Very Expensive: First reactions on Nvidia's RTX 4090, RTX 4080, DLSS 3 and more

[mbk34]

It looks like I'll be sticking with my 1060 6GB for a while longer then.

 

[toooooot]

All I need is something to finally play comfy at 4k.
Ever since I upgraded to 4k monitor, I cant unsee pixels on my old 1080 monitor.

 

[toooooot]

The bottom line is that Nvidia is relying heavily on DLSS and RT performance gains to convince you to buy a typical generation upgrade for significantly more money. The only card here receiving an upgrade to sort of justify its price increase is the 4090 (But that's mostly because the 3090 wasn't worth the asking price to begin with). Both 4080 models represent significant price increase where any major performance increase is based on Nvidia proprietary tech that has to be added by developers into games individually to take advantage of it. In other words, Nvidia is increasing prices with the promise of higher performance if and when a developer adds NV tech to their games. So, you get to accept Nvidia's risk for them by paying more for future promises... No thanks, hard pass, let's see what AMD has.

well said

 

[Loadedaxe]

These cards, like others have stated are too expensive.

People need to stop paying these ridiculous prices and hold on to their money. Skip a few generations and make NVidia and AMD come down on their pricing. It’s getting out of hand.

Same for cpus, most have already upgraded to the AMD 5000 series and Intels 12 series, stop upgrading every 2 years and let these money grubbing companies come back down to normal pricing.

 

[Revolution 11]

These cards, like others have stated are too expensive.

People need to stop paying these ridiculous prices and hold on to their money. Skip a few generations and make NVidia and AMD come down on their pricing. It’s getting out of hand.

Same for cpus, most have already upgraded to the AMD 5000 series and Intels 12 series, stop upgrading every 2 years and let these money grubbing companies come back down to normal pricing.

Well, it is a free market. People are free to spend their money however they want. Enthusiasts have to be the ones advocating not to upgrade every generation or two. They lead and form the mindshare, shape the opinion of the masses, and educate people new to the hardware space.

Yeah, I don't ever see that happening for several reasons. This hobby has fans that grew up as poor children, with parents who didn't understand their hobby, who are all now working adults with the money they never had to spend on the hardware they always wanted but might have been out of reach.

What's worse, these new adults are now educating their families, their children on their hobby. The desire to spend is only spreading. And gaming has never been stronger as an industry or hobby, so the demand is only going to continue skyrocketing on this front.

There might be short-term factors that dampen demand like a upcoming recession but the long-term environment for consumer GPUs (and CPUs to a lesser extent) looks inflationary, for reasons related to consumer habits.

 

[Todd Sauve]

No, you are not the only one. All working people are suffering the same as you. The one percent holds a larger percentage of the wealth than ever before, and it gets worse with each passing year. Their greed knows no bounds, and is utterly insatiable. The Republican party is the party of the wealthy, for the wealthy. Everything else they pretend to stand for is nothing more than smoke and mirrors, designed to keep the ignorant and gullible voting for them, so they can continue to take from us and give to the ultra-rich. As long as working people keep stupidly falling for their lies and voting them into office, the problems for working people are just going to keep getting worse, until the middle class disappears altogether.

I think the majority of tech companies are in the pocket of the Democrats. The Republicans have definitely been guilty of this in the past. Really, putting your trust in any political party or politicians is bound to disappoint. They just don't know what they are doing. Thus the colossal national debt. It is witness to all their attempts to buy votes because, as I said, they simply don't know what they are doing. And both sides seek out bribes above all else it seems.

 

[neeyik]

The bottom line is that Nvidia is relying heavily on DLSS and RT performance gains to convince you to buy a typical generation upgrade for significantly more money.

To a certain degree, yes, but look at Nvidia's claims for Assassin's Creed Valhalla. That games doesn't have ray tracing nor DLSS, so it's not like the new models are gaining any magic advantage here. The 12GB 4080 is with spitting distance of the 3090 Ti, and that card is no slouch -- it's around 17% faster than the vanilla 3080, at 4K, in that particular game, and about 24% faster across a 12 game sample.

Does that make it worth $900? Well, one can get a 12GB version of the 3080 for $732, and the difference between $732 and $900 is approximately 23%. The days of new gen hardware being roughly the same price as last gen are sadly long gone, especially in the world of GPUs.

One might argue that it was only a matter of time before the silicon industry followed how other manufacturing handles pricing (e.g. the motor industry) but at the same time, when a sector is pretty much dominated by one vendor (Nvidia is rated in the top 20 in the world for market capitalization; AMD barely makes the top 100), they're going to charge whatever they like.

 

[rmcrys]

1) "Nvidia-Way": marketing + more tdp > we´ll sell anyway and more than ever.

2) Are people *really* paying so much (between the card itself + power supply + electricity consumption + cooling) to play games?! Unbelievely..


I´ll wait for AMD and even another year(s) to settle the dust down. 2500€ and 450W GPU, 350W CPU, .... at the end 1000W to play games?! LOL not a chance...

 

[EdmondRC]

To a certain degree, yes, but look at Nvidia's claims for Assassin's Creed Valhalla. That games doesn't have ray tracing nor DLSS, so it's not like the new models are gaining any magic advantage here. The 12GB 4080 is with spitting distance of the 3090 Ti, and that card is no slouch -- it's around 17% faster than the vanilla 3080, at 4K, in that particular game, and about 24% faster across a 12 game sample.

Does that make it worth $900? Well, one can get a 12GB version of the 3080 for $732, and the difference between $732 and $900 is approximately 23%. The days of new gen hardware being roughly the same price as last gen are sadly long gone, especially in the world of GPUs.

One might argue that it was only a matter of time before the silicon industry followed how other manufacturing handles pricing (e.g. the motor industry) but at the same time, when a sector is pretty much dominated by one vendor (Nvidia is rated in the top 20 in the world for market capitalization; AMD barely makes the top 100), they're going to charge whatever they like.

I am not denying that there is a generational leap in performance here. What I am saying is that the performance numbers that Nvidia is spouting out are indeed based on DLSS/RT performance enhancements. Nvidia obviously knows that a 15-20% increase in performance for a $200 increase in price over a three year old GPU is not going to be enticing to many consumers. So what they have done is promised a major uplift in games that support NV Tech. I'm glad to see the RT uplift (if its real) and I would perhaps be willing to pay $200.00 more if we see the majority of games start to support that. But, lets remember we are comparing it to a three year old GPU. DLSS 3.0, I think its a gimmick. I like DLSS 2.0, but, the adding of additional non-rendered frames may give a smoother overall look to the game, but I'm almost certain that it is not going to be desirable for fast paced shooters where input lag is the major reason why you need 120+ frames. Relying on DLSS 3.0 for "2X-4X" performance in my opinion is misleading, we shall see I guess. If we cannot even expect 15-20% more than a three year old GPU at similar pricing then PC gaming is essentially dead where it stands. We have reached the pinnacle as most of us will be priced out of the market in just a generation or two.

That being said, there are rumors out there that Nvidia has shot themselves in the foot and is passing that along to the customer. They did not attempt to make cards that the customer could afford and went for a more expensive node process trying to squeeze as much performance as they could and assuming the consumer would pay for it anyway. AMD on the other hand is said to be able to make RDNA3 chips at a cost that is not that much higher than RDNA2 chips and they seem to be getting pretty extreme performance uplifts all the way down their line up. If that is true and AMD keeps the price increase reasonable, Nvidia may find themselves bleeding a lot of market share this generation.

 

[Ohnooze]

What I get from this article is that you're better off sticking with the 3000 series or going AMD.
Nvidia can eat a....you know the rest.
These prices are ridiculous. I'm good at the moment with my 6800xt and was planning on going with Nvidia in the future but atm I doubt that will happen.
And honestly I don't see any big title games worth upgrading for atm.

 

[Neutronman]

Big Yawn.... Doesn't even make sense for a cryptominer to spend this kind of money on a gpu. So unless you are a sponsored overclocker, why would any gamer need this kind of power! Let's also buy new power supply, have increased power bills and a hotter pc requiring additional cost for new fans etc!!! Look at latest steam survey. I have a pretty decent freesync 2K IPS monitor that can do 144hz and with my 6700X (that is actually on sale at the moment at $399), most games hit or get close to 144hz even at high or ultra settings....
We've gone way beyond 'Can it play Crysis' even with mid-level gpu's......

Far be it for me to say that Nvidia is using the pandemic and semiconductor supply as a means to create a new normal higher price for gpu's, but they are! (IMO of course).

 

[yannus]

I watched the flight simulator dlss3 video and I can see highlights blinking like crazy. Is that the way to have amazing frame rates ? I now understand why ngreedia had to push the power usage of their new cards to be able to compete in rasterization.

 

[yannus]

Big Yawn.... Doesn't even make sense for a cryptominer to spend this kind of money on a gpu. So unless you are a sponsored overclocker, why would any gamer need this kind of power! Let's also buy new power supply, have increased power bills and a hotter pc requiring additional cost for new fans etc!!! Look at latest steam survey. I have a pretty decent freesync 2K IPS monitor that can do 144hz and with my 6700X (that is actually on sale at the moment at $399), most games hit or get close to 144hz even at high or ultra settings....
We've gone way beyond 'Can it play Crysis' even with mid-level gpu's......

Far be it for me to say that Nvidia is using the pandemic and semiconductor supply as a means to create a new normal higher price for gpu's, but they are! (IMO of course).

I love the way you used "new normal".

 

[godrilla]

Hey at least you can get 500 fps in esports with no improvement to latency after using reflex . The elephant in the room is why pay $1600 to $2k to have a worse image and worse latency? Some people dissected those graphs to show at best 60 to 70% improvement in rasterization while this is still good its no where near what Nvidia is marketing.
Nvidia is long overdue for an ego correction!

 

[OortCloud]

Too expensive - I'll pass. Hopefully AMD can get GPU game together as much as they did their CPU game and put nVidia back in their box where they belong.

 

[CapNemo72]

They know exactly who bought those cards

Nvidia has all the data, they know the market, they are a strong business.

Im not in the market, but I dunno how everyone assumes prices should be the same per tier every 2 years. Inflation is real, and not just over the last 2 years (which is like a ridiculous 18%).

Yes the 970 was a badass card for $329 years ago, but that was 2014. Almost 10 years ago, inflation on average is 2% not to mention the S show that is inflation the last 2yrs

Do you complainers buy groceries?? How do you feel about paying $3 for a tomato??

Everything is crushingly expensive these days, employers cant increase pay fast enough to keep up.

Well, of course, I understand prices for the same class will go up.
That is why I paid 499 for my 3070. That is about 50%+ more than the card you mentioned (970). I think it was an OK price. Would like it if it was cheaper, but everyone would like cheaper. So, all good there.
But now, we are going for some insane prices, beyond the "inflation" excuse.
As someone said, we do NOT NEED these cards, and I will buy new one once I feel like the price/value is correct (for me) and I NEED it.
Until then, all good for me.


PS: I pay 5 for a kg of tomato. I am OK with that. It is food and I NEED it.

 

[waclark]

I disagree that price/performance is the be-all, end-all metric here. Really, the most important thing is simply price in general: most people simply cannot handle the thousand dollar (!!!) starting price on the 4070 Ti (scummy move naming it an x80 Nvidia). RDNA 3 has a TON of room to wipe the floor with team green this generation: literally all they need to do is price it appropriately and they'll sell cards, but Nvidia won't.
Yeah sure RDNA 3 will be competing against used Ampere cards, but that isn't much of a competition, is it

^^ This

Value is one thing, but absolute price does matter. It reminds me of a marketing discussion we had some years ago about why it made financial sense to own a Ferrari. It's a well designed vehicle, performs better than many lesser cars and holds it value. The problem? Who's got $350-500K for an every day driver? LOL.

 

[waclark]

After all, Nvidia has learned that people will pay exorbitant amounts of money at the high end...

Thing is, Nividia and maybe AMD will soon learn the the world has changed, once again. We're no longer locked down at home, inflation is crushing all of our bank accounts and the miners who would pay anything for a card are gone. Spending $1500 to play games represents a very small part of the overall market. With used cards flooding the market and cash being hard to come by, I doubt this generation of GPUs will do well, at least not until prices come down.

And we haven't even talked about power requirements (PSU upgrades) and card sizes (3+ slots!!!).

 

[waclark]

Eh, if testing confirm even close to their numbers for the 4080 16 I'll be considering one of those next year unless AMD really manages to up their game and get on par with nVidia and their offering this generation

The 4080/16 is what, a $1,200 card? My wild-***-guess is AMD will have something within 5-10% of the performance for around $700-900. In all likelihood they will get 4080/16 performance at the 4080/12 price point. That would be a killer for Nvidia.

The issue I have with Nvidia and AMD is going to be power and card size. The 3+ slot Nvidia's are ridiculous. Consider that many cases that support vertical mounting are only 2 slots wide. Everyone running that sort of configuration will have to go back to horizontal mounting or get new cases, if any even exist that can support that. Power requirements for GPU and the new CPUs is definitely going to drive a lot of 1000W PSU upgrades. Water cooling may become the standard because the noise and size of air cooling gear will be enormous.

 

[EdmondRC]

The 4080/16 is what, a $1,200 card? My wild-***-guess is AMD will have something within 5-10% of the performance for around $700-900. In all likelihood they will get 4080/16 performance at the 4080/12 price point. That would be a killer for Nvidia.

The issue I have with Nvidia and AMD is going to be power and card size. The 3+ slot Nvidia's are ridiculous. Consider that many cases that support vertical mounting are only 2 slots wide. Everyone running that sort of configuration will have to go back to horizontal mounting or get new cases, if any even exist that can support that. Power requirements for GPU and the new CPUs is definitely going to drive a lot of 1000W PSU upgrades. Water cooling may become the standard because the noise and size of air cooling gear will be enormous.

From a raw performance perspective I believe that the 7900 XT and 7800 XT will both have more rasterizing performance than the 4080 16GB, the 7900 XT might even beat the 4090 on that front. RT wise, I would expect that AMD has made quite a leap, but likely Nvidia will still be quite a bit ahead on that front. That being said, my prediction is 7900 XT @ $1200 7800 XT @ $800 7700 XT @ $600. All of those represent a large price increase over the previous gen, but AMD could easily get away with it considering Nvidia's pricing.

 

[godrilla]

From a raw performance perspective I believe that the 7900 XT and 7800 XT will both have more rasterizing performance than the 4080 16GB, the 7900 XT might even beat the 4090 on that front. RT wise, I would expect that AMD has made quite a leap, but likely Nvidia will still be quite a bit ahead on that front. That being said, my prediction is 7900 XT @ $1200 7800 XT @ $800 7700 XT @ $600. All of those represent a large price increase over the previous gen, but AMD could easily get away with it considering Nvidia's pricing.

Notice the the 4000 series performance chart specifically a non rt title Assasin's Creed Valhalla without dlss which means pure rasterization the 4070 loses to the 3090ti and the 4090 is 50% better than the 3090ti. So it's possible that 7900xt traded blows in rasterization. Hence why Nvidia focused more on dlss 3.0. I was personally hoping Nvidia would focus on quality and not double down on performance mode dlss and then adding generated frames that no one asked for. From my personal experience the only worthwhile mode for dlss was quality mode at 4k and not performance mode. I really hope RDNA3 fsr 3.0 leapfrogs image quality for dlss.

Nvidia is long overdue for an ego correction!

 

[ZackL04]

I love how people imagine inflation is some force of nature and not the calculated robbery it really is.

Increase minimum wage
Print covid money
……
Inflation

Dont forget:
Commodities and labor shortage (due to lack of production, a bye product if covid shutdowns) price increase

Other companies without shortages:
“Well lets crank up our prices too, everyone’s doing it!”

Its garbage, there is no going back and nothing we can do about it other than bend over

 

[rmcrys]

Increase minimum wage
Print covid money
……
Inflation

Dont forget:
Commodities and labor shortage (due to lack of production, a bye product if covid shutdowns) price increase

Other companies without shortages:
“Well lets crank up our prices too, everyone’s doing it!”

Its garbage, there is no going back and nothing we can do about it other than bend over

Well, less consumption makes prices go down until everything stabilizes. Governments should employ more and adjust taxes so people have more money to buy also.

If most people just get depleted buying non-essential things with inflated prices, they are doing harm both ways:

A) if the product X costs 250€ in 2015, then the normal way would be that the successor Y in 2020 has a higher speed at lower price OR max. around 280€ (250 + some price adjustment due to higher payments, etc. It may even be that the price goes down if they can save costs producing it). It means, you should get a gtx1070 for about the same price as a gtx970, not much higher; what happens since the pandemic + mining + "inflation": companies get the signal that they still sell extremely well overpriced (= that will be the new price and standard

B) the "inflation", pandemic, bla bla bla... well be excuses to dismiss people and even so higher profits with less production. It will be just a win situation for those companies

C) if you buy overpriced things, wages will just increase 5% of that increase. Which means what you earn won't last long. People will get poorer. In my country was made a study with the conclusion that 50 years ago people could save 2/3 (66%) of what they earned, they had a good buying power; in the last 50 years prices increased brutally but not the wages; ATM people can save around 20-25% maximum and that on the middle class. The ones that earn less almost have to spend 100% what they earn.

 

[havok585]

High end graphic cards are luxury items (I.e. you don't NEED them). Don't be surprised if they are sold as such.

Uhh not ?a couple of videocard generations ago, no high end videocard was above $ 600, nvidia started the trend with very high prices (titan series) then amd got dragged as well.

 

[Knot Schure]

Well, The miners and scalpers are now jobless and Ngreedia that relied on them for obscene profits is now looking for new fools to pick up the slack and buy over-priced GPUs!

Good luck, but that train has left the station a year ago!

Mining was NEVER my job, just a part-time interest - but it sure paid like one!

Thanks for your tears...