by It’s been a few days since NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card launched at a ridiculous price of $1199 US and it seems that consumers (literally) aren’t buying it. Days after launch, the card isn’t selling well in the consumer segment and there are plenty of reasons for that.
‘No’ is consumer response to $1199 US NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card, lower stock than 4090 and still in stock at retailers
In our own review, we found the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 to be an impressive card in terms of gen-over-gen performance and power efficiency, but the price NVIDIA is asking is simply absurd. The 4080 launched at $1199 US, making it the biggest price hike we’ve ever seen on an ’80’ class GeForce graphics card.
Just put things in perspective. the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 launched two years ago for $699 US. The GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB launched at 899 US. Comparing it to the $1999 US price of the 4080, we see a price increase of 71.5% and 50% gen-over-gen. Previously, NVIDIA ’80’ class cards had been well positioned in the $550-$700 US range for several years. Below is a price comparison of different generation GeForce GPUs:
NVIDIA GeForce GPU segment/tier pricing
| Graphic segment | 2014-2016 | 2016-2017 | 2017-2018 | 2018-2019 | 2019-2020 | 2020-2021 | 2021-2022 | 2022-2023 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Titan level | Titan X (Maxwell) | Titan X (Pascal) | TitanXP (Pascal) | Titan V (Volta) | Titan RTX (Turing) | GeForce RTX 3090 | GeForce RTX 3090 Ti GeForce RTX 3090 |
GeForce RTX 4090 |
| Price | $999 US | $1199 US | $1199 US | $2999 US | $2499 US | $1499 US | $1999 US $1499 US |
$1599 US |
| Ultra enthusiastic level | GeForce GTX 980Ti | GeForce GTX 980Ti | GeForce GTX 1080 Ti | GeForce RTX 2080 Ti | GeForce RTX 2080 Ti | GeForce RTX 3080 Ti | GeForce RTX 3080 Ti | N/A |
| Price | $649 US | $649 US | $699 US | $999 US | $999 US | $1199 US | $1199 US | N/A |
| Enthusiast level | GeForce GTX 980 | GeForce GTX 1080 | GeForce GTX 1080 | GeForce RTX 2080 | GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER | GeForce RTX 3080 10GB | GeForce RTX 3080 12GB | GeForce RTX 4080 |
| Price | $549 US | $549 US | $549 US | $699 US | $699 US | $699 US | $999 US | $1199 US |
| High quality level | GeForce GTX 970 | GeForce GTX 1070 | GeForce GTX 1070 | GeForce RTX 2070 | GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER | GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GeForce RTX 3070 |
GeForce RTX 3070 Ti 16 GB | GeForce RTX 4070 Ti |
| Price | $329 US | $379 US | $379 US | $499 US | $499 US | $599 $499 |
To be determined | To be determined |
| mainstream level | GeForce GTX 960 | GeForce GTX 1060 | GeForce GTX 1060 | GeForce GTX 1060 | GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER GeForce RTX 2060 GeForce GTX 1660 Ti GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GeForce GTX 1660 |
GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GeForce RTX 3060 12GB |
GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GeForce RTX 3060 12GB |
N/A |
| Price | $199 US | $249 US | $249 US | $249 US | $399 US $349 US $279 US $229 US $219 US |
$399 US $329 US |
$399 US $329 US |
N/A |
| Entry level | GTX 750 Ti GTX 750 |
GTX 950 | GTX 1050 Ti GTX 1050 |
GTX 1050 Ti GTX 1050 |
GTX 1650 SUPER GTX 1650 |
GTX 1650 SUPER GTX 1650 |
RTX 3050 | N/A |
| Price | $149 US $119 US |
$149 US | $139 US $109 US |
$139 US $109 US |
$159 US $149 US |
$159 US $149 US |
$249 US | N/A |
Leaving crypto aside for a moment (which helped artificially inflate card prices), users who actually paid $700 or $800 US for an RTX 3080 are simply not ready to pay more than $1K US for a ‘ 80’ class graphics card despite all the performance and all the nice features it has to offer. And that brings us to today.
NVIDIA 4080 shipping units:
🟢30,000
NVIDIA 4090 shipping units:
🟢130,000
Total number of RTX 40 transmission units:
🟢160,000
NVIDIA’s 4090 virtually sold out at launch.
Retailers still have 4080 in stock. 😶🌫️😶🌫️
— Hassan Mujtaba (@hms1193) November 19, 2022
8:30,000
9:+30% of current shipment— chi11eddog (@g01d3nm4ng0) November 19, 2022
Retailers in almost all regions stock NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card. This isn’t something that was seen after the launch of the RTX 4090 and it’s certainly not due to the massive inventory NVIDIA has for the RTX 4080. Based on the numbers we have, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX shipments are 4080 nearly 30,000 units.
That’s 70% less than the RTX 4090’s shipments, which were 100,000 units a few weeks ago (we reported exclusively here) and are currently close to 130,000 units. So the whole of the RTX 40 series cards shipped about 160,000 units. That’s 30,000 RTX 4080 and 130,000 RTX 4090 units. So despite a lower shipment count, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 is still having a hard time selling and consumers are just waiting for a cheaper solution under the $1000 US bracket or to buy an RTX 4090.
Here are just a few examples of various stores in the US with piles of RTX 4080 graphics cards that no one wants to buy:
Another stock stack of Nvidia RTX 4080 pic.twitter.com/ITEzCkZ96o
— taekim 🐀 (@firstadopter) November 17, 2022
The following is the situation at most retailers and while Newegg has already sold out of their cards, it seems that eBay scalpers could play a big part in causing these shortages as the site is full of cards costing over $1600 US and even some that cost more than $2000. US (we don’t recommend buying any of these scalped cards):
This leads us to the third part of the story and that is the pricing of the individual AIB model. Most NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 cards are priced neck-and-neck with either RTX 4090 Founders Edition or reference-priced AIB models. The RTX 4080 ROG STRIX and TUF Gaming from ASUS are currently priced at $1500 and $1549 US respectively. We also recently reviewed an anime-themed model that is priced higher than an RTX 4090. The RTX 4090 offers a 30-40% performance boost over the RTX 4080, so users would rather pay for that extra performance and massive VRAM pool for 10-15% more price instead of getting an overpriced 4080.
The last and most crucial thing keeping consumers from buying an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card is the imminent launch of AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 series graphics cards, which the red team has directly marketed against the RTX 4080 , with shots on the 16-pin connectors (now confirmed as a user error), are hugely oversized reference models and bet on its brand new set of features. Pricing is very attractive at $899 and $999 US, but despite that, we recommend our readers to wait for final reviews. Either way, that doesn’t change the fact that the GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card currently offers the worst performance.
