If recent talk from the rumour mill is accurate, Nvidia’s next-generation Lovelace GPUs, which go on sale starting from next month, could wind up costing more than their suggested levels (MSRPs) (with all the usual caveats applied).
Moore’s Law is Dead (opens in new tab) (MLID), a YouTube leaker, raises several comments about the cost of the two RTX 4080 graphics cards and the new RTX 4090 graphics card. For example, he notes out that the cheapest Lovelace GPU, the RTX 4080 12GB, won’t have a Founders Edition (one made by Nvidia).
As KitGuru(opens in new tab) pointed out, the specifications for the next-generation GPUs on the Nvidia website merely mention that the dimensions “vary by manufacturer,” indicating that only independent manufacturers would produce these cards and that Nvidia won’t produce its own version (something clarified elsewhere on the spec page).
As a result, Team Green won’t be able to maintain the MSRP at the advertised $899 in the US; instead, those partner card makers will choose the price, which, according to MLID, may result in the device starting at more than $1,000. In addition, the YouTube leaker predicts that prices for Lovelace graphics cards above that model would rise in line with it. However, this prediction may also be contingent on initial supply availability.
As always, if there is little available inventory when the Lovelace GPUs are released, at least for the first few weeks, we will fall victim to the usual scam of stock being purchased by scalpers at inflated prices. Of course, it’s too early to make that prediction, but it’s something to keep in mind as new GPUs are introduced (and indeed CPUs).
The fact that German price tags will be over 20% more expensive than the US, as reported by Tom’s Hardware(opens in new tab), is another finding that has surfaced on the Lovelace pricing radar.
The official pricing for Germany was noted on Twitter(opens in new tab) by Andreas Schilling, editor of the German website Hardwareluxx, with the RTX 4090 being pitched at €1,949 as opposed to $1,599 in the US. The price is somewhat high, but we must consider that the German pricing includes VAT (and of course the cost of importing).
When all of this is considered, there are some early indications of the pricing of Nvidia’s next-generation graphics cards that are a little concerning.
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Add your own spice, as always with the rumour mill, but MLID makes another intriguing point in his most recent video. He says that Lovelace graphics cards have a long history (dating back to before Ampere), and that the final tuning was being completed in early 2021. In other words, while the mining craze was in full swing and GPU shortages were prevalent.
According to MLID, this had an impact on Lovelace’s design because Nvidia pushed to create the most potent GPU it could, putting power efficiency and cost less of a priority. In other words, Nvidia developed a more expensive design to boost performance as much as possible in response to the climate of intense demand for graphics cards at the time and price spikes. Additionally, MLID’s sources claim that Lovelace cards cost about 50% more to produce than Ampere cards (across every tier of GPU, that is).
According to the logic, the RTX 4080 12GB costs 50% more to produce than the RTX 3070 (at least, it appears to), and hence more than the RTX 3080, which is why we have one instead of an RTX 4070. Therefore, the card must be an RTX 4080 rather than a 4070 in order for the pricing for the GPU to make sense. (According to MLID, EVGA’s decision to leave Nvidia was partly motivated by its cost-saving manoeuvring with Lovelace.)
This is somewhat corroborated by what we heard through the grapevine in the days leading up to the Lovelace launch, when there were frequent leaks about the RTX 4070, which was also a very promising performer, and then all of a sudden it was theorised that there would actually be a 4080 with lower specifications.
All of the aforementioned should be considered cautiously, although some of it does make at least some logic. Despite this, we shouldn’t indulge in excessive speculation. What’s equally intriguing is that, according to MLID, AMD’s price may very well be much more aggressive, with RDNA 3 boards costing less than current-gen chips while Nvidia’s bill of materials increased by a generation. This would imply that AMD’s RX 7000 family will be priced lower than Lovelace, but we’re definitely jumping the gun here.
Additionally, since high-end cards are allegedly being released by AMD first (the 7900 XT and 7800 XT, according to MLID), they won’t be particularly inexpensive per se. Instead, pricing will likely be pitched depending on how much profit Team Red hopes to earn.
