The $999 RTX 4080 Super feels like a tacit admission Nvidia over-reached on the original Ada pricing

HardwareGraphics CardsThe $999 RTX 4080 Super feels like a tacit admission Nvidia over-reached on the original Ada pricingWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia RTX 40-series Super cards

There’s no denying shaving $200 off the original $1,200 price tag of theRTX 4080is a good look. We’re over a year on from its original launch and the mildly updated RTX 4080 Super—with its slightly more powerful AD103 chip and slightly quicker GDDR6X memory—isn’t going to deliver much in the way of a performance improvement. So a big price drop is the only way to make the new card feel like a tangible advance.

It has to be said the original RTX 4080 should never have been a $1,200 GPU in the first place. It always felt like far too much money for an RTX xx80 class card; that was always Titan, Ti, or RTX xx90 class cash at most. Having the top two cards in the Ada generation costing well north of $1,000 felt utterly tone deaf in an environment that was struggling out of an economically catastrophic Covid period.

But during that time gamers and GPU enthusiasts had proven over and over again they were willing to pay even higher premiums for the privilege of having their hands on the best graphics silicon you could buy, no matter the brutal scalper or retailer markups they had attached to them. And the RTX 4080’s ludicrous price tag felt like a response to this, like an Nvidia determined to make all the money it could while that acceptance of sky-high GPU pricing was almost the norm. Even if before that point it wasn’t strictly manufacturer mandated.

And that RTX 4090 costs considerably more, too, launching at $1,600, though is absolutely a far superior card on the whole. It’s got a way bigger GPU, a good chunk more memory, and delivers the sort of generational performance leap you want from a whole new architecture coupled with a new production process.

Even today the RTX 4090 almost feels like the best value Ada graphics card of the entire range, especially when you take into account the hefty price hike the rest of the range took over the previous generation. TheRTX 3090 Ti—itself embodying pandemic pricing at $1,999—was an expensive outlier, but theRTX 3090launched at a very similar $1,500.

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Though a lot of that shine has faded since thehefty rise in pricing for the RTX 4090after the China sanctions started to bite.

(Image credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia RTX 4080 Super cards

So there was no way Nvidia could, in all good conscience, release an RTX 4080 Super with effectively the same gaming performance for the same unrealistic price. And it seems like, with a $200 price cut, it has seen some sense. This $999 tag puts it at around the same price as AMD’s top graphics card, theRX 7900 XTX, which was always going to be as low as Nvidia would be willing to go with the top card in the Ada refresh.

Though it will never admit as much; it will never say it got it wrong with the extreme pricing of the RTX 4080, and we’ll just have to accept the benevolence of our Nvidian GPU overlords in the relative price cut slapped onto the RTX 4080 Super. There’s a chance this was the plan all along: release the original card at an unfeasible price point while people were still prepared to pay ridiculous sums for cards not worth the money, and then drop its price later on. Making hay while the sun shines, so to speak.

Of course, having said all that it would be churlish of me to suggest that even a $999 price tag for the original RTX 4080 would have been too high, especially with theRTX 3080costing a paltry $699 at launch. But it’s hard to get too excited about a second-tier graphics card where a large percentage of third-party cards are going to be priced well above the $1,000 mark, even if the reference GPU does have that $999 MSRP.

Still, the Founders Edition is where it’s at anyways. Just look at the lovely all-black shroud and try and forget how much money you might have spent on one. After all, you can still feel super smug about the few people who spent well over the odds on the weaker RTX 4080 in the past 12 months, eh?

More about graphics cardsIs the new RTX 5070 really as fast as Nvidia’s previous flagship RTX 4090 GPU? Turns out the answer is yes. Kinda.It’s time for me to admit that AI-accelerated frame generation might actually be the way of the future and that’s a good thingLatestCruel is a frantic run-and-gun shooter where you boot cultists out of windows in a cursed apartment block that wants you deadSee more latest►

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Is the new RTX 5070 really as fast as Nvidia’s previous flagship RTX 4090 GPU? Turns out the answer is yes. Kinda.It’s time for me to admit that AI-accelerated frame generation might actually be the way of the future and that’s a good thing

Nvidia RTX 5070 graphics card

Is the new RTX 5070 really as fast as Nvidia’s previous flagship RTX 4090 GPU? Turns out the answer is yes. Kinda.

Nvidia RTX 5090 Founders Edition rendered on a green background.

It’s time for me to admit that AI-accelerated frame generation might actually be the way of the future and that’s a good thing

LatestCruel is a frantic run-and-gun shooter where you boot cultists out of windows in a cursed apartment block that wants you deadSee more latest►

Latest

Cruel is a frantic run-and-gun shooter where you boot cultists out of windows in a cursed apartment block that wants you dead

Cruel

Cruel is a frantic run-and-gun shooter where you boot cultists out of windows in a cursed apartment block that wants you dead

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