We all had a giant bucket of cold water thrown on us when NVIDIA announced the pricing for their new
RTX 4000 Adelavelay series of GPUs. And it would be easy to blame the outrageously high MSRP's
on inflation and corporate greed. Don't get us wrong, those two factors almost certainly have
something to do with the price tags. But let's spend the next few minutes diving a little bit
First off, let's parse out just how bad this is. In 2020, the RTX 3080 was announced at a starting
MSRP of $700, and everyone was super hyped over getting a significant leap over the previous
generation's flagship for the same price. But you know what happened next, bots in the service
of crypto miners snatched up what little supply there was, and the rest of us were left to join
months-long waiting lists or buy from scalpers on eBay. We hate those guys.
But here in the present, with crypto mining crashing and used cards flooding the market,
many folks were hoping the Adelavelay series would be relatively affordable.
But the 16GB RTX 4080 starts at $1200, a 72% price increase over the 3080,
and that isn't even taking the aforementioned inflation into account.
But hold on, Riley. What about the other 4080 that starts at only $900? What are you talking about?
An astute observation, dear viewer. As you know, NVIDIA is selling two versions of the RTX 4080.
One features 12GB of VRAM, while the other features 16. And the 12GB version is the one
that starts at 900. But if we look closely here, there's way more differences under the hood
than just the RAM. The beefier 16GB revision has over 2,000 more CUDA cores, as well as a
wider memory bus. So even if 12GB of VRAM is enough to handle high-quality textures,
you're not getting anywhere close to the same maximum performance as the 16GB model.
A fact you can even see on a benchmark results chart, Team Green itself released.
Some fans are even going so far as to call the 12GB version nothing more than a rebadged
70-series card sold at a markup. Because yeah, the architecture is obviously newer,
but it comes with fewer CUDA cores than the last-gen RTX 3080. And to top it all off,
these are just starting prices, as third-party cards from AIBs, which make up the vast majority
of the market, are virtually certain to be more expensive. All this is a real shame.
Since even though the 3000 series was generally well received, it was also roundly criticized for
being short on VRAM compared to what modern AAA titles demand, even at the high end.
So if you're trying to snag a 4000 series card just so you can get more VRAM,
well, I hope you've got some deep pockets. And if not, I want to cut a couple new ones.
Even though NVIDIA isn't just going to spill all the ins and outs of its pricing strategy,
we have a good idea of what's going on here. CEO Jensen Huang has come out and publicly blamed
rising prices on the dramatically increasing costs of silicon wafers, and has also pointed out
that performance per dollar is much better than past generations. But that latter argument is,
you know, exactly how nearly all advancements in technology work, so let's get away from
NVIDIA's official statements. It's no secret that since the crypto crash earlier this year,
there's been a glut of old RTX 30 series stock that both Team Green and its retail partners that
have purchased graphics cards wholesale really want to clear out. I mean, New Egg is even giving
away free monitors if you buy an Ampere GPU. Therefore, both the high end of the new 4000
series and the existing 3000 stock are going to be on the market at the same time?
NVIDIA is effectively positioning the 4000 series cards at the top of one combined product stack,
hence the 4000 series higher prices. NVIDIA seems to be using them as a tactic to nudge some budget
conscious folks towards buying an older gen card to clear out their inventory.
But what about supply of the new cards? Could the high prices be an attempt by Team Green to ensure
they don't run out of cards like what happened back in 2020? This isn't very likely considering
the pandemic seems to be winding down, GPU crypto mining is on life support, and the GPUs themselves
are now being made by TSMC instead of Samsung. In other words, many of the factors that seriously
cut into supply last time around, other than actual high demand from gamers, are now gone.
And even with the 4000 series admittedly impressive performance increases on paper,
it's not like gamers are chomping at the bit to get their hands on something new the way they were
when the 3000 lineup launched. Or for the next two years of supply shortages, since the 2000 series
was widely considered an overpriced disappointment. And the lack of supply constraints could end up
being good news in the months after the November launch, since NVIDIA may be forced to lower prices
once they move some of the 3000 series stock and once they face competition from AMD,
who will be launching their Radeon 7000 cards that same month. Sadly, if you want a shiny new
Ada Lovelace card for the holiday season, you most likely will have to fork over lots of cash.
And don't forget about budgeting for a new power supply. Maybe we should all just give up on PC
Go outside, find a cool stick, play with it. We'll launch a new channel called Stickwiki.