[blake929]

My two cents on Nvidia's rollback reasoning:

4080 12GB was universally panned. The 40 series launch also got heat for price gouging, particularly the higher cost for the low end of the launch (4080 12GB). They had to raise the cost of the lower end of the 40 series though if they wanted to maintain the value of the 30 series cards and clear out the remaining inventory. They couldn't just release a true 4070 for a true 4070 price. While the name was obviously bad, it seems likely that they wanted to obscure the release of a 4070-quality chip for a 4080-price while attempting to sell off remaining 30 series. Pure speculation: maybe they were hoping a "cheaper 4080" would come across to the uninformed as Nvidia trying to lower the entry cost for 40 series rather than raising it through an expensive 4070.

Two potential reasons for the rollback come to mind: 1) higher than expected 4090 demand means they can wait to launch a 4070. 2) higher than expected heat for the thinly veiled 4070 price gouging made it worth it to wait on the release since it helps sell more 30 series cards by raising the entry price for a 40 series while getting better PR in the process.

[winkeltripel]

It's actually even worse. If you look at the core counts, the 4080 12g is a 60 tier card, and the 4080 16gb is a 70 tier card. The 4090 has a much better power to cost ratio.

[_hypx]

Same with memory bus. The 3060 Ti, 3070 and 3070 Ti all had a 256-bit bus. Only with the 3060 did it drop to a 192-bit bus.

[happycube]

And the 3060ti has less memory (8 vs 12GB) - for many non-gaming uses (i.e. deep learning/ML) that makes it much less useful.

[mikepurvis]

> higher than expected 4090 demand

Has anyone done analysis on this? My layman's assumption is that with the shortages and gouging/scalping over the past two years, an awful lot of people decided to tough it out on their 10-, 16-, and 20- series cards, and now the narrative is that the shortages are over (whether or not the actual prices really back that up) and those people who skipped a generation or two are now emotionally and financially prepared to "treat" themselves to the new top of the line.

If this is it, though, it seems weird that it could really have caught Nvidia by surprise. Don't they have driver-level telemetry that would show them all those older cards plugged into new-chipset motherboards, and could give them some indication of demand?

[cinntaile]

Plenty of people do have the money to spend on these cards. It's entirely possible that it's really just a vocal minority that refuses to pay these prices. I agree with the grandparent and the 4090 probably sells better than expected. The card performs well too.

[AdrianB1]

We are in an economic recession, so even if the people have the money, many are not willing to spend it on a graphic card. If you also consider parts of the world like Europe where the price of electricity more than doubled and the power consumption of 4xxx series (practically secondary room heaters), there are even less people here willing to pay the price.

[q-big]

> If you also consider parts of the world like Europe where the price of electricity more than doubled and the power consumption of 4xxx series (practically secondary room heaters)

Considering the worries about heating in the winter this year in some European countries, marketing the 4xxx as a secondary heater might actually be a good idea ...

[cinntaile]

That's what you think and expect, but it might not be what is happening. The 40xx series is already priced above a point where people that don't have the necessary disposable income can afford a 40xx. I doubt the electricity prices affect hobby and professional users of these cards all that much.

[injinj]

China fomo? Are these good enough to fill the needs of AI workloads of the datacenters which can no longer get the next gen NVIDIA GPUs?

[mattnewton]

Benchmarks I have seen absolutely put them above existing workstation cards in everything except memory. If your model and embeddings fit into 24gb vram, it absolutely makes sense to buy this over an a5500 or even a a6000

[D13Fd]

That’s me. I spent 4 years with the last gen and I don’t feel bad about spending $1600 this time. I actually feel lucky that I kind of skipped over the whole shortage.

[mikepurvis]

Absolutely, and that's pretty serious coin even for us wealthy tech workers! You could buy both next gen consoles for the price of a single component in your computer.

[sdenton4]

A computer is the thing you attach to your graphics card.

[mikepurvis]

Sure, if the card costs $1600. But for most mere mortals, their GPU is built into the CPU, soldered onto a laptop motherboard, or if truly discrete, is at most a quarter of the total BOM.

[Scaevolus]

You still can't easily buy a PS5.

[bitL]

4090 is in stock in all shops around, so I don't think the demand was higher than expected. Zen 4 is also everywhere but not selling.

[neogodless]

> Zen 4 is also everywhere but not selling

I was shocked to learn today that B650 boards are available. That information didn't seem to make it anywhere near my usual technology news channels!

But... they start at $170 for a barebones motherboard. Having spent $200 not too long ago for a well-rounded mid-range X570 board, I find $170 for the starting line up quite steep. And it's unlikely builders want to pair their $300+ Zen 4 chips with the most basic board available.

The barebones right now would be $170 + $300 + $90 (16GB DDR5) = $560 before accounting for the rest of the parts (like a GPU).

[sliken]

Yup, doubling the memory bandwidth, doubling the memory channels, and doubling the PCIe bandwidth, and switching to DDR5 is placing a premium on the new AM5 platform for AMD. Similar happened with the Alder lake launch, which had the same upgrades and combined with sky high DDR5 memory prices.

Just wait a few months, pioneers are the ones that get the arrows (high prices) in the back side.

[tracker1]

I'm waiting until around March/April... hoping that prices settle by then, also considering rDNA3 and hoping to see an R9 7950X3D model by then before making final decisions on a next build. Also, right now there's not really any good options for higher speed DDR5 at higher quantities and am curious to see which boards support ecc by then.

[mikhailt]

It depends on the location as well. In US, it's out of stock everywhere.

In EU, where the price and electricity prices are much higher, it appears to not sell out like it did in EU. (As far as I know).

[TillE]

I don't see a 4090 in stock anywhere in Germany (big PC gaming culture), except for scalpers on eBay.

[bitL]

It seems like it has been bought out by scalpers after a few days of plentiful stocks in the EU. We'll see if they will prosper or if they keep listing them on eBay for a long time...

[D13Fd]

In what country? In the US they sold out in literally five minutes (I know because I snagged one but couldn’t get the exact model I preferred).

[faeriechangling]

I always expected the 4090 to sell like hotcakes. 4080 16gb I was more sceptical of but it still seemed like a nice card for 1440p gaming considering the 4090 is just overkill at that resolution.

It was the 4080 12gb I was expecting to flop hard. 4080 12gb was way too close to the 3080 going for jack squat so there was hardly a market for it.