Nvidia’s new gaming GPUs, up to $1,599, prompt user outrage: 'Capitalist greed knows no limits,' gamer posts on Twitter

Electronics pricing matters.

Pricing really, really matters to IT professionals buying servers. It matters to car companies building next-generation vehicles. Thousands of OEMs can’t afford an added dollar in a new product.

Often, procurement managers in IT will say, “Well, the higher price is worth it, if it gives me higher performance and a better user experience and results in a lower TCO --  eventually.”  Fintech procurement officers have been known to justify a higher priced system if it gives them an edge over a competitor, even for only a few months.

For consumers of electronics, and specifically gamers, there is clear concern about pricing for a new graphics card or high-end system but almost always serious gamers and creators will concede they want blazing speeds and better lighting and shading and other characteristics that prove more elegant than with previous generations. Historically, they are used to paying more for subsequent generations.

Nvidia, which made its reputation at its beginning decades ago with GPUs for gamers, knows the buying psychology of gamers better than any company. They know there are some gamers who will put off other expensive electronics purchases just to stay on top of their game.  They know they are often young, mostly male and don’t yet see the day when a home mortgage will be their top priority.  Nvidia is not allowing buying psychology to interfere or drive its ability to innovate and provide faster acceleration – if one believes their rationale for pricing.

But something just happened that is different from this traditional gamer mindset. It happened precisely at 8:23 a.m. PDT on Tuesday September 20 when Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang held up the new Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU during his keynote address at GTC Fall.

Advertised as the “ultimate GeForce GPU” powered by the Nvidia Ada Lovelace architecture, it is the high-end entry in the anticipated third-generation GeForce RTX 40 Series described as up to 4x faster than Nvidia Ampere architecture GPUs.  It is four times faster on Racer X, Huang said in his keynote.

“The GeForce RTX 4090, the new heavyweight champ, is $1,599,” Huang added. A few sentences later, Huang noted that Nvidia’s older 30 series GPUs start at $329 for the RTX 3060, intended for “mainstream gamers.”

While some gamers and creators paid attention to a long list of 4090 specs (76 billion transistors, for one), many paid attention to the $1,599 most of all.  Two lesser-priced 4080 cards at $899 and $1,199, earned plenty of concern as well.

On Twitter, deeb wrote: “I hope nobody buys the 4080 cards…The 3080 was a $699 card originally (expensive!) Now Nvidia wants to charge pandemic and crypto inflated prices of $899 and $1199 for the follow up two years later? Nah.”

Psybernetic on Twitter called the RTX 40 series prices “nothing short of gouging…Capitalist greed knows no limits…Don’t buy these cards. “

Also on Twitter, Grummz added: “The boom in buyers willing to pay for 4000 series cards isn’t there any more. Not when it’s a matter of choosing a GPU vs food and rent…This is a HUGE opportunity for AMD…Nvidia just fumbled the ball.”

To his credit, Huang responded to the criticism one day after making the 4000 series announcement at GTC in comments to more than 250 reporters during an online Q&A,

PC World Executive Editor Gordon Ung teed up the concern: “The reaction [to 4000 series] universally I’m seeing out there is ‘Oh, my god. It costs so much money.’ Is there anything you would like to say to the community regarding pricing on the new generational parts?...Can they expect to see better pricing at some point and basically address all the loud screams I’m seeing everywhere?”

Here was Huang’s response, in full, with some minor edits:

“So first of all, a 12 inch wafer is a lot more expensive today than it was yesterday. And it's not a little bit more expensive, it is a ton more expensive.

 “Moore's law is dead. And the ability for Moore's law to deliver the same performance, half the cost every year and a half is over. It's completely over.

“ And so the idea that the chip is going to go down in cost over time, unfortunately is a story of the past.

 "The future is about accelerated full stack. You have to come up with new architectures, come up with new as good chip designs as you can. And then of course, computing is not a chip problem.

“Computing is a software and chip problem. And so we call it a full stack challenge. And so we innovate across the full stack. For all of our gamers out there, here's what I'd like you to remember and to hopefully notice, that at the same price point based on what I just said earlier, at the same price point, even though our materials cost at the same price point is less than it used to be. At the same price point, the performance of Nvidia’s $899 GPU or $599 GPU a year ago, two years ago, at the same price point, our performance with Ada Lovelace is monumentally better. Off the charts better.

“And so that's really the basis to look at it, at the same price point. Now, of course the numbering system is just a numbering system. I think that if you go back 3080 compared to 1080, compared to 980, compared to 680, compared to 280. If you go all the way back to the 280, a 280 obviously was a lot lower price in the past.

 “So over time we have to create in order to pursue advances in computer graphics on the one hand, deliver more value at the same price point on the other hand, expand and [go] deeper into the market as well, with lower and lower price solutions.

“If you look at our track record, we're doing all three all the time.

“We're pushing the new frontiers of computer graphics further into new applications. And look at all the great things that have happened as a result of advancing GeForce. But at the same price point, our value delivered generationally is off the charts. And it remains off the charts this time.

“And so if they could just remember the price point compared to price point to price point, I think that they're going to find that they're going to love, just absolutely love Ada.”

To summarize and simplify, Huang said pricing is higher because performance is much higher. Whether gamers and creators shell out the cash or take the advice of some of the louder critics and hold off, their intentions may become clearer after the RTX 4090 becomes available Oct. 12.

Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer who died in London in 1852 and is the namesake for Nvidia’s newest architecture, would likely be astounded at the kerfuffle.

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