Nvidia’s latest GPUs have made headlines for phenomenal power and astronomical prices. The GeForce RTX 4080 in particular it has a price, way above both the AMD competition and the usual MSRP hike of previous Nvidia generations. While it’s a bit early to call the 4080 a flop, early indications from the retail world seem to show that PC gamers, and even GPU scalpers, aren’t interested.
Stock for the $1200 card appears to be high in both brick and mortar stores and web outlets, with many tech sites and even Reddit users noting how easily you can find the seemingly hot item. Prices on eBay hover retail for cards from OEM partners like Gigabyte, PNY, and Zotac, and even the usually coveted “Founder’s Edition” Nvidia cards stayed in the Buy It Now section for days at a time. A year ago, even these overpriced cards would have flown off the lists like heat sinks were made of gold.
At the heart of the problem is the RTX 4080’s value proposition, or rather, lack thereof. In his PCWorld analysis, Brad Chacos concluded that the card is about $500 more expensive than it should be, compared to its RTX 2080-to-3080 jump performance boost. Don’t get us wrong, the card is absolutely amazing for gaming and content creation. But after two years of monstrously inflated street prices on graphics cards have finally come to an end, not to mention lower prices for new cards from both AMD and intelit seems that the PC gaming public is largely uninterested in the GeForce RTX 4080.
Nvidia appears to have built – and priced – the RTX 40-series card under the assumption that pandemic-era GPU pricing was here to stay. This has obviously not turned out to be the reality and the retailers are acutely aware of this. At least two Newegg listings for the RTX 4080 it shows the card as ineligible for a refund once purchased. This is an indication (though not proof) that buyers, presumably scalpers, are attempting to get back on their purchases in large numbers. I’ll wait while you chase a tiny violin, so you can play a solo for their missing profits.
What can Nvidia do to fix it? The company already canceled the $900 version of the card, which would come with less RAM and a less powerful version of the GPU. We could see that design resurface as the RTX 4070 or rebranded 4070 Ti, but in the meantime, it’s a huge expense for Nvidia and its partners. The only other realistic option for juice sales is a price cut for the 16GB version of the card. Unconfirmed rumors says Nvidia is considering such a cut later this month. Again, those rumors are unconfirmed… but it hardly takes a Nostradamus to predict the underlying market forces driving Nvidia to make the RTX 4080 more attractive.
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