The RTX 4090 is the most significant generational leap we’ve seen from Nvidia, crushing the RTX 3090 and RTX 3090 Ti with a price match. Prior to launch, most of us expected AMD to break that leap, but that’s not going to happen. Instead, the new RX 7900 series will be in direct competition with the RTX 4080.
Frank Azor, chief architect of gaming solutions and marketing at AMD, confirmed this during the conference RDNA 3 reveals in Las Vegas. Frank said the new Radeon RX 7900 XTX was designed to compete with the RTX 4080, and the “main reason” there were no Nvidia GeForce RTX series GPUs in the charts is because they didn’t have any RTX benchmark 4080 numbers.
To speed things up, the GeForce RTX 4080 will come with 16GB of GDDR6X memory and start at $1,199 (around £1,042 or AU$1,850), which is $400 less than RTX4090. But! AMD will offer more VRAM on the $899 Radeon RX 7900 XT (20GB GDDR6) and the same VRAM as the $999 RTX 4090 (around £870 or $1540) Radeon RX7900 XTX (which will have 24GB GDDR6).
Analysis: AMD pricing is what the GPU market needs right now
If we look back at the launch prices of the RTX 3090 i RX6950XT we see a steady climb with one team and not the other. At launch, the Nvidia RTX 3090 was $1499 and the RX 6950 XT started at $1099, a staggering $400 difference between the two.
Right now, the cheapest RTX 3090 on Newegg.com is $1,200 – while the cheapest RX 6950 XT we could find was just $800. Considering that the average performance difference between the two graphics cards is only about 20% in favor of the Nvidia card, AMD’s current flagship is definitely better value for money.
While we don’t yet know exactly how well the next-gen RTX 4080 and RX 7900 XTX will perform, it’s a good sign that AMD is deliberately targeting the 4080 as competition for its flagship GPUs. However, it’s already $200 cheaper, putting AMD in a very good position if Team Red can match (or at least nearly match) the performance of the RTX 4080.