EDIT:
Since people continue commenting and sometimes recommend the same thing to me, please note the following message I had posted yesterday.
Regardless, feel free to continue discussing this matter as you please. Turned out to be an interesting topic.
Original post:
Hi everyone,
I've been seeing everyone BASHING on the 4080, honestly, for not apparent reason.
The main argument is: The 3080's MSRP is 699$, the 4080 is 1199$. nVidia is a greedy company.
Now here's my (logical?) counter-argument:
- The 4080 is better than even a 3090 Ti which was released at an MSRP of 1,999$. People were not as negative towards the 3090 Ti as they are over the 4080.
- The 4080 is much closer to the 3080 Ti in terms of CUDE Cores and VRAM, and then 3080 Ti was released at the exact MSRP of 1,199$ as the 4080.
I assume the 4080 12GB was intended to be the "real" 4080, and the 4080 16GB the 4080 Ti? If nVidia would have simply called the 4080 16GB version a "4080 Ti" would people not be as pissed as they are?
- The current market is awful, allowing nVidia to basically do whatever they want. Reality check, "courtesy" of pcpartpicker:
- Want a 3090? Pay 1,298$+ (only 1 card at that price). ~13-23% slower than the 4080 for ~8% more money.
- Want a 3090 Ti? Pay 1,639$+ (only 1 card at that price). ~9-14% slower than the 4080 for 36% more money.
- Want a 4090? Pay 2,079$+ (only 1 card at that price - the next one is 2,199$). ~5-25% faster than the 4080 for 73%-83% more money.
- Or frantically refresh websites until (maybe) some website sells them at MSRP. Maybe.
And on a more personal note and a bit more details about my thought process here:
Yes - it's very justified for companies to spike their prices. nVidia isn't some charity organization intended to give back to the community. They are here to make money and please the investors first and foremost. If that means increasing the prices dramatically due to numerous reasons, such as: extremely high demand, shortage of chips in the industry, increased prices of the workforce, materials, development process and shipment, no competition, and purely because they can - they will do it.
Whether you (the user) like it or not makes 0 difference to them, since they have done their research (they have people smarter than many of us working on exactly that) and know it will sell either way due to the current market situation. They can only make X GPUs a year, knowing very well the vast majority of them will sell. Why sell them for 699$ a piece if it'll sell the exact same way for 1199$ a piece?
Is it ethical / good for consumers? Nope and nope.
Is it something that was done in the past? Only a million times by a million different companies. Tesla has been doing it for years.. Does that stop people from buying Teslas? Not really. They are still selling far more than they can produce. Only now people with less money can't afford it. Did you see Elon Musk crying about all those people who can't afford Teslas? Didn't think so.
Until nVidia produces more GPUs than they can sell, prices will continue rising. Until AMD/Intel doesn't produce anything worthwhile and competitive, prices will continue rising. Until scalpers will be dealt with, price will continue rising. This is a very very basic demand and supply issue.
This problem won't be fixed just because
xxx_insert_username_here_xxx can't afford a product, or thinks a private company is doing "unethical" things. They have enough customers without them, they've done their research. It being sold out very quickly just proves it they were not wrong.
Thoughts?
Full disclosure:
OP had bought 2 RTX 4080's at MSRP for 2 different builds and doesn't understand all the fuss and hate around it.
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