It's not an overstretch. AMD targeted the 7900XTX to go against the 4080. That was considered high end and the 4090 was considered flagship. The 7900XTX blew my RTX 3080 out of the water.
Yes, and given the one not-so-demanding game I play now, Trails to Daybreak 1-2, both 4080 and 7900XTX won't be capable to perform in 4K well at decent quality settings. So much for these... It's not an FPS shooter when nothing but FPS matters and picture's too fast to grasp anything decent, here you really want to look at beautiful scenario and stuff. So yeah, 'high end' suddenly becomes feasible middle ground when you add 4K to the mix. And no, even 4090 is not capable of running it in 8K smooth even without any AA... so much for having native 8K display for now... the photo viewing quality is extreme, but gaming is still a no. I'm actually convinced 5090 can bridge this gap to 'barely playable', but no, 4090 was the last nV for me, except if AMD decides to stay at the budget sector forever.
Yes, 4090 _was_ the top. But having AMD not releasing anything even close to it is pitiable. I'd prefer AMD to be honest, but there's just nothing to buy instead of 4090 there for these two years.
In another news post here we see MSI skipping doing AMD cards. Basically a result of the same: they don't want to dip fully into the budget sector and so shifting their position, but alas there's just nothing to cover anything above it from AMD. Even some card between 4080 and 4090 would be somewhat good, but no, 'value' became the key. Personally I don't need the 'value', I need something decent stuff will be playable on in 4K at least, 'value' may go to hell there.