A new rumor suggests that Nvidia’s upcoming flagship Ampere graphics card, which some people are calling the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 (though we’re still not convinced by that name), could come with a ridiculously high price tag – of around $2,000.
The rumor comes from what appears to be an internal memo, which suggests a price of ¥1,3999 in Chinese yuan, about $2,000/£1,500/AU$2,800. If true, this would make the RTX 3090 (or whatever it ends up being called) one of the most expensive consumer graphics cards ever made.
It would also mean this new flagship is almost twice the price of Nvidia’s current flagship, the RTX 2080 Ti, which launched for $1,199 (£1,099, AU$1,899).
If this rumor is true – and that’s a big ‘if’ at the moment – it means you’re going to have to shell out a huge amount of money for the most powerful RTX 3000 series GPU.
Would it be worth it?
So, would a graphics card costing $2,000 ever be worth it? After all, for that price you could get a whole new gaming PC or gaming laptop.
It’s hard to say, as we don’t know what the RTX 3090 – if it exists – would be offering. However, recent leaks suggest the GPU will come with 12GB of ultra-fast GDDR6X memory, while another points at a huge 24GB of memory.
That could put it in RTX Titan terrority. Nvidia’s Titan GPUs, which although based on the same tech as Nvidia’s gaming GPUs, are in fact aimed at content creators and come with high price tags which are relatively affordable compared to professional GPUs.
The current Titan card, the RTX Titan, costs $2,499 (around £2,000, AU$3,600). We actually have one in for testing games at 8K, though it’s completely overkill for normal gaming.
But if the RTX 3090 is actually a Titan-level card, it could actually be more affordable (we use ‘affordable’ loosely here) GPU, and one that Nvidia won’t target at gamers.
We also don’t know what the RTX 3080 Ti/RTX 3080 Ti and other RTX 3000 series GPUs cost – and an expensive RTX 3090 could mean (if we’re feeling optimistic) cheaper GPUs below it.
Meanwhile, a poster on the Chiphell forums suggests the high end RTX 3000 card will be $1,399 (around £1,000/AU$2,000), with a Founder’s Edition costing $1,499 (around £1,130/AU$2,060).
That’s a bit cheaper, but still means we should expect the high end GPUs from Nvidia to be very expensive. If you’re hoping to upgrade when Nvidia launches the new graphics cards at its September 1 event, then you may find you have to shell out a huge amount of cash.
Via Eteknix