One can criticize Nvidia’s behavior while being honest about the company’s technical work. And on this point, it is undeniable that the RTX 4090 is a beast. The good performance suggests that it will be difficult to tickle the green team on the top of the range. But we must admit that we know nothing about the future generation of AMD GPUs. Some recent leaks suggest that AMD would be very well positioned in case of a confrontation between its next RX 7900 XT and an RTX 4090. A recent release of the very well informed Greymon55 allows us to think (or hope?) that the fight between the reds and the greens would be much more difficult than previously thought. So we’ll allow ourselves a few words here that can be described as speculation on the future of the GPU market.
A situation that Nvidia would have anticipated by shifting its range to finally release a 4090 that should have been named 4090 Ti to face the next RX 7900 XT. A reversal explaining the price of the last RTX. Remember once again that we are still at the level of rumors and speculations but we must recognize that the inconsistencies are numerous since the presentation of the RTX 4080/4090.
Nvidia’s price slippage could have another explanation…
We won’t go back to the story of the fake RTX 4080 twins because in reality it’s the prices that bother us. Yes, the €/$ conversion is unfortunate and doesn’t help the situation, but for years Nvidia has maintained a certain consistency in the commercial positioning of its range. So let’s stay in dollars and give us a little retrospective of the Nvidia range and its price positioning at the time of release. We get this little list that doesn’t really do any good:
GTX 680 – $499
GTX 780 – $549
GTX 980 – $549
GTX 1080 – $599
RTX 2080 – $699
RTX 3080 – $699
RTX 4080 – $1199
So yes there is inflation, yes the chips are more expensive to produce, but the gap between an RTX 3080 and an RTX 4080 seems inordinate even with these parameters. It seems hard to believe that Nvidia is trying to impose “covid pricing” as the new market rule. For us the explanation lies elsewhere. Maybe we’re wrong…but maybe not…
