After announcing its new generation of GeForce RTX 30 Series graphics cards, Nvidia might have been forgiven for thinking that all gamers would be happy with the huge performance leap, as well as the significantly lower than expected pricing for the mid-range RTX 3080 and 3070 cards. However, one group of PC gamers who recently bought Nvidia’s current generation flagship, the RTX 2080 Ti, feel as though they’ve been treated unfairly.
The problem is that the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 will be launching at $699, and is expected to be up to 70% faster in titles with ray tracing than the RTX 2080 Ti, which has still been selling for $1000+ in recent months. Similarly, the RTX 3070 will be launching at $499, and is expected to match the 2080 Ti in most areas of performance, but be significantly stronger at ray tracing.
Much attention has been placed on the flagship RTX 3090, the gigantic performance increases that come with 24 GB of next generation GDDR6X memory, and the claim from Nvidia that 8K resolution gaming is achievable with the card before most gamers have even upgraded to 4K. Yet for the majority of people, it is the RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 that provide the realistic upgrade options, and the reveal shows Nvidia being super competitive in its aim of attracting gamers away from AMD cards. The price points could even start a mid-range price war, as if AMD cannot find a performance boost in the same region for its upcoming RDNA2 powered Navi 2X cards, it may need to rely on low pricing to attract gamers.
By any measure, Nvidia has knocked the RTX 30 Series reveal out of the park, combining huge performance gains with amazing value pricing on the mid range cards. Not only will the price points cause huge concern for AMD, but potentially for Sony too, as high performance ray tracing gaming PCs become significantly more affordable. It is understandable though, why gamers would feel ripped off after buying a 2080 Ti recently, with low supply keeping prices high, few would have anticipated that a similarly powerful card will be available for half the price just a few months later.
Whether Nvidia chooses to tackle this problem with discounts or gifts remains to be seen, but for gamers looking for high-value ways to upgrade graphics performance, there has probably never been a better time.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 will be available on September 17, GeForce RTX 3090 on September 24, and GeForce RTX 3070 in October.
Source: Notebookcheck.net
