A Drop In Price
As highlighted by Videocardz, the Gainward RTX 4080 Phantom which was once being sold for €1,539 now comes in at €1,449. Well, how is this supposed to be below MSRP you may ask? Germany levies a VAT on every GPU which makes the MSRP of this particular variant come in at €1,469. Yeah, we’re not making those numbers up. The same variant has seen a steady decline in pricing since its launch. On the 16th of November, this GPU would cost you €1,913 or ~$2000. Sadly, since we’re no longer in the GPU shortage era most people didn’t bother to pick up an RTX 4080. This has been the prime reason why a lot of Micro Centers were stocked with RTX 4080s, where any newly launched GPU would quickly vanish from retailers only to be re-stocked later.
Worth Your Money?
Since AMD’s RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT are closing in as each day passes, the RTX 4080 is becoming a hard pass for gamers. The RX 7900 XTX is tipped to offer performance 10-15% better than the RTX 4080 while costing $200 less. Besides, the RTX 4070 Ti has been leaked to launch no lower than $899. This does not leave much hope for the lower-mid ranged Ada GPUs. Based on initial benchmarks, the RTX 4050 (Mobile at least) based on AD107 is a marginal 20-30% faster than last generation. The RTX 3050 saw the same fate with performance on par with the GTX 1660 Ti/Super. If the RTX 4050 is hypothetically 30% faster than the RTX 3050, that would put it right next to the RX 6600 from RDNA2.
