4090s in drag.
As consumers eagerly await a supposed announcement from NVIDIA in regards to various RTX 4000-series “SUPER” graphics cards, which are more than likely slated for an announcement at next years CES, a European retailer has decided to throw a spanner in the works by listing various “RTX 4090 SUPER” GPUs on its website.
Previously it was highly speculated that NVIDIA would be introducing just three SUPER graphics cards for ADA Lovelace, namely in the forms of the RTX 4070 Super, as the mid-range fight between the standard model and the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT is a blood bath, the RTX 4070 Ti Super which sounds ridiculous given its dual suffix but should in theory provide a green “premium” alternative to AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 XT.
And a proposed SUPER variant of the RTX 4080, which was originally slated to feature a further cut-down of the AD102 core featured on the RTX 4090, however those plans went out the window as the supposed RTX 4080 Super looks to be the most disappointing of the bunch as it’ll now feature a full fat AD103 core providing barely any improvement over the current RTX 4080.
Though to incentivize customers in what has to be NVIDIA’s worst GPU generation throughout its history, second only to RTX Turing, some believe that NVIDIA would be scrapping production of the RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 4080 graphics cards in favor if these new SUPER variants as their replacements.
Whether or not NVIDIA intend on actually slashing their prices or at the very least providing increased gaming performance for the same egregious prices is yet to be determined however at no point throughout these last couple months was there any actual notion of theory that we would be getting an RTX 4090 Ti / RTX 4090 SUPER anytime soon.
NVIDIA usually loves to give their customers one last ravaging by introducing a TITAN class graphics card or introducing a Ti variant of their “flagship” model as the last introduced member of the GeForce family as the next generation of graphics cards draws near.
Proshop.dk is a Danish retailer that deals in all things personal computing, however for whatever reason they’ve listed various GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards on their website with the “SUPER” suffix attached.
All the listings for the “RTX 4090 SUPER” on Proshop appear to be standard RTX 4090 models, with identical prices. While it could be an honest mistake, it would mark the first instance of a retailer labeling an RTX 40 GPU with the “SUPER” designation, though this could really be a mundane retail store taking advantage of their customers by simply slapping the word “SUPER” on their online listings as a marketing ploy amidst the anticipation of NVIDIA announcing RTX 4000-series SUPER GPUs in January.
Similarly to how people on online marketplaces will try and advertise their older GTX reference model graphics cards as being “Founder’s Edition” simply due to NVIDIA subverting their reference design as a self-produced model, originating with the 1000-series Pascal generation and more often than not inferior reference board redesigns were upsold to consumers as being “fancy” in-house renditions that cost above MSRP.
NVIDIA are already working extensively with Chinese AIB partners to brutally bend over Chinese consumers with an inferior cut-down variant of the GeForce RTX 4090 called the “4090 D”.
Because NVIDIA would prefer to jump through arbitrary hoops than actually benefit consumers with price cuts towards their most outlandishly price GPU generation in history, as alleged by the scrappage of the RTX 3050 8GB in favor of a revised 6GB model simply because it was excessively cutting into the sales for their RTX 4060.
NVIDIA desperately need these slurry of RTX 4000 SUPER graphics cards, as they are being genuinely swamped in terms of specifications and performance by competitors AMD who are providing competitive products (in rasterization) for less money.
Needless to say this is most certainly a case of a retailer taking advantage of its customers through deceptive listings, or an honest mistake, I don’t believe that NVIDIA will be ushering out a more beefed up variant of the RTX 4090 alongside the proposed “SUPER” refresh of ADA Lovelace, we’re still quite a while off before witnessing next generation hardware from both AMD and NVIDIA so the timing doesn’t align at least for the time being.
