Bad news – Nvidia RTX 4080 GPU pricing now looks even more ominous
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Nvidia’s RTX 4080 graphics card has been priced higher in Europe and the UK ahead of its big launch on November 16, but unfortunately these are even more worrying price tags for potential buyers than the ones we’ve already seen in the US.
If you recall, US pricing – for third-party models of the RTX 4080, i.e. custom boards made by Nvidia’s manufacturing partners – came out at the end of last week and generally didn’t make for a pretty display. Granted, there were some 4080 GPUs that adhered to Nvidia’s recommended prices – which was a great relief to see – but more expensive models commanded a pretty ridiculous premium.
If you were hoping the situation in Europe would be better, think again based on the first glimpses we’ve seen now.
In the UK, retailer Box has several Asus RTX 4080 models starting at a rather eye-watering £1,399 (TUF gaming (opens in new tab)), of entry-level Palit RTX 4080s (opens in new tab) also pitched at that level (two Game Rock (opens in new tab) variants).
The TUF Gaming OC Edition (opens in new tab) from Asus creeps up to £1,571, and if you want the top of the range ROG Strix RTX 4080 (opens in new tab), which will cost you £1,649. Yes, ouch.
As Tom’s hardware (opens in new tab) points out, the situation elsewhere in Europe also looks quite dire. The Asus TUF RTX 4080 is a sky-high €1,430 in France (InfoMax) – which is almost $1,500 in US dollars – and 11,299.00 kr in Denmark (Proshop), which is even more (about $1,560).
Analysis: price woes worsened
Don’t forget that the said Asus TUF RTX 4080 is one of the graphics cards that just happens to be on MSRP in the US (at least at Micro Center), so it’s pretty disappointing to see it improved significantly in the UK and Europe .
Now, of course, these early prices don’t represent the entire landscape of RTX 4080 prices; so we can’t get carried away. Major retailers such as Scan, Overclockers and so on in the UK have not yet priced RTX 4080 models at all, although the product listings are on the site.
That said, we don’t take that as a good sign either — and more of an indication that the stock could be wobbly at launch. That would be an unfortunately familiar situation, and one that could lead to price inflation anyway as scalpers try to pick up stock and perhaps sell it for even more profit.
We’re getting ahead of ourselves, of course, but the whole RTX 4080 launch is starting to fill us with trepidation. And sure, it’s hard to be optimistic, especially for the UK market when you still can’t get an RTX 4090 for less than £1,800 now (opens in new tab).
Prices will eventually drop more, though some gamers may want to wait for more affordable graphics cards from Nvidia to appear – like the RTX 4070 Ti (even if affordable is going to be a relative term here, this GPU could certainly look like a bargain compared to the prices outlined above). Likewise, there are options from AMD in the form of RDNA 3 GPUs, but again only more expensive models, with the RX 7900 XTX aiming to take on the RTX 4080.