

Makes sense--didn't really think that much into it. I havn't even looked into benchmarks yet--was just gonna wait for the NDA to be lifted and watch this site + a handful of others.

Sounds like totally infantile tech...although granted real-time ray-tracing is reletively new too. Reminds me of the early days of Aegia Physx in a way.

 

[darkzelda]

These prices are going to kill Pc gaming in the long run, I love building my own pc and play games on it, but at these prices I can't see myself upgrading my pc, a shame really.

 

[DanUK]

Ill add myself to the list of people saying "no thanks" to those prices.

Currently got a GTX 970 which is chugging along just fine and I guess I'll look to get a 1080 or 1080 Ti for cheap once these 20xx cards come out.

 

[fps4ever]

Interesting - if the competing companies product is orders of magnitudes less powerful than these new cards why should the pricing not reflect that?

From doing some quick research it seems that 99.9999% of the Internet thinks you are wrong on both points. That is interesting.

 

[OcelotRex]

From doing some quick research it seems that 99.9999% of the Internet thinks you are wrong on both points. That is interesting.

Considering it's impossible to "research 99.9999%" of the internet it's clear you're emotional over Nvidia's pricing. Some quick research of my own yields this reputable report:

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2018-nvidia-reveals-rtx-2080-benchmarks

Richard @ DigitalFoundry is clear that this is a controlled press demo so the gains need to be taken with a grain of salt but indicates that performance increases are looking promising. DF is pretty good at breaking down the performance of these cards and will suss out whether Nvidia was taking liberties with their claims.

So right now Nvidia is claiming that they have made sizable gains in performance since the last generation launched in 2016. In late 2017 Nvidia was clear that a new lineup was not coming due to the cost and indicated as late as June 2018 that the new lineup was a long way off. Launching these cards at this higher price point shouldn't surprise anyone if you've been keeping up with the industry the past 18 months.

 

[fps4ever]

Considering it's impossible to "research 99.9999%" of the internet it's clear you're emotional over Nvidia's pricing. Some quick research of my own yields this reputable report:

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2018-nvidia-reveals-rtx-2080-benchmarks

Richard @ DigitalFoundry is clear that this is a controlled press demo so the gains need to be taken with a grain of salt but indicates that performance increases are looking promising. DF is pretty good at breaking down the performance of these cards and will suss out whether Nvidia was taking liberties with their claims.

So right now Nvidia is claiming that they have made sizable gains in performance since the last generation launched in 2016. In late 2017 Nvidia was clear that a new lineup was not coming due to the cost and indicated as late as June 2018 that the new lineup was a long way off. Launching these cards at this higher price point shouldn't surprise anyone if you've been keeping up with the industry the past 18 months.

Nothing emotional about my comments. You justifying the prices are in such small company that would make practically everybody else emotional as well. It's pretty clear they are price gouging due to lack of competition at the higher end. The Vega 64's offer great performance for the price and is a higher end card. I've been in the industry for decades and these absorbent prices were once held for only the workstation Titan and professional cards. These prices have never been seen before in consumer cards other than new release shortages. I'm not sure why you are trying to justify something that is simply outrageous.Every new architecture should get sizable gains so that is nothing new. I can only speculate as to why you think this should be normal but that gets my comments deleted.

One news source. I can find many others for you...

If your eyes are watering not from hardware lust but from sticker shock, you're probably not alone. The RTX 2080 Founder's Edition is 45% more expensive than the current GTX 1080 Founder's Edition. The flagship RTX 2080 Ti Founder's Edition clocks in at an astounding $500 more than the GTX 1080 Ti Founder's Edition. Ouch.

Granted, these cards have an impressive amount of new technology under the hood, but doesn't every new generation of Nvidia GPUs?

ExtremeTech's Questioning NV Performance Practices Justifying Prices:
https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/...cal-by-deliberately-comparing-the-wrong-cards

 

[OcelotRex]

You justifying the prices are in such small company that would make practically everybody else emotional as well. It's pretty clear they are price gouging due to lack of competition at the higher end.
One news source. I can find many other for you...

I am not arguing there is no competition; that's a terrible position. What I am criticizing is your position that this is gouging due to a lack of competition. AMD's own competitor to the 1080 didn't stack up well according to Forbes. Nvidia claims that the new 2080 is more powerful than the 1080Ti and can be 100% more powerful than than 1080 released 2 years ago. The 1080 launched at a $699 MSRP and the 2080 has a similar $799 MSRP (both for founder's edition cards from Nvidia).

Putting that all together and assuming Nvidia comes close to matching their performance claims the 14% price increase for up to 100% better performance is not gouging. Bringing these products to market when there is no competition is an expensive gamble with these price increases. You will have the power to vote with your wallet and not purchase these cards. If inventory doesn't move because of high retail pricing Nvidia will have failed massively. Considering the history of people buying expensive Nvidia cards I highly doubt that will be the case.

 

[fps4ever]

I am not arguing there is no competition; that's a terrible position. What I am criticizing is your position that this is gouging due to a lack of competition. AMD's own competitor to the 1080 didn't stack up well according to Forbes. Nvidia claims that the new 2080 is more powerful than the 1080Ti and can be 100% more powerful than than 1080 released 2 years ago. The 1080 launched at a $699 MSRP and the 2080 has a similar $799 MSRP (both for founder's edition cards from Nvidia).

Putting that all together and assuming Nvidia comes close to matching their performance claims the 14% price increase for up to 100% better performance is not gouging. Bringing these products to market when there is no competition is an expensive gamble with these price increases. You will have the power to vote with your wallet and not purchase these cards. If inventory doesn't move because of high retail pricing Nvidia will have failed massively. Considering the history of people buying expensive Nvidia cards I highly doubt that will be the case.

Where are you getting your way to low of a number 14% price increase from $700 to $1200? See below for historical value. And you are basing performance off of speculation and NV percentages, which my link to extremetech throws some questions at. I agree vote with your wallet is the best hedge against these prices but like you said highly doubtful.

 

[OcelotRex]

Where are you getting your way to low of a number 14% price increase from $700 to $1200? See below for historical value. And you are basing performance off of speculation and NV percentages, which my link to extremetech throws some questions at. I agree vote with your wallet is the best hedge against these prices but like you said highly doubtful.

View attachment 84667

You might want to take a look at your graph again. It perfectly supports what I said - Founder's Edition 1080's launched with a $699 MSRP and 2080's are launching with a $799 MSRP. $100 dollars is 14.31% of $699 (100/699=0.14306). I am not sure where you are getting $1,200 from unless you are confusing the 2080Ti for the 2080.

The 1080 Ti launched nearly a year after the 1080; the 2080 Ti equivalent to the 10XX series was the Titan X. The launch price for the Titan X was.....$1,200. If you're trying to use the 1080 Ti as proof that Nvidia is gouging you're ignoring that it was launched much later as a more powerful Titan X at nearly half the cost. You're comparing apples to zebras.

 

[fps4ever]

You might want to take a look at your graph again. It perfectly supports what I said - Founder's Edition 1080's launched with a $699 MSRP and 2080's are launching with a $799 MSRP. $100 dollars is 14.31% of $699 (100/699=0.14306). I am not sure where you are getting $1,200 from unless you are confusing the 2080Ti for the 2080.

The 1080 Ti launched nearly a year after the 1080; the 2080 Ti equivalent to the 10XX series was the Titan X. The launch price for the Titan X was.....$1,200. If you're trying to use the 1080 Ti as proof that Nvidia is gouging you're ignoring that it was launched much later as a more powerful Titan X at nearly half the cost. You're comparing apples to zebras.

You are changing the goal posts. The 1080 Ti ($699 at release) is directly compared to the 2080 Ti because it's a consumer card. You're being disingenuous as best. Read the article I linked to and learn a few things the rest of us already know.