Nvidia’s RTX Super refreshes have been the subject of a ton of rumours in recent times, and just ahead of these graphics cards purportedly being launched at CES 2024, we’ve got some juicy details on pricing (add seasoning as required).
This fresh info comes from Moore’s Law is Dead on YouTube, which asserts that the Super refreshes – which comprise the RTX 4070 Super, RTX 4070 Ti Super, and RTX 4080 Super – are already shipping to some reviewers.
Onto the pricing revelations and we’re told that – subject to last-minute changes – Nvidia intends to price the RTX 4070 Super at $599, with the RTX 4070 Ti Super coming in at $799, and the RTX 4080 Super will weigh in at $999.
This comes from a source who works at Nvidia, and all of those are the US-recommended prices, but we can expect that in other regions, pricing will fall relatively in line with that.
Two other mentioned sources (from a distributor, and a graphics card manufacturer) corroborate this pricing (more or less, although the distributor casts a touch of doubt on whether the 4080 Super might come in higher – this is likely due to communication hitches more than anything else, though).
The YouTuber also touches on spec rumours and notes that the specifications rumoured by VideoCardz at the end of December are correct.
That means an RTX 4080 Super with 512 more CUDA cores than the vanilla RTX 4080 (a 5% increase), an RTX 4070 Ti Super with 768 more graphics cores (up 10% on the 4070 Ti), and an RTX 4070 Super with a whopping 1280 more CUDA cores (over a 20% increase on the basic model).
Clock speeds will only have modest uplifts (in the order of 30MHz to 90MHz), with the other main notable upgrade being the RTX 4070 Ti Super getting 16GB of VRAM (compared to the 4070 Ti’s 12GB) plus a big boost in memory bandwidth, too.
The upshot, as Moore’s Law is Dead tells us based on internal estimations at Nvidia, is the RTX 4080 Super will only be slightly better than the GPU it replaces, with a 5% uplift, but the other refreshes will be a more substantial step forward to the tune of something like 15% better performance levels.
Analysis: Taking the fight to AMD
These freshly revealed prices chime with what was previously rumoured, and in fact, they are at the most optimistic end of the scale of purported price tags that were aired back in December – so that’s good news.
With the new (theoretical) pricing, the RTX 4080 Super at $999 makes nonsense of the RTX 4080 with its MSRP of $1,199 in the US – so Nvidia will scrap the latter. The RTX 4070 Ti is also set to be ditched as well, we’re told, with the Ti Super model being a direct replacement in this case.
What’s different is the RTX 4070, as this graphics card will still be sold by Nvidia, but of course, Team Green will need to adjust pricing as the new RTX 4070 Super is coming in at $599, the MSRP of the existing 4070. So, the RTX 4070 will be dropped to a new price point of $549 in the US, as many folks had hoped.
It’ll be great to see such an outstanding performer – the RTX 4070 is currently our pick of the best graphics cards from Nvidia – dropping to a lower price, and indeed, you can already buy this GPU at that price level ($549, discounted at Newegg). So, in theory, with discounts going forward, might we see the RTX 4070 at $499 in the US? Perhaps, and we can but hope…
The most exciting refresh in value terms, though, is that RTX 4080 Super. While it’s the most modest uptick in performance, at just 5% faster than the existing RTX 4080 it will replace, with the MSRP dropping by $200, Moore’s Law is Dead estimates it’ll be roughly a 25% better value proposition than the 4080.
The RTX 4070 Ti Super will also be in the same ballpark in terms of advancement of its overall value proposition – and loading it up with 16GB of VRAM is sure to make this graphics card turn heads in the upper-mid-range space.
In short, all three of these refreshed Lovelace GPUs look pretty compelling, if – and it’s a sizeable if – these price predictions prove to be correct. The RTX Super refreshes may well mean that AMD has to reexamine the pricing of its RX 7900 models, and even the very popular RX 7800 XT, the latter of which will be under direct attack from the RTX 4070 Super (and the 7900 XT, that’ll be under fire from the 4070 Ti Super).
That said, the 7800 XT has already dropped to close to the pricing in the US that it’ll likely need to reach to be competitive with its theoretical Nvidia rival (namely $500, and right now at Newegg in the US, you can pick one model up for $510 – suggesting some pre-emptive movement from Team Red, even?).
AMD may not be overly worried, then, and really these new graphics cards from Nvidia are more about Team Green competing with the RDNA 3 top dogs, than the other way around. Whatever the case, the consumer wins, though, again assuming these pricing rumours pan out (fingers tightly crossed).
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