The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 (Test) has surpassed the €2,000 mark. However, from a customer perspective, it’s headed in the wrong direction. This represents the average price across multiple retailers for all models. Even the typically comparably affordable German retailer, Mindfactory, is currently unable to undercut this price.
Although it has consistently been the fastest graphics card on the market and concurrently the most expensive card of the current generation since its release, it had previously been considered one of the more reasonable GPUs in terms of price-performance. Its increased performance compared to the GeForce RTX 4080 (Test) and AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX (Test) had placed it in a relatively favorable position.
The reasons behind the high prices aren’t entirely clear. One factor might be significant bulk purchases, particularly in the Chinese market, due to some uncertainty about whether the graphics card would indeed disappear from the market there. It is no longer available there. Another contributing factor could be the high AI computing power coupled with 24 GB of GDDR6X.
Nvidia isn’t the sole option for AI
These aspects are crucial for developers, as they increasingly find suitable alternatives from Nvidia’s competitors, such as AMD and Intel, offering 16 to 24 GB of graphic memory at sometimes significantly more appealing prices. AI assistants in image editing software or voice assistants don’t necessarily require high-end GPUs to function. The specifically integrated execution units in upcoming processors are consequently relatively diminutive.
For potential buyers of a high-end graphics card, the successors to the reportedly already clearing out Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 4080 are likely to become more enticing. This development might also please AMD since the price hike has not affected the RDNA-3 graphics cards thus far.
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