Are you excited for the prospect of yet more overpriced graphics cards making their way onto the market that may hopefully provide marginally greater performance per dollar figures than previous models for what has to be the worst graphics card generation in modern history?
Me neither, however it’s certainly exciting when companies announce new and shiny things for journalists to gawk at and for prospecting gamers to buy.
We’ve already moved past the whole GeForce RTX 4090D fiasco for the Chinese market, where NVIDIA have provided a cucked and neutered rendition of the RTX 4090 with a noticeable drop in the overall CUDA core figure alongside a marginal divot to Tensor core figures for effectively the same street value as the previous RTX 4090 which has now been banned inside the country.
Following such acts of blasphemy, consumers remain hopeful that the introduction of NVIDIA’s revised RTX 4000 “SUPER” series of graphics cards will somehow salvage the most overpriced and disgusting GPU generation in recent memory.
With NVIDIA’s only viable offering this generation in my opinion, that being the GeForce RTX 4090 exceeding its MSRP value and regularly being found for upwards of $1800+ USD, well we’ve already discussed how this graphics card is a fire hazard that seemingly has been glossed over as some sort of minor inconvenience or scapegoated as some sort of “user error”.
NVIDIA is the company that keeps on giving to its customers, what with RTX 3060 Ti’s featuring defective Hynix GDDR memory inevitably bound to fail, much akin to how several previous generation RTX 3000 GPUs are bound to fail due to susceptible PCB designs, where excessive sagging over time will inevitably crack the PCB and kill the card.
You can’t just suspend a kilogram of metal in thin air and expect it to not affect something over time, you’d be surprised to know just how few consumers utilize a bracket of sorts to hoist up and hold their increasingly heavy graphics cards inside of their PC, if you have a high end GPU of any sort please invest in some sort of makeshift GPU bracket.
And of course, who could forget the infamous RTX 3090 with its many problems, the initial revision of GDDR6X memory modules by Micron exhibits exceptionally high temperatures. Micron mentions in their datasheet that these modules are rated for 118°C. However, considering the layout of the 3090 VRAM, where 1GB modules are situated on both sides of the PCB and one side lacks sufficient cooling, this has caused immense heat issues.
I also cannot help but remember the time that RTX 3090’s were dying left and right due to uncapped frame rates in various video games such as New World and Diablo 4, never mind how the previous generation RTX Turing was entirely defective, with the 2080 TI Founder’s Edition featuring defective vapor chambers that crack, along with the very high failure rates of 2018 Micron GDDR6 memory chips.
Of course, NVIDIA isn’t the only company with problems, defective vapor chambers are also a staple with various AMD Radeon GPUs albeit to a lesser extent, though practically every single Radeon VII is bound to become e-waste eventually.
NVIDIA has a history of simply treating its customers like paypigs, whatever it takes to make a dollar they’ll do just that, they’re a corporation that simply loves to make money and are highly regarded by their swarm of loyalists as being some sort of premium brand much like Apple.
NVIDIA GeForce over the past several years have cemented themselves as being ticking time bombs.
Anyways, CES 2024 is upon us and with that will likely come the announcements of several new graphics cards from both NVIDIA and AMD with speculation suggesting the imminent launch of a minimum of three new GeForce graphics cards, specifically the RTX 4070 Super, RTX 4070 Ti Super and the RTX 4080 Super with the latter two SKUs apparently set to replace their outgoing equivalents entirely while the RTX 4070 Super will be produced and continue to be sold alongside the RTX 4070.
NVIDIA have released a teaser for their upcoming CES conference, indicating the imminent arrival of a new series of products as the company updated their Facebook cover photograph showcasing a blacked out GPU floating above the Earth, referencing that a new horizon of GeForce is upon us shortly.
If you’re a consumer looking to spend around $400-600 for a compelling mid-range product there hasn’t been anything better to buy than AMD’s Radeon RX 7800 XT, which should now face stricter competition in the form of the RTX 4070 SUPER which aims to yield a 22% net increase in overall CUDA core count versus the standard RTX 4070 (7168 CUDA Cores vs 5888) alongside an additional L2 cache yield of 48MB versus 38MB.
The RTX 4070 Super is most certainly going to be the best product from this announcement, but it ultimately will come down to pricing. AMD’s Radeon RX 7800 XT has an MSRP value of $500, a whole hundred dollars less than the standard RTX 4070 which will continue production moving forward.
If NVIDIA wants to take a dominate lead in the lower mid-range market they absolutely need to start lowering their prices, making the RTX 4070 a much less horrible purchase instead of the cheaper and superior RX 7800 XT and slot in the RTX 4070 Super which will absolutely reign supreme in terms of outright performance with a competitive price tag.
But given how the RTX 4070 costs $600, and the RTX 4070 Ti costs $800 there’s an immense pit inside my stomach that would suggest that NVIDIA doesn’t give a single fuck about competitive pricing but rather will just aim to slot in the RTX 4070 SUPER between $600-800.
AMD would have an immense headache on their hands if NVIDIA simply let go of their immense profit margins and priced down the RTX 4070 to around the realms of $450 and priced the RTX 4070 Super at $550 which would effectively slowball and reach the likes of the $400/449 RTX 4060 Ti 8GB/16GB and the $300 RTX 4060 which will then have adjusted and more tolerable prices.
But that’s all a pipe dream, rest assured that consumers have been getting royally fucked over throughout this entire generation no matter which side you align yourself with. Especially given how consumers seemingly detest NVIDIA’s $1200 RTX 4080 as they instead flock to purchase the “cheaper” RTX 4070 Ti in droves.
Which is why NVIDIA seemingly needs to incorporate the RTX 4070 Ti Super and RTX 4080 Super, as both products are being pounded by superior alternatives for less, with the RTX 4070 Ti being dispatched by AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 XT for $780 on NewEgg, while the RTX 4080 gets manhandled by the Radeon RX 7900 XTX for $980.
Hilariously enough, there’s a roughly 30% performance gap between the GeForce RTX 4080 and the RTX 4090, however in terms of actual pricing you’re going to have to pay over 50% extra for the privilege, while the Radeon holds up exceptionably well given that it may as well be an entire grand less.
NVIDIA has a lot of issues dispatching competitive AMD products across most of their lineup, the RTX 4070 Ti Super sounds like a retarded name given the dual prefix however it’s entirely necessary to provide a slightly more enticing product to ward off the RX 7900 XT, it’s speculated that the RTX 4070 Ti Super will come featuring 8,448 CUDA cores, a solid enough yield over the 7680 CUDA cores present inside the standard model, it should be enough to convince consumers that NVIDIA offers the most compelling products.
While the RTX 4080 Super, which was originally intended to be a further cut-down variant of the AD102 core has now turned into a lousy cash grab given that it now allegedly will feature the full AD103 core with 10,240 CUDA cores versus the 9728 featured within the RTX 4080. A 5% increase with no real changes to memory specifications, not that enhanced bandwidth will somehow manage to allow the RTX 4080 Super to leapfrog the superior Radeon RX 7900 XTX.
Either way, only time will tell how these new SUPER cards matchup versus their supposed Radeon rivals, however if NVIDIA instead opt towards bridging price gaps amongst its lineup rest assured that neither of these cards will be at all compelling or enticing to prospective consumers, if NVIDIA is actually serious about taking the fight towards AMD who’ve benefitted from NVIDIA raising the bar in terms of pricing this generation, announcing these products simply isn’t enough, they need to actually provide price cuts across their entire lineup.
I look forward to being immensely disappointed by the introduction of NVIDIA’s RTX 4000 SUPER GPUs or genuinely surprised come January 8th.
