“Crazies. You uploaded them. Oh, damn, damn you all damn!’
That’s more or less my reaction to the price of the first Nvidia RTX 40 series (opens in a new tab) playing cards A set of fresh Lovelace processors, with the cheapest of the three new cards being a princely $900. Guess how much the ROG version with a 12GB RTX 4080 overclock will cost… my bet is on a four figure sum.
But you have to admit, we have ourselves to blame here. Even if in reality we’ve been backed into a corner by countless outside forces, we’ve proven to Nvidia, and every other component manufacturer, that we PC gamers will pay almost anything to get our hands on the latest and greatest graphics cards for our rigs.
Sure, we had no choice. The only other option was to stop progress and not buy a new GPU when we couldn’t get the framerate we wanted from our current system. And who will do that when there are new and tempting graphics cards? It’s only money, after all.
The RTX 4090 has been revealed (opens in a new tab) in the GeForce Beyond Special Broadcast, and this monstrous graphics card will hit shelves on October 12th for the outrageous price of $1,599.
Admittedly, it’s only $100 more than the RTX 3090 (opens in a new tab) Launched already in 2020, and $400 less Than Pandemic Special RTX 3090 Ti (opens in a new tab)But the fact that the entire release series of RTX 40 cards starts at $900 is quite disturbing.
A third-rate ticket shouldn’t cost the better part of a grand.
But there’s nothing faster right now, and no matter how much AMD wants to shout about the potential performance gains of the RDNA 3 cards that launch on November 3rd (opens in a new tab) This year, Nvidia’s beefy RTX 4090 GPU is likely to retain the performance crown until at least the end of 2022.
It’s not even Lovelace’s full-fat top GPU. There is plenty of room for an 18,000+ CUDA core $2,000 RTX 4090 Ti or Titan later on.
And frames mean sales (like no marketing person ever said) so whatever GPU can post the highest frame rates for gaming is going to be the one most PC gamers will want.
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And price doesn’t seem to be an object of our gaming ambitions.
The perfect storm of unprecedented performance gains, supply chain disruptions, the crypto mining boom, and stay-at-home bookings from the past two years has seen prices rise ever higher as demand continues to outstrip supply. These were all things out of our control, meaning that if we wanted a new card, we would have to pay through the nose to get one.
Even now, when there are many cards on the shelves, the average selling price of a video card (opens in a new tab) It still hasn’t dropped to pre-pandemic levels. And most likely never will be.
Like everything else video cards are only worth what people are willing to pay.
Now, with these external factors largely alleviated, we are left with only the burden of inflation and the certainty in the minds of marketing departments around the world that people will still pay.
You can bet during all of 2021 Nvidia kicks itself on the price of the RTX 3080 (opens in a new tab) B- only $699 when retailers and AIB sold for much more than that starting price. And it is definitely not going to take the risk of missing out on dollar bills this time, even if the bottom has fallen out of the crypto market and the supply chain has more or less strengthened.
We can call it greed on the part of the capitalist businesses that make the hardware that goes into our gaming PCs, but like anything video cards are only worth what people are willing to pay. If everyone is now bashing the $1,600 price tag for the RTX 4090 (opens in a new tab)And Nvidia has struggled to divert the volume it needs, so you can bet there will be price cuts.
But even though there are no longer supply chain issues, a crypto goliath swallowing up masses of GPUs, or a nationwide lockout, the green team will probably still sell its initial run of RTX 4090 cards; both from its own vaults and from the distribution centers of all its add-on board partners. Well, except EVGA (opens in a new tab).
I probably wouldn’t feel so bad about the pricing of the new Ada Lovelace cards if they weren’t the first RTX 40 series card out the door. If Nvidia were to launch with a cheaper RTX 4080 (that doesn’t look like a rewired RTX 4070) ahead of it, you could still make the case that the RTX 4090 is just the slightly ridiculous money, no-object, super-enthusiast, Titan card. Which is not really intended for gamers, but for novice professionals who can’t afford a Quadro.
That line is hard to maintain, however, with the GeForce brand name upfront, and the fact that this is the first Lovelace GPU to hit shelves and is branded a “quantum leap in gaming” by Nvidia. So you have second and third tier tickets that go for $900 and up.
Jen-Hsun’s talked about the emerging RTX 40 series as a set of cards that will “deliver the ultimate performance for enthusiasts”, while the mainstream will still be served by the surviving RTX 30 series alongside it. So it can still satisfy a broad cross-section of the GPU buying public, even if this two-cassette system means dumping it with last-gen silicon at the bottom end.
Can AMD respond with an affordable RDNA 3 GPU that matches Lovelace, but undercuts it in price? No. Rumors are that the Navi 31 card will also be expensive. If the new Radeon cards can compete with Lovelace, why would they charge less? AMD has shareholders it needs to please even with an increase in average selling prices.
But hey, if we get a $350 RTX 4060 card out of all this sometime next year, with almost RTX 3080-level gaming performance, I’ll be much happier. It’s possible, even likely given the rumored core count that puts it just shy of the last-gen card’s GA102 GPU, but we’re not going to see that until long after the first super-expensive RTX 40-series cards hit the market.
After all, from the looks of things RTX 30 series cards are going to be around for a while (opens in a new tab). But then who’s to say the RTX 4060 won’t come with a much higher price tag than the RTX 3060 it replaces? I certainly wouldn’t bet against a $450 sticker price.