Nvidia reveals RTX 4000 pricing and release date
After months of waiting, Nvidia has finally revealed the RTX 4000 series GPUs’ pricing and release date. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang revealed these details as part of his keynote during the company’s three-day GTC 2022 event this week.
The announcement comes on the heels of a leak that had the cards being released within the next couple of months. Now it turns out those leaks were on the money. The flagship GeForce RTX 4090 will have a paper launch on October 12, while the RTX 4080—something also mentioned in the leak—will launch sometime in November.
What wasn’t covered by the leak was the RTX 4000 series’ pricing, which Nvidia also revealed at GTC 2022. The flagship 24GB RTX4090 will cost a whopping $1,599 (Php92,000 as of current exchange rates). Meanwhile, the 16 GB version of the RTX 4080 will go for a not unsubstantial $1,199 (Php69,000) and the 12GB version will retail at $899 (Php52,000).
The prices represent a significant markup compared to that of the previous generation cards, the now three-year-old RTX 3000 series.
Nvidia touts the cards as the first based on their new Ada Lovelace architecture (named after English mathematician Ada Lovelace) and promises a “massive generational leap” in regard to performance and efficiency.
“The age of RTX ray tracing and neural rendering is in full steam, and our new Ada Lovelace architecture takes it to the next level,” said Huang at the event.
“Ada provides a quantum leap for gamers and paves the way for creators of fully simulated worlds. With up to 4x the performance of the previous generation, Ada is setting a new standard for the industry.”
Part of this performance comes from new features including the newly announced Nvidia DLSSS 3—the next iteration of the company’s real-time AI upscaling technology—which will only work with RTX 4000. This is on top of a new performance-enhancing technology Nvidia calls Shared Execution Reordering.
In addition, Nvidia announced that the RTX 4000’s dual NVENC hardware video encoders will support next-generation video codec AV1.
While it does bring the expected generational leap in performance, the RTX 4000 series’ increase in pricing over the RTX 3000 series has led some gamers scratching their heads. This is especially in regards to the 12GB version of the RTX 4080, which based on released specs, some feel has enough downgrades from the 16GB version to be an “RTX 4070” instead.
“The prices are downright insulting,” stated one Redditor. “They are trying to sell you a 4070 rebranded as a 4080 for 900$ lmao.”
The prices are even more questionable in the face of the current drop in GPU prices, thanks to the cryptocurrency crash. They also give ammunition to Nvidia’s competitors to compete with it on price. AMD, which is supposed to release its rival Radeon RX 7000 series later this year, could use this to undercut Nvidia. Meanwhile, it could also help justify GPU-newcomer Intel’s decision to focus on the lower end of the market. (Read: Intel Arc A770 GPU finally ready for retail – Pat Gelsinger)
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