It’s been a few days since NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card launched at a ridiculous price point of $1199 US and it looks like consumers ain’t buying it (literally). Days after its launch, the card isn’t selling well in the consumer segment and there are plenty of reasons.
‘Nope’ Is Consumers Reply To The $1199 US NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Graphics Card, Lower Stock Than 4090 & Still Stocked Up 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, however, the price that NVIDIA is asking for is simply absurd. The 4080 launched at $1199 US, making it the single largest price bump we have ever seen on an ’80’ class GeForce graphics card.
Just to put things into perspective. the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 launched at $699 US two years ago. The GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB launched at 899 US. Comparing these to the 4080’s $1999 US price, we see a 71.5% and a 50% price bump gen-over-gen. Previously, the NVIDIA ’80’ class cards had been positioned well in the $550-$700 US range for several years. Following is a comparison of various gen GeForce GPU’s pricing:
NVIDIA GeForce GPU Segment/Tier Prices
| Graphics Segment | 2014-2016 | 2016-2017 | 2017-2018 | 2018-2019 | 2019-2020 | 2020-2021 | 2021-2022 | 2022-2023 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Titan Tier | Titan X (Maxwell) | Titan X (Pascal) | Titan Xp (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 Enthusiast Tier | GeForce GTX 980 Ti | GeForce GTX 980 Ti | 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 Tier | GeForce GTX 980 | GeForce GTX 1080 | GeForce GTX 1080 | GeForce RTX 2080 | GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER | GeForce RTX 3080 10 GB | GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB | GeForce RTX 4080 |
| Price | $549 US | $549 US | $549 US | $699 US | $699 US | $699 US | $799 US | $1199 US |
| High-End Tier | 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 |
TBA | TBD |
| Mainstream Tier | 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 12 GB |
GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB |
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 Tier | 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 |
If we take crypto out of the equation for a second (which helped inflate prices of cards artificially), users who actually paid $700 or $800 US for an RTX 3080 are simply not ready to dish in over $1K US for an ’80’ class graphics card despite all the performance and all the fancy features that it has to offer. And that leads us to today.
NVIDIA 4080 shipment units:
🟢30,000
NVIDIA 4090 shipment units:
🟢130,000
Total RTX 40 shipment units:
🟢160,000
NVIDIA’s 4090 was pretty much 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 are stocked with NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card. This is not a sight that was seen after the RTX 4090’s launch and it is definitely not due to the massive inventory that NVIDIA has for the RTX 4080. In fact, based on the numbers we have, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 shipments are close to 30,000 units.
That’s 70% less than RTX 4090’s shipments which were at 100,000 units a few weeks back (we reported here exclusively) and are currently close to 130,000 units. So the entirety of the RTX 40 series cards has shipped around 160,000 units. That’s 30,000 RTX 4080 and 130,000 RTX 4090 units. So despite a lower quantity of shipments, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 is still having a hard time selling and consumers are simply either waiting for a cheaper solution under the $1000 US bracket or getting themselves an RTX 4090.
Here are just a few examples of various stores in the US sitting with piles of RTX 4080 graphics cards that no one is interested in buying:
Another Nvidia RTX 4080 inventory pile pic.twitter.com/ITEzCkZ96o
— tae kim 🐀 (@firstadopter) November 17, 2022
Following is the situation at most retailers and while Newegg has all their cards sold out, it looks like eBay scalpers may have a big hand in causing these shortages as the site is loaded with cards priced above $1600 US and even some which are priced above $2000 US (we don’t recommend buying any of these scalped cards):
This leads us to the third part of the story and that’s the individual AIB model pricing. Most NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 cards are priced neck-to-neck with an RTX 4090 Founders Edition or AIB models with reference pricing. For example, ASUS’s RTX 4080 ROG STRIX and TUF Gaming are currently at $1500 & $1549 US, respectively. We also recently covered an anime-themed model which is priced higher than an RTX 4090. The RTX 4090 offers a 30-40% performance bump over the RTX 4080 so users would rather pay for that extra performance and massive VRAM pool for 10-15% more price rather than get an overly priced 4080.
The last and most crucial thing that is holding off 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 been marketing directly against the RTX 4080, throwing shots at the 16-pin connectors (now confirmed as a user-error), its hugely oversized reference models and betting on its brand new set of features. The prices are very attractive at $899 and $999 US but despite that, we would recommend our readers wait for final reviews. Regardless, that doesn’t change the fact that the GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card offers the worst perf to $ value at the moment.
