RTX 4080 might only be a little faster than a 3090 Ti

Nvidia’s RTX 4090 made a big splash when it debuted a few weeks ago, highlighting a massive improvement in intergenerational performance, alongside sky high power and thermal demands, an enormous physical footprint, and minor fire hazard status. Not to mention its $1,600 price tag. The RTX 4080 then, may be more modest, but early leaked results suggest it’s only a little faster than the 3090 Ti, and custom models might still cost well north of $1,000.

Nvidia has been the premium GPU brand for some time now, but it appears to have shot its shot with the RTX 4000 series for even higher prices, and is falling flat on its face. Not only has AMD massively undercut its existing RTX 3000 GPUs by slashing prices on its equally-capable RX 6000 cards, but its new RX 7000 GPUs are equally competitive with the RTX 4000-series, and they’re much cheaper. Nvidia’s RTX 4080 was supposed to be the more value proposition at the top end, but with prices already edging close to the 4090’s, performance that barely edges over an RTX 3090 Ti — a card that can be had for close to $1,0000 itself, isn’t that exciting.

That’s the word form some new Geekbench results, which give the 4080 an OpenCL score around 248,000. That puts it neck and neck with AMD’s RX 7900XTX — a card that costs $200 less than the 4080’s stated launch price. A price that will likely go up dramatically after launch.

Nvidia is not off to a good start with this new gen. How do you see it shaking out in the coming months?