News RTX 4080 Too Expensive? Gamers Say Otherwise, as Cards Sell Out Within an Hour

[elforeign]

The real cost isn't the chips, it's all the R&D that goes into creating the chips in the first place. Nvidia likely spent billions creating Ada Lovelace, and probably 50% more than it spent on Ampere just because things were more complex going to N4 process and packing in lots more transistors.

First, I wanted to say thank you to you and Tomshardware. I used to follow Anandtech more closely but with the loss of Dr. Ian Cuttress and their budget/staffing issues i've come back to Tomshardware for reviews and other industry related news.

Second, it really can't be said enough how much people don't understand your point that the cost is hardly ever in the chips. the R&D and wafer costs are the real pricing pressure for these products, like any product from an AMD, NVIDIA, Intel or the like. Not to mention shareholder pressure to see balance sheets and profit margins like Apple's.

Unfortunately, for these diverse reasons and others (such as lack of competitive pressure from the market), it's more and more miraculous when we get what seem like competitively priced, good products rather than the "milk them for as much money as possible" that we have been living through recently.

Ada is a good product, it's just priced for the 1%.

 

[BrassmonkE]

I rechecked the video and you are correct that there is no direct indication of cut to Ada orders. However, Jenson directly addresses the fact that ADA was delayed to allow for sell through (around the 35minute mark). Its reasonable to assume that they would have continued to build inventory in anticipation of day 1, particularly given that there are no indications of production cuts and given that they had to prepay when moving to TSMC. Given those drastic actions (delay of ada and undershipping) which Jenson referred to as Harsh Medicine, it seems at least plausible that they have an interest in limiting supply, somewhat, if 3 series supply is still considered too high. I suppose we will see if the soft market sell through was adequate. I assume some of this may be addressed in the call tonight. Either way - speculation on my part. Conspiracies on the internets!

Historically their margins are around 60% (sub 50% for the quarter) which certainly point to a lack of competition and thereby unreasonable prices so I agree with you there. My point in making that comment was that I'd rather see NVDA take the addition income then some group on Ebay.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I saw plenty of people lined up at my local MicroCenter in Tustin, California.
They were all lined up for the RTX 4080.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I rechecked the video and you are correct that there is no direct indication of cut to Ada orders. However, Jenson directly addresses the fact that ADA was delayed to allow for sell through (around the 35minute mark). Its reasonable to assume that they would have continued to build inventory in anticipation of day 1, particularly given that there are no indications of production cuts and given that they had to prepay when moving to TSMC. Given those drastic actions (delay of ada and undershipping) which Jenson referred to as Harsh Medicine, it seems at least plausible that they have an interest in limiting supply, somewhat, if 3 series supply is still considered too high. I suppose we will see if the soft market sell through was adequate. I assume some of this may be addressed in the call tonight. Either way - speculation on my part. Conspiracies on the internets!

Historically their margins are around 60% (sub 50% for the quarter) which certainly point to a lack of competition and thereby unreasonable prices so I agree with you there. My point in making that comment was that I'd rather see NVDA take the addition income then some group on Ebay.

But nVIDIA doesn't do enough to pressure their Partners to prevent scalping, that's a entirely seperate issue though.

 

[alceryes]

I don't buy into this mentality. Marketing might, but I think it's BS. Having something continually sold out is bad for the business, because it means lots of people aren't able to buy your product. Not having sufficient supply at launch is different, because it's almost impossible to have sufficient supply on any new high-end GPU. You get 80-150 chips per wafer, max. So even 10,000 wafers goes pretty fast if you're Nvidia. That's basically a whole month's supply. Having ~5% less than demand is one thing; having 5% of demand is a completely different story.

I say this in the nicest of ways - that is very naive.

Maybe you misunderstood my use of scarcity. I don't mean that they make them completely unavailable for long periods of time, or put out so few that some reviewers don't even get to test them (the so-called paper launch). No, my use of scarcity means that their literal army of accountants, and product, supply, and merchandising managers got together to figure out how to make the maximum amount of money from their 4000 and 3000-series GPUs through limiting either production or supply.

If you disagree, let's flip the equation. Do you think NVIDIA and its board partners are producing the absolute most amount of chips and GPUs at the absolute fastest rate they can?

 

[tracker1]

From what I understand, 4080 stock to stores was a fraction of 4090. Holding back inventory to push 3000 series sales.

 

[TJ Hooker]

Nvidia cut production requests for the 30-series GPUs in Q2/Q3 — this already happened. It was done to help reduce 30-series inventory. Nvidia did not cut Ada orders as far as we know; it has never suggested such. But Ampere orders were to Samsung and Ada was for TSMC, so it couldn't use Samsung to create more Ada GPUs

Nvidia was (allegedly) trying to reduce or delay TSMC wafers for Ada as well.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-apple-nvidia-reportedly-reducing-5nm-tsmc-orders

 

[ManDaddio]

Without any insight on how many cards were available, this information is meaningless.

By writing these articles tech sites support a narrative that the product is so desirable that it immediately sold out, without any actual information about sold units. One could ask if limiting supply on the first day isn't a strategy of tech companies to fuel that narrative.

You don't really need to have numbers. I was also looking at many websites today and yesterday and saw cards come and go. That means they were in stock and now they aren't. That would only indicate one thing. People bought the cards.

 

[ManDaddio]

Last generation when it was hard to get the RTX 3090 I bought a pre-built system. And after adding up all the parts getting a free 2-year warranty and a $200 discount from a promo code I actually paid less than I would normally for the parts.

Sometimes going pre-built isn't that bad of an idea if you know what you're buying. I wouldn't just buy from any Joe blow. Make sure to trusted company that gives you a decent warranty.

 

[USAFRet]

If Nvidia cut the price in half it would actually make the 4080 good value.

And you still would not get one.
The scalper bots would still get there first.

 

[ManDaddio]

One other thing that people have to be mindful of is that companies that put together pre-built PCS buy up a lot of these cards.
This was under reported last generation from all the media outlets.
While it was hard to buy a card last generation it was very easy to get one in a pre-built. No one seemed to report on that very much though. Everybody just wants to blame it on crypto miners. But they were only a percentage of people who bought cards.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Amazon has a dedicated page for the RTX 40## series, Amazon.com: GeForce : GeForce RTX 40 Series You can select between all listed 4090s or 4080s
Amazon.com: MSI Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 24GB GDRR6X 384-Bit HDMI/DP Nvlink Tri-Frozr 3 Ada Lovelace Architecture Graphics Card (RTX 4080 16GB Gaming X Trio) : Electronics 1 left in stock now
Amazon.com: MSI Gaming GeForce RTX 4090 24GB GDRR6X 384-Bit HDMI/DP Nvlink Tri-Frozr 3 Ada Lovelace Architecture OC Graphics Card (RTX 4090 Gaming X Trio 24G) : Electronics 20 in stock

The pricing is a JOKE! Why would I buy a lower card of the exact same series for $200 more, fear of melting a connector, but thats what RMAs are for...

EDIT: nevermind, I see the "shiped and sold-by" is different from the selling store. Your right, these are scalpers already turning and burning. Amazon should really remove the official Store link if they are being sold by a 3rd party, its misleading.

Amazon Marketplace and Newegg Marketplace (or whatever they're called) are super annoying!

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

If you disagree, let's flip the equation. Do you think NVIDIA and its board partners are producing the absolute most amount of chips and GPUs at the absolute fastest rate they can?

Again, it's a difference in semantics. Early last year and late 2020, AMD and Nvidia were trying to get as many GPUs as possible as fast as possible. That's for certain. But by the start of this year, Nvidia saw the writing on the wall for mining profitability and demand and had to scale back orders as 2022 kicked off. These projections are done about four to six months in advance, so there's always an element of uncertainty. Is Nvidia asking TSMC to make the absolute highest number of GPUs possible right now? No. Because that would likely cost more money, and it definitely doesn't want to end up with lots of unsold cards.

At the same time, I don't think Nvidia projected six months ago that it could sell a million RTX 4090 cards and then intentionally limited the original supply to maybe 50,000 units. That's probably a reasonable lower estimate of what has shipped, perhaps as many as 125,000. And I don't think Nvidia did fewer RTX 4080 cards for the launch than it did for the 4090, just so they could also sell out. Now if Nvidia did a forecast and said, "We can probably sell 250,000 4090 cards in the first month" but then only ordered enough wafers to sell 100,000, that's different. Because it would then likely do another 100,000 for months two and three (combined), and then sales will slow down. At some point, Nvidia wants equilibrium so that it sells roughly as many cards as it makes.

You don't flood the market with a maximum order right off the bat. Because by the time you determine how many cards have been sold, and you're projecting how many more you need to order, you're potentially looking at a surplus or shortage that lasts six months while you wait for wafer orders to come through. So yes, Nvidia absolutely "under predicts" the initial sales. But how much is it coming in under what it thinks it needs? That's where we apparently differ in opinion. Nvidia will probably sell half a million RTX 4080 and 4090 cards by the end of 2022. Maybe it could have sold a million if it ordered more GPUs! But if that's the upper bound on how many potential 4090 buyers there are, Nvidia would want to fill those orders over many months rather than all at once. That's not just marketing, it's business — steady revenue and not feast and famine.

But again, if anyone on here works at some place that actually sells cards and can speak (off the record) to me about unit quantities, I'd love to hear from you. Drop me a PM. How many 4090 cards arrived at Amazon, Newegg, B&H, Best Buy, etc. for the Oct 12 launch? How many 4080 cards for the Nov 16 launch? That's what we really need to know, but that sort of business information is almost never given out. If you're at a single store (e.g. Best Buy) and can just say, "Hey, our store got XXX 4090 cards at launch and yyyy 4080 cards," that would be at least part of the story we want to know.

 

[cloud7s7]

3000? 4000? Who cares. If I have to wait another decade for prices to come out of fantasy land, I'll do it. I'm just fine with my 1070 TI and a Steam library so large, I'll probably die before I finish them all.

 

[palladin9479]

I don't buy into this mentality. Marketing might, but I think it's BS. Having something continually sold out is bad for the business, because it means lots of people aren't able to buy your product. Not having sufficient supply at launch is different, because it's almost impossible to have sufficient supply on any new high-end GPU. You get 80-150 chips per wafer, max. So even 10,000 wafers goes pretty fast if you're Nvidia. That's basically a whole month's supply. Having ~5% less than demand is one thing; having 5% of demand is a completely different story.

Hmm not quite, this would only apply if they made one giant batch and release all at once but they don't do that. Instead you release in smaller waves, then each wave gets reported as "sold out", which only lasts a week, then gets "sold out" a few days later, then back in stock, and so forth. It creates the illusion of limited supply, while not actually limiting supply.

To illustrate, say you are running a candy bar sales stand and have a few bars on display with a sign that says "buy now, going fast". Now down below you have a whole box of them, but you only ever have a few on the counter top and only replenish when there are none. People see other people hurrying to buy those "few" candy bars and get excited that they have to buy them quick before you "run out".

Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) is a real thing and a very strong marketing tactic. Most of the consumer industry use's FOMO and YOLO tactics to drive sales by creating the illusion of demand and "gotta get it now".

 

[Coffee Fueled Curmudgeon]

£1350-£1700 on every 4080 in stock at 1400hrs yesterday at Box.co.uk, and actually not sold out - albeit mostly the Palit and Asus TUF left over. Not a single card at MSRP, actually surprised to see any of them at £1350ish.

Still not buying one, they're all huge, overpriced too. Same goes for the RX7900's. I'm used to building people machines to game on at £1000-£1400 not spending most of that on the damn card.

 

[Elusive Ruse]

I can understand 4090 being scooped up quickly, that is assuming they were legit buys; the card is a beast and can moonlight as an Quadro/A series GPU at a much lower price point. The 4080 selling like hot cakes is baffling though, I'm sure there are people who would purchase the card, yet not to a point that the card goes out of stock immediately. It seems to me that scalpers are the culprits here for the large part.

 

[sizzling]

£1350-£1700 on every 4080 in stock at 1400hrs yesterday at Box.co.uk, and actually not sold out - albeit mostly the Palit and Asus TUF left over. Not a single card at MSRP, actually surprised to see any of them at £1350ish.

Still not buying one, they're all huge, overpriced too. Same goes for the RX7900's. I'm used to building people machines to game on at £1000-£1400 not spending most of that on the damn card.

Yesterday evening scan.co.uk had most models in stock but looking now there are 6 models in stock from Palit, Zotac, MSI & Gigabyte. The price will have to come down a lot before I consider an upgrade to a 4080, I just don’t think it’s worth this price.

 

[dalek1234]

Without any insight on how many cards were available, this information is meaningless.....

That's exactly what I through as soon as I read the title of this article.

 

[PEnns]

"...as Cards Sell Out Within an Hour"

Yeah, the scalpers are hard at work!

 

[rdmetz]

£1350-£1700 on every 4080 in stock at 1400hrs yesterday at Box.co.uk, and actually not sold out - albeit mostly the Palit and Asus TUF left over. Not a single card at MSRP, actually surprised to see any of them at £1350ish.

Still not buying one, they're all huge, overpriced too. Same goes for the RX7900's. I'm used to building people machines to game on at £1000-£1400 not spending most of that on the damn card.

To be fair if you're used to building systems in the $1000-1400 budget for the whole thing then these level of cards were never really designed for your builds to begin with.

xx70 level cards are more likley the right "fit" for a build of this cost for most of the past decade with now more likley a xx60/ti today.

I remember putting together $2000 builds for me and my friend circa 2010 with a 5770hd and for most builds I kept my limit at $2k and the xx70 class cards (or usually whatever was a step down or so from the top) was what went in them.

Today 2 things are different though... We now have an "Uber" class above high end cards (the new xx90 class) and costs overall have went up with the addition of ray tracing / ai features.

So again maybe when the 4070 or 4060ti release look and see if you can't fit one in your "Typical" budget and more than likley you'll be a lot closer and performance will still be way better than likley anything from a build 3 or 4+ years old. (so still a "proper" upgrade)

Many people are going to have to take a bit of an ego check when it comes to PC gaming these days if their goal is to continue spending on parts exactly what they've paid in the past you'll still see huge improvements but if you're forced to go from a x080 class card down to a 4060ti to keep within your "budget" so be it.

Youll just have to get over the fact that you're no longer a "high end" gamer. You'll still be doing better than you were before by a long shot.

 

[USAFRet]

Youll just have to get over the fact that you're no longer a "high end" gamer. You'll still be doing better than you were before by a long shot.

And some people buy this level of device, just to watch funny cat videos, because they think they have to.

$1k motherboards, 2x 4TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, 64-128GB RAM, top of the line CPU.
Just for web browsing.

I kid you not.

 

[rdmetz]

Yesterday evening scan.co.uk had most models in stock but looking now there are 6 models in stock from Palit, Zotac, MSI & Gigabyte. The price will have to come down a lot before I consider an upgrade to a 4080, I just don’t think it’s worth this price.

If someone told me I could have a 3090ti for $999 or a 4080 for $1199 I'm taking a 4080 the uplift may not be huge but the next gen features plus longer support life to me makes it worth the extra cost... If dlss3 becomes pretty ubiquitous that alone would make it worth it to me.

And heck Amazon is still selling (themselves not 3rd party) the 3080ti for $999 so again given the choice I'm spending the bit extra...

Sure the 4090 for $400 more is totally "worth it" but if it's out of my budget it's out of my budget.

33% more cost is a very real number and yes 20% more (3080/90ti to 4080) is too it's a much smaller amount to swallow and isn't BOTH for a 60% bump.

I think it will all come down to how well amd does at $999 if they really put pressure on Nvidia and blow away ANYTHING they currently offer at the price then we might see some adjustments... But if they can only match SOME of the performance while losing in other areas then Nvidia will likley not feel the need to move anything knowing their "special sauce" is worth it to many even if slightly more expensive.

 

[rdmetz]

And some people buy this level of device, just to watch funny cat videos, because they think they have to.

$1k motherboards, 2x 4TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, 64-128GB RAM, top of the line CPU.
Just for web browsing.

I kid you not.

I don't game like "alot" but I do play games at least a couple times a week. I mainly into the experiences of high end AAA games (the God of war's or Death Stranding type of experience) and when I do play these big budget games I want to see them at their absolute best.

I spent the money on the display to have the best image quality I could (LG 4K/120HZ OLED) so I want my system to be able to push that as far as it can.

So I have a 4090 equipped pc and have for the last decade had what would essentially be called "overkill" pc going back to 780ti's in SLI IN 2013/14 and having sli for each subsequent 'next best gpu "after til the 2080ti where I went back to single card.

I was chasing 4k/60 back then (getting my first 4k display in 2013) and it took until the 3080 before I actually had a setup that could match that level of display without any compromise... Too bad I had moved on to 4k/120hz display the year before! Lol

4090 is the first time that I've actually had a gpu that matches my display almost perfectly and I'm quite happy with its cost vs performance.... Again as someone who has been used to buying 2x gpu's for better part of a decade the "cost shock" really ain't that hard to swallow not when I've been spending $1200+ for years and years.

The 4090 really truly is just a sli users replacement gpu and it performance matches the cost properly I feel.

I may not get as much use out of it as others who can game on it 24/7 but I'm pushing 40 and I have a right to waste some money on making sure my last year's on this earth are spent enjoying what I've worked to be able to have.

 

[elforeign]

I may not get as much use out of it as others who can game on it 24/7 but I'm pushing 40 and I have a right to waste some money on making sure my last year's on this earth are spent enjoying what I've worked to be able to have.

Cheers, mate!