NVIDIA's RTX 4080 Problem: They're Not Selling & MSRP Doesn't Exist

[Music] the RTX 4080 is actually the most expensive 80 class silicon that Nvidia has sold in four generations now and it has a 4080 problem don't worry there's a trash can down there it went exactly where it's supposed to go so today we're going to talk about the problem with the 4080 and how Nvidia can't seem to sell them this chart shows both the original MSRP and the inflation-adjusted launch price for flagships dating back to the GTX 480. it was stable until recently and then it skyrocketed with the 40 series but we know what some people are thinking which is that choosing to plot 80 series cards isn't fair if Nvidia chooses the names anyway and has decided that the 80 series is no longer flagships because there's 40 90s now but there's always been a card like that there were Titans before that one was a little closer it did make it in though there were Titans before them and they've shifted the naming yes but the the idea of the pricing at a functional Flagship level that's still the same problem and even so here's our response to that this line plots the die area for each of those cards although Nvidia tends to fluctuate up and down a bit the area for the 4080 shot downwards while the price skyrocketed 50 percent over the inflation-adjusted 3080s price and people aren't buying them this time at least not so much that they're out of stock just look at this Market footage we took recently today we're talking about how the 4080s have been left abandoned on shelves at least compared to the last few generations and even compared to the 4090 and that's shelves from the USA all the way over to Taiwan where we just were let's get started before that this video is brought to you by fractal and the pop air cases the fraxel pop did well in our recent review performing admirably thermally while also offering unique color variations for the chassis body the fractal pop air is around relatively compact mid Tower while still offering ease of installation features and it even has optional five and a quarter inch mounts for those who still use front panel Hardware like Optical drives learn more at the link in the description below the 4080s haven't sold out yet they've been available since launch day and they still are they never globally sold out unlike the 4090 for example and this is a point that evj CEO brought up when we interviewed him in an upcoming video where he talks about a judgment day for GPU prices in the future and he noted that the 4080s are still in stock and have been in stock and that's because reality is beginning to kick in for NVIDIA and a reality check for the prices just like what happened with the 20 series is on its way this is history repeating itself the 2080 TI for example launched at twelve hundred dollars at the time and the 2080 was the card that everyone reviewed and said just if you buy any of them although you should get the 1080 TI at that time when RTX didn't even have any games then get the 2080 and not the 2080 TI and then with the 30 series they Swan it back they corrected the prices and everyone was happy except for the stock problem that came a couple weeks after launch and persisted but now we're back in that 20 series dilemma a smaller die area means reduced cost to manufacture compared to the larger dies at least at the simplest level although the process node also improved this price hike is more than inflation as our chart and we'll bring it back shows and it's more than manufacturing costs too in fact AMD recently showed manufacturing cost increases in its own chart something Nvidia should be doing if it wants to defend its price hikes better and AMD tried to build an argument for cost increases but we can't get past the fact that the 4080 is now a smaller die with a 50 price increase inflation adjusted it looks even worse if you don't adjust the 4080 is a classic up upsell to the 40 90. disguised by launching after the flagship skew this time instead of alongside it and also disguised by the fervor around dumping old inventory our review demonstrated that the 4080 is an example of product stagnation where it was less than one percent uplift for one percent more money at best and that was effectively running in place again at best we're losing ground at worst regardless of the many other variables like Logistics that go into GPU manufacturing the simple fact is that larger dies cost more we don't know what the real cost is for NVIDIA they don't share that but we can create a ratio factoring in the cost of the cards before Ram is considered in the scenario now the table we're about to show isn't some masterful Metric that no one else could ever achieve we were just putting some numbers into a spreadsheet and we thought we saw an interesting Trend so don't read too far into the numbers we're about to show uh because some parts of it are potentially arguable as arbitrary but even still this table is it's here to provide some Concepts to play around with for GPU pricing we have the card's name GPU die and size the percentage of the Cuda cores it has versus a full die MSRP and the calculation we just mentioned that calculation is for the dye area versus the cost the 490s die is called ad-102 with a large area of 608 millimeters squared the 4090s MSRP is sixteen hundred dollars so with our definitely not industry standard but still interesting and useful metric the MSRP per millimeter squared comes out to 2.63 and that's without factoring the higher memory capacity of the 4090 at 24 gigabytes versus 16 gigabytes which is unaccounted for in this table into the consideration versus a 4080. doing the same calculation on the 4080 with its much smaller 8103 die gives us 3 dollars and 17 cents per millimeter squared 21 higher cost per area than the 40 90. the 4090 has a sixty percent larger die and fifty percent more memory for only 33 more MSRP even if better performance per dollar sits with the 4090 Nvidia knows not everyone can afford that level of card so they have a more profitable safety net for NVIDIA at least underneath it in the form of the 4080 and we won't get started on AMD in this one that'll be maybe for a different topic with the 7900 XT where Nvidia is not quite playing the same game where amd's XT looks like a decoy product or something that they put out there to push you explicitly towards the next one up because Nvidia although they are trying to upsell to a 4090 recognizes that the 400 Gap is more than a decoy product can fix so we've all seen the internet comments about what people think about the 4080 let's see what some Merchants out in the world think from our recent Taiwan trip so we were wondering like how how the 4080 does in Taiwan like still in Balance uh yeah I know I know yeah [Music] I have many people bought their 4080s because the prices a little bit hard and then everyone thinks it doesn't have the price so hard that it does not have what it cost so that's what most of the people just only five that's five of them 39 days right right back to the Chart what's more interesting is comparing the 4080 to previous generations the 30 series saw the larger ga-102 die used in at least five cards with msrps ranging from two thousand dollars for the 39 TI all the way down to the original 10 gigabyte version of the 3080 for 700 the 3090 TI comes out to the same MSRP per millimeter squared as the 4080 and the 30 80 10 gigabyte calculates to be the lowest on the table but that was launched at the start of all this and was actually an impressive value and if you were around for those reviews at the time that was before anyone knew about the impending GPU shortage the sentiment was pretty much shared across most reviews which was this was a massive change in direction for NVIDIA from the 20 series and it was sort of like their 1080 TI moment happening all over again or value genuinely looked good we were excited about it and that's kind of been rare for the last couple years the GB launches for another comparison on the chart the 28 ATI had an absolutely massive 754 millimeter square dock which is about double the area in millimeters squared of the 4080s GPU despite that the 2080 TI Founders Edition and most partner models cost around the same 1200 MSRP that price was crazy high back then and other than the 30 series the price has continued to grow and after the 3080 uh it was already growing with the 30 90 and then the 3090 TI at least one of those didn't even have an MSRP when it launched they just put it out there and they were like well here you go let's see what it sells for uh that's not a joke by the way they actually launched it without an MSRP because they'd given up at that point so the 4080 has the smallest die for an 80 class card since the GTX 1080 but at the same time it's tied for the highest 80 class MSRP we know that higher end more advanced silicon costs more to make but the ratio of the price versus the class of GPU has gotten way out of hand at this point and on one hand performance is what matters and the video card's name is somewhat arbitrary but on the other hand it's really not because people are rightfully mad that at this point they have been led to feel that the 80 class is in fact a flagship and realistically the 90 is just sort of replacing a Titan class anyway so while we can argue semantics over the names it's kind of irrelevant even at the psychology side of things ignoring the pricing structure of it you're in a scenario where now people have been trained to feel the 80 class is something they can afford if they are buying at the high end and it is the best that they can get and the 90 you can mentally sort of quarantine as a Titan class piece of silicon when the 80 class creeps 50 higher in a generation obviously people are going to be mad because they feel like they are coming down in their class of what they can afford it's not a great feeling so the point is on that side of things the name carries certain customer expectations on the social side too people don't want to feel like they're stagnant in Life or sliding backwards and so whether or not that's fair to Nvidia the fact of the matter is that it is being considered here but the most important thing is none of that that's just another angle to throw out there for anyone who might want to argue the naming side of things and certainly I used to think that the naming was purely arbitrary and over time we've come to realize uh actually no it's really not the performance is what matters of course and the performance to price really is what matters and we have numbers for that we have dozens of charts from our reviews that show the value is terrible for the 4080. Nvidia knows this and it's sliding the product stack Nvidia just needs the customer to not care enough the problem for NVIDIA is that customers that do care it's not just the Benchmark heavy media like us who care at this point this is something everyone's caught on to see so is are more people buying 30 series or like three thousand dollars yeah and sales aren't just bad in Taiwan where we were recently we did some quick checks with retailers online and physically around the us and we spot check some of the current pricing and availability for the 4080 and just as a note pricing and availability and stock are numbers that change nearly constantly so these numbers were accurate at the time we wrote the script and obviously you may see the stock numbers fluctuate a bit depending on when the video goes live and when you see the video anyway we found it a little unusual for a brand new GPU the quantities we were seeing in the stock and well here's the table first off the major online retailers in the US like new Ag and Best Buy were actually out of stock when we checked after Black Friday this is usually what it looks like after a GPU launch is met with the world's leading Sales holiday the skus on NewEgg are going in and out of stock but mostly out we see this pattern break though once we look at Micro Center we looked at four locations to get a decent sample size and of those only the LA area store in Tustin serving a massive populace was totally sold out the other three had only partially sold through the stock of 4080s again unusual I gave one of the stores a call and asked if this is behavior they typically see the answer was no typically the behavior is there are zero in stock and this one wasn't selling well the Chicago and Rockville stores in particular had a high number of cards still in stock at the time we checked and at thirteen hundred dollars average per card that's a lot of inventory sitting on shelves waiting to sell and it's a lot of Frozen cash for the companies in the chain trying to make a dollar likewise European online retailers mind Factory and case kitten still had 4080s in stock and ready to buy at the time we checked mind Factory seems to hide out of stock skus but the ones we can see showed healthy stock levels mine factory also shows how many have been sold then at the time of writing the visible skus because we can't tally the ones that are sold out we only counted 195 units that's a minimum though it's probably more than that we just can't see them all either way not impressive and we're not intimately familiar with mind Factory's usual volume but it does seem low when we compare it to other gpus on the site taking a look at the price range in general shows options from the base MSRP of twelve hundred dollars for the founders Edition on nvidia's website if you can get it all the way up to fifteen hundred fifty dollars for the Asus Rog strix OC the highest end cards of one tier being closely priced to the low end cards of the next year up it's not really new but it seems particularly bad this time the base price of the 4090 is 50 more than the strix OC it's like uh two or three percent or something like that higher so at that point it's just a poor choice to buy that 4080 versus the cheapest possible 40 90 even if it has a terrible cooler design if you can find a 40 90 but that's not a mistake again it's also not quite new it's just it's particularly noticeable this time either way whether you buy them or not Nvidia at least made its money on the initial numbers and looking around the other stores in Taipei every single stall that we walked past had 4080s we talked with some of the vendors there and what we learned in speaking with the actual bosses who run the retail stores was that the most popular card right now is the 3080 but they were all sold out so I asked what's the next most popular one after that they said it's the 3060 TI keep it in mind Taiwan has a lower base income than places like the us so that plays in as well I asked what about after that is it the 4080 and they said ah no it's not the 48 it was the 40 90 or the 1650. but Nvidia gets its money for the first round when the board Partners buy the gpus it's not really making the money necessarily when you go and buy the Asus strix OC that's where Asus gets its cut and its money back for the GPU it purchased there is some interplay there where Nvidia does things like marketing Development Fund or it does rebates to try and help manufacturers soak some of the cost as prices fluctuate and when they inevitably drop the price certainly that will be something that the board partners are asking for but it's on the board Partners to figure out how to package it into a compelling and profitable complete video card within Nvidia is a very strict guidelines where they now set price caps where they say you can't go higher than this and they already have the price floor where they say it's not fair if you price under this or you just literally can't because it's too expensive anyway so it's retailers like all of these we've been talking about who end up stuck holding a bag of 4080s uh because everyone else kind of got a little bit of their money when they were on the way out the door and now they're sitting on extra stock another takeaway from this data is that the average price of a partner model 4080 is around 100 to 120 over MSRP the 1200 were sold out everywhere except Micro Center and it'll be interesting to see how quickly or if at all those models refresh because speaking with board Partners recently confirming something we heard years ago and published years ago if you've been around a while on the channel what we learned is that often the board Partners will launch an MSRP model which is in some cases very difficult for them to actually make money off of where you're talking extremely slim margins if they want to provide real support they'll launch an MSRP model they'll let it sell through and then oops they never restock it they restocked the things that are maybe 50 bucks higher 100 bucks higher to try and keep the margins healthier this isn't out of nowhere either back in 2020 we were told by an unnamed partner that this tactic would be a worst case method to technically provide a product that hits the advertised MSRP without actually intending to follow through on it for any period of time longer than when people like the Press are actively monitoring the prices and that was especially to satisfy nvidia's at the time aggressively low msrps where they needed to compete and without losing too much money for the partners in the process because we were told directly that nvidia's MSRP targets weren't realistic and the quote Partners would be bankrupt end quote if they followed them now in that video that we published talking about the aggressive pricing and how Partners were struggling to make an actually good product for the price that Nvidia listed we learned that nvidia's guide until then only left four to five dollars for the entire cost of the cooling solution which gets you a bottom of the barrel flower style cooler only capable of handling low heat loads that exact number only applied to the mid-range cards being talked about then but we know that the complex high performance cooler designs on Partner cards can now cost upwards of a hundred dollars to manufacture and this actually gets really interesting on its own but we're going to save that for a separate piece where it'll be in our EVGA follow-up piece of what's next for them we'll be talking about cooler cost for nvidia's Fe versus nvidia's Partners cards when we combine this with what we learned when talking with EVGA about leaving the video card Market it Paints the picture that nvidia's price guidance only makes sense for the Fe cards and no longer does for partners and video doesn't have to pay itself margin on the cost of the GPU core and memory like the board Partners do which is a huge Advantage it can put that money into other things like it's cooler or um its pockets this puts Partners in a bad position because they rely on the higher priced cards to actually make money they have to compete against the now very competent Founders Edition at MSRP the partner MSRP cards from what the board Partners tell us are barely breaking even and depending on the rmas or their programs that they offer after sales risk losing them money so they have to kill those skus quickly it's a lose-lose unless you're Nvidia we've done this discussion in the past but let's just briefly talk about what it is Partners provide for the market that Nvidia doesn't first off they're sort of internal competitors where they're all selling the same part but because they're doing different versions of it it does help to keep Nvidia in check so Partners like EVGA as we showed in our Kingman lab tour have invented Technologies like four-way SLI or they've actually gone and improved the power Delivery Systems they've improved cooling solutions to the point where these things have to exist now for NVIDIA because it's old ones were so embarrassingly bad that every single review that at least we published for probably seven years was basically if you buy it don't buy the reference model so the partners have contributed Jensen Juan the CEO of Nvidia doesn't seem to think so from what we understand his belief from what EVGA and the other board Partners have told us is that uh if you're just providing a cooler you don't deserve to make that much more money on what Nvidia is selling but it's not that simple the coolers are Advanced too and Beyond the coolers there's after sales support So programs for cross-shipped rmas or for quick repairs Step Up Programs upgrades if your GPU dies and that unit is out of life for production and further than that there's localization support for different countries different regions different languages there's shipping and Logistics support that Nvidia is not structured currently to handle and RMA support in countries outside of the US where again Nvidia is not really set up to handle it yet and then there's stuff like OC designs software and Enthusiast tools that make it fun to use the card Beyond just plugging it into a system even though Nvidia at least at the executive level really seems like it wants to go the Apple approach of make it brain dead stupid to use which would be a tragic loss in the video card Market if it ever is successful in that critically Partners also provide competition with each other because there are so many different teams in different parts of the world all competing with each other to try and figure out we've all got the same core what do we do to sell a card to someone that drives Innovation and that drives design in a way that even Nvidia with its infinite computing power to do cfd for example it just it can't keep up with the amount of innovation that can come from that amount of people because it's not always just about the cooling design there's other factors too and ultimately it just keeps choice in the market healthy now Nvidia has told us time and time again that we're not trying to displace our partners we love working with our partners our partners are great we're not trying to get rid of them uh and that's fine but what's Happening Here is the prices are still bad for consumers and the message to Nvidia here is if you want people to stop complaining about it then fix it either bring them down or uh I don't know kill the product a lot oh wait they've already done that they already unlocked the 12. wow it set a good precedent so all the discussion on the partners I don't want to take away from the core of the issue because the partners do provide value uh and the point of including that was Nvidia doesn't really seem to think so which is odd because they're the ones who got Nvidia it's where they are today don't forget your roots but beyond that the pricing is clearly untenable we've known this since our review where we showed the value was just disproportionately bad compared to basically anything else that was relevant uh and the reason we're following up with it here is because we're doing a stock check and we saw the 4080s in stock everywhere and uh we're curious about it so there you go that's the end of the the research talking to Partners pulling together the numbers and just kind of thinking about it really it's just it's a partially scripted video and partially unscripted rant about the state of the 4080 and the 7900 XT by the way is its own problem uh we talked about that in the review maybe we'll talk about it more later but the only action item right now is if you're looking for something cheaper than a 4090 just wait because the prices are going to come down in fact we're pushing this video through faster because we think they will probably come down soon and we'd have to rework the entire video so hopefully we're right about that and hopefully they do come down down sometime before or around CES early January when Nvidia is rumored to be launching at least the 4070 TI if not also something like a 40 70. we'll see how those do but uh now is the time to start thinking about price and even you know it's not it's not the same as it was with the 30 series Nvidia can no longer sell gpus simply by making them they have to be compelling now there was a time especially during early covid where everyone suddenly needed a high-end PCS at home that they could sell literally anything they made just because it existed that time has passed and it may take a little bit of latency there for NVIDIA to fully realize it and recognize the problem that they are now creating for themselves in the future but they will eventually realize it and you should at least wait until that point to pull the trigger on something lower end than a 40 90. the 49 the only kind of gets away with it because it's the absolute best and uh what do you do about that but for most people you're just you gotta buy the old inventory that's still new in box potentially used inventory AMD or weight so that's it for this one thanks for watching subscribe for more as always go to store.camersaccess.net to help us out directly or patreon.com Gamers Nexus thank you for watching we'll see you all next time

Channel: Gamers Nexus

Views: 1,194,145

Keywords: gamersnexus, gamers nexus, computer hardware, nvidia rtx 4080, nvidia rtx 4080 review, nvidia rtx 4080 pricing, nvidia rtx 4080 16gb, nvidia rtx 4080 unlaunch, nvidia rtx 4080 12gb, nvidia rtx 4080 12 vs 16gb, nvidia rtx 4080 sales

Id: OCJYDJXDRHw

Length: 25min 50sec (1550 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 20 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/praxis_rebourne]

Maybe in US the pricing is always somewhat closer to MSRP. However, the exact model that sells for $1000 would get an automatic markup in other regions(not counting duties/vat etc) to $1300-1500. In my region, graphics cards get at least 20-30% markups before their duties/vat always.

Last time we had cards for reasonable prices were during the Nvidia's 1000 series and AMD's 400/500 series. That's when I bought a 1070. I have not seen cards coming down to any reasonable pricing since then. Yet, I've found CPU, RAM, Motherboards, PSUs, Cases, monitors, keyboards, mice, AIOs.... all at/around the international MSRP(excluding the VAT/duties), all are available within a month or so of their release dates.

Something is broken with the business model of discrete graphics cards worldwide. Maybe it works better in the US, Canada and EU... but not in rest of the world.

[u/Firefox72]

I think this picture alone speaks volumes.

https://i.imgur.com/MBPCI9h.png

How anyone can defend the pricing of this product is beyond me. Its not value it never was. Its a shameless product in every sense of the way.

[u/Luka2810]

Prices here in Germany/EU is so weird. 3090/4090/3090ti actually seem to be worse value than the 4080.

7900xt is somehow better value than the 7900xtx.

GPU	Price €	FPS	€/FPS
RX 6800	587.99 €	110	5.35 €
RX 6800 XT	695.60 €	125	5.56 €
RTX 3070	525.00 €	94	5.59 €
RX 6950 XT	859.00 €	145	5.92 €
RX 6900 XT	828.99 €	134	6.19 €
RTX 3070 TI	669.96 €	101	6.63 €
RX 7900 XT	1049.00 €	158	6.64 €
RTX 3080	842.98 €	119	7.08 €
RTX 4080	1342.25 €	180	7.46 €
RX 7900 XTX	1408.38 €	181	7.78 €
RTX 3090	1209.00 €	134	9.02 €
RTX 4090	1954.18 €	210	9.31 €
RTX 3090 TI	1389.14 €	145	9.58 €
RTX 3080 TI	1283.87 €	132	9.73 €

Prices from Geizhals yesterday (2022-12-19)

Average 1440p FPS from HUB's RX 7900 XT review

[u/DefaultVariable]

I bought a 3080 for $800. Why would I want to spend $1500 for a 4080, it’s just a terrible value proposition

[u/genzkiwi]

In New Zealand:

• 7900XT - $1800

• 7900XTX - $2000

• 4080 - $2700

• 4090 - $3700

Nobody is buying 4080s. Rofl. Only the XTX is sold out!

[u/pleem]

I was forced to become a console gamer due to the GPU pricing bullshit. I like my PS5, but damn I miss playing 1st person shooters properly. Still play quake on my gtx 970, though.

[u/jv9mmm]

I'll believe it's not selling well if it is in stock at bestbuy.

[u/ArchSyker]

Man, the release of the 4080 upsets me so much.

I can finally get another upgrade after 6.5 years and I was going to get the 80s card of the current generation, which fit perfectly with the new 40 series release and now Nvidia massively overprices the new series :(

I am missing the CPU (i9 13900k which I'll get next week when my paychecks arivies) and of course the GPU, should I bite the bullet and get the 4080 (FE would be the only one that fits my case properly) or wait for a price cut (wasn't there supposed to be one mid December?) or wait for the 4070 and hope it's priced more responsible and for the time being stick with my 1080?

(And no I don't want to buy one of the new AMD cards, they are just as overpriced here in Europe and also not a 30 series card for reasons :P)

Edit: fucking hell, my 1080 just died... Was playing some games when suddenly my PC shut off completely and wasn't turning back on. Pulled the GPU out and it starts just fine :'(

[u/Ryujin_707]

If I was nvidia I would have sold the 4090 for 2000$ and 4080 for 800$. People are gonna buy the flagship anyway and also they will have the best bang for the buck GPU. Instead the went with upselling tactic and getting rid of 30 series stock. It's win win situation for them.