$700-800 Ideal Price of GeForce RTX 4080: TechPowerUp Poll Surveying 11,000 Respondents

The idea price for the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 “Ada” graphics card is around USD $700 to $800, according to results from a recently concluded TechPowerUp Front-page poll surveying our readers. Our poll received over 11,000 responses. At the number 1 spot with 22% of the vote is $800, closely followed by $700. Together, this range represents 44% of the vote. 14% of our readers think $600 is an ideal price, followed by “less than $400” at 13%. 9% think $500 seemed fair, followed by 7% willing to spend as much as $900. 5% is happy to spend $1,100. 2% or less feel that the current $1,200 MSRP is justified or are willing to spend more than MSRP. There’s more to a majority finding sanity with the $700 to $800 price-range.

With NVIDIA cancelling the RTX 4080 12 GB, the RTX 4080 16 GB became the only SKU to bear the name “RTX 4080.” This $1,200 MSRP GeForce RTX 4080 is the successor to the RTX 3080, which debuted at $700, marking a $500 increase generation-over-generation (a whopping 71% price increase gen-on-gen). You begin to see why most readers prefer the $700-800 range to be the ideal MSRP, and are willing to tolerate a $100 increase. For even more context, the RTX 3080 “Ampere” launched at the same $700 MSRP that its successor, the RTX 2080 “Turing” launched at. The GTX 1080 “Pascal” came out at $600 ($700 for the Founders Edition), which explains the interest in $600 in our poll.

A sizable chunk of our readers are simply disillusioned with GPU pricing, and feel that either $500 to $400, or something lower, should be the ideal price of the RTX 4080. Can NVIDIA even break-even at such prices? NVIDIA’s own quarterly financial results reference vague margins as high as 60% (not specific to any product, but as a general rule, margins tend to be proportionate to MSRP, with the higher priced products generally having a fatter margin). At 50% to 60% margins for its $1,200 MSRP, we’d be in the neighborhood of $500 to $600. We’ve seen examples in the past of NVIDIA cutting its prices in sharp response to competitive AMD products, with both brands fiercely locked in price-wars, and their products selling at less than half their MSRPs. So a $500 to $600 price for the RTX 4080 cannot be easily dismissed as “impossible.”

A tiny fraction of the RTX 4080 thinks the $1,200 MSRP is fair, or is willing to pay more than $1,400. This probably aligns with the demographic that’s actually buying the RTX 4080 at its current prices, or willing to spend top-dollar for a high-end graphics card. The poll indicates that NVIDIA can push more volume by lowering the price, or be content selling the RTX 4080 at ?$1,200 at high margins to a tiny fraction of people.