RTX 4080 May Be a Sales Flop as Cards Gather Dust on Store Shelves
Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:
What a difference a year can make. It wasn't long ago that you would have been lucky to spot a high-end GPU in stock someplace, and it would have most likely been priced well above MSRP. Now, the latest Nvidia RTX 4080 is reportedly piling up at the same retailers that ran through RTX 4090 stock the instant it was released. The RTX 4080 is cheaper but probably a much worse value in the enthusiast GPU market.
The RTX 4090 was the first of the new RTX 40-series to launch, and it saw robust sales even at the obscene $1,600 asking price. People lined up to get the new GPUs, and units have been hard to come by ever since. Perhaps Nvidia expected a similar showing for the $1,200 RTX 4080, but it's not getting it.
If you want a 4080, you won't have to spend a long time looking. In the US, retailers like Microcenter have stacks of the cards on shelves, and buyers have even had plenty of opportunities to buy the GPUs online. Newegg, for example, had units available for days before they sold out. It's not much different in other markets. According to Hardware Canucks, the RTX 4080 is the first Nvidia release in more than two years that hasn't sold out immediately at Canadian retailers. It's the same story in the UK and Germany, too.
[...] There's also the issue of the remaining RTX 30-series cards. Many PC gamers held off on the 30-series because it was impossible to find them for a reasonable price. Now, they too are sitting on store shelves, and at much lower prices than the new 40-series. For those who don't need the best of the best, the 4080 doesn't offer enough of an improvement over last-gen cards to justify its price tag. Some gamers are probably also waiting to see what AMD can offer with the upcoming Radeon RX 7900.
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