Nvidia RTX 4080 Super Founders Edition Graphics Card Review
How Much Does it Cost?
Nvidia launched the RTX 4080 with an MSRP of $1200, which is a lot of money, but you didn’t need me to tell you that. The new RTX 4080 Super launches with an MSRP of $1000, still a lot of money, but for a (slightly) improved graphics card coming in as a mid-gen refresh and with a lower price, it’s safe to say things are heading in the right direction for consumers, so thank you Nvidia for this one! While it’s still expensive, more GPU for less money will always get a big thumbs up from us.
Overview
So what do we think? I think it’s clear to see that the 4080 SUPER is a step up in everything but performance. Sure, some games can utilise the extra specs that the 4080 SUPER has, but at such a small amount, it’s still within the margin of error, and the silicon lottery comes into play too. So you could argue, why didn’t NVIDIA just price cut the 4080 and while they’ve not confirmed anything with us, we do have our theories.
When NVIDIA place an order for the silicon from their partners, they are paying a specific price based on the fabrication process, and the 4080 non-SUPER never saw that change, whereas the 4080 SUPER is slightly different, as per the GPU variants naming structure, so NVIDIA has found a way to refine the process, and in turn, it’s likely costing them less money.
Their costs go down, and therefore they can afford to pass those savings on, whereas simply cutting the price of an existing product that’s been made under a more expensive fab process and has already been paid for, is a completely different kettle of fish.
So I’m all for this, and like I said earlier. It does seem that gamers are happy to pay more for an NVIDIA card, as seen by how much of the market NVIDIA have, and the fact that AMD has even been rumoured to say that they may stop making high-end GPUs, much like we saw with the 5000 series which topped out as the 5700 series. They simply can’t compete. That’s not to say in terms of rasterisation, high frame rate numbers, but more in terms of features, and of course Ray Tracing.
So that all puts NVIDIA in a really good position and allows them, yes, to charge more money, but also to do these mid-cycle changes where money and savings can be passed on. Sure we’d all like to see it cheaper, but the 4080 SUPER is still likely to outsell both the 7900 XT and 7900 XTX by a huge margin, much like the more expensive 4080 non-SUPER already has.
So definitely some food for thought. I always had my feelings about how the 4080 was too expensive, but at $1000, it’s definitely a card that really has no competition when you factor in all elements including performance, Ray Tracing, upscaling, streaming and all of the other features that separate AMD and NVIDIA.
