Earlier this week, Nvidia announced its next batch of GeForce RTX cards – raising eyebrows at how much some of them will cost.
At the high end, the RTX 4090 costs an eye-watering $1599. The RTX 4080 16 GB costs $1199, while the RTX 4080 12 GB costs $899.
Many had hoped for lower prices — but according to Nvidia boss Jensen Huang, those costs reflect a world where Moore’s Law — where performance is doubled every two years for half the price — is now “dead.”
“Moore’s law is dead,” Huang said, as reported by Digital Trends. “A 12-inch wafer is a lot more expensive these days. The idea that the chip will drop in price is a thing of the past.”
That said, Nvidia has plenty to brag about with the 40 series. The 4090 and 4080 are the company’s first GPUs in the company’s ‘Ada Lovelace’ series and should be up to twice as fast as their last-generation counterparts in rasterized games – and up to four times faster in ray-traced games. .
The company’s RTX 3080 will also remain available.
“The RTX 4080 16GB is 3x the performance of the RTX 3080 Ti on next-gen content like Cyberpunk with RT Overdrive mode or Racer RTX – for the same price,” an Nvidia spokesperson told Eurogamer today. And the RTX 4080 12GB is 3x the performance of the RTX 3080 12GB for $100 less.
“They are a fantastic value compared to comparably priced RTX 3080 GPUs. However, we know the RTX 3080 10GB is an incredible value and we will continue to offer it.”
To learn more about RTX 4090, Digital Foundry is already hands-on with Nvidia’s new cards.