When it comes to graphics card prices, we’ve had difficult years. In the case of the RTX 3000 generation, factors such as the shortage of chips and the mining hype or very strong demand with little supply caused extreme costs far beyond the RRP for a long time. The new RTX 4000 generation is now appearing in times of global inflation, also due to the consequences of the Ukraine conflict.
How exactly the prices for GPUs are determined and whether they are justified is not the subject of this article. Instead, we take a neutral look at the facts in the form of Nvidia’s price development. On the one hand, this applies to the popular GPUs of the X80/XX80 series and, on the other hand, to the top models such as the new RTX 4090 (click here for our RTX 4090 test).
We have a similar look at the development from before to now in terms of power consumption in the article Watt madness with new graphics cards: How bad is it really now?
thrown. If you want to know how you can save power even with GPUs with high energy consumption and what needs to be considered when building a balcony power plant, feel free to listen to our podcast:
link to Podcast Content
Price development from GTX 480 to RTX 4080
First, let’s look at the cost of Nvidia’s graphics cards for the X80/XX80 models since the GTX 480. The information relates to the price that we quoted for the release in our own test. In the case of the RTX 4080 models that have not yet been released, we quote Nvidia’s official MSRP. They will follow the RTX 4090 in November 2022.
As you can clearly see in the chart below, the costs were quite stable from the GTX 480 in 2010 to the GTX 980 in 2014. Only the GTX 1080 from 2016 exceeds the 700 euro mark, while the new RTX 4080 models costing over 1,000 euro play in a completely different league.
The specification of 700 dollars for the RTX 3080 also occupies a special position. To this day it is practically impossible to get new for this price, and for a long time its cost was much higher. In the course of the graphics card crisis mentioned at the beginning, the RTX 3080 has cost clearly more than 1,000 dollars most of the time since its release in 2020.
What about inflation? Taking inflation into account, old graphics cards would be a good bit more expensive from today’s perspective, but inflation doesn’t change much in the basic conditions either. For the sake of simplicity, we have not included them in the following information.
Price development of the top models
It doesn’t really look any better for the Geforce top models. We exclude the now no longer produced Titan graphics types, which were recently released without the Geforce branding.
From today’s perspective, the first Ti graphics card in the form of the Geforce GTX 780 Ti from 2013 was almost worth it at 650 dollars cheap
to have. Since then, prices have risen steadily and drastically. Even the RTX 2080 Ti was really no bargain at 1,199 dollars, but the RTX 4090 reaches completely different spheres with costs of around 2,000 dollars.
The RTX 3090 Ti, which appeared very late in the course of the RTX 3000 generation, was even higher when it was released in March 2022 with an official price of 2,249 dollars. At that point in time, the availability and price situation had by no means calmed down as much as it does today. Nvidia is currently even selling its own Founders Edition of the RTX 3090 Ti only
for 1,329 dollars, but this offer is limited in time without precise information.
Higher, more expensive, further
In addition to the prices, the technology has also developed rapidly, from extreme theoretical performance (GTX 480: 1.3 teraflops, RTX 4080 16 GB: 48.7 teraflops) to features such as the acceleration of ray tracing calculations with dedicated hardware to extras like DLSS.
Ultimately, everyone has to decide for themselves whether the overall package of new graphics cards like the Geforce RTX 4090 justifies the very high prices for a purchase.
If you decide to buy either Nvidia’s Founders Edition or one of the Customs designs that are also available from today for today’s release of the Geforce RTX 4090, you will find all general information about it in the first of the two following articles and in the second article from our deal editors Matching links to shop offers:
How do you rate the price development of gaming graphics cards or Nvidia’s Geforce models? A complete absurdity, no problem or something in between? Feel free to write it in the comments!