Oof, Early GeForce RTX 4080 Pricing Puts It In Striking Distance Of The 4090 FE
NVIDIA's hardware partners have a little bit of pricing wiggle room between the GeForce RTX 4080 (the real one) and GeForce RTX 4090, with $400 separating their $1,199 and $1,599 MSRPs, respectively. As is typically the case, you can expect some factory-overclocked and custom-cooled GeForce RTX 4080 cards to come with a pricing premium over NVIDIA's FE model. Ahead of next week's retail release, early listings have popped up at a major US retailer, and they reveal where partner pricing will land.
In at least one case, a custom GeForce RTX 4080 will only be $50 cheaper than a GeForce RTX 4090 FE. That would be the ASUS ROG Strix Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition as pictured above—it's listed at Micro Center for $1,549.99.
At default settings, the ROG Strix card features a 2,625MHz boost clock, and in OC mode it gets bumped up to 2,655MHz. Both amount to a greater than 100MHz overclock compared to the Founders Edition model, which has a 2,505MHz boost clock.
It also comes with a custom three-fan cooling shroud, fancy RGB lighting, and high-end components and construction (such as high-current power stages and 15K capacitors). We'd also expect temps to be somewhat lower, though won't know for sure until when and if we have a chance to test the card.
You'll have to decide for yourself if spending $1,549.99 on a custom GeForce RTX 4080 makes sense when $50 more gets you a GeForce RTX 4090 FE. The latter option serves up more CUDA cores (16,384 versus 9,728), more GDDR6X memory (24GB GDDR6X versus 16GB), a wider memory bus (384-bit versus 256-bit), and more of almost everything (such as RT cores).
Not all custom models will go above NVIDIA's baseline MSRP, though. There are several GeForce RTX 4080 listings prices at $1,199.99. Here's a breakdown...
- ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition: $1,549.99
- ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition: $1,499.99
- MSI GeForce RTX 4080 Suprim X OC Edition: $1,399.99
- Zotac GeForce RTX 4080 Amp Extreme: $1,399.99
- Gigabyte GeForce RTX Aorus Master OC Edition: $1,349.99
- MSI GeForce RTX 4080 Gaming X Trio OC Edition: $1,324.99
- MSI GeForce RTX 4080 Ventus 3X OC Edition: $1,279.99
- Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4080 Gaming OC Edition: $1,269.99
- Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4080 Eagle OC Edition: $1,239.99
- ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080: $1,199.99
- Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4080 Eagle: $1,199.99
- PNY GeForce RTX 4080 XLR8 Gaming Verto Epic-X RGB: $1,199.99
- Zotack GeForce RTX 4080 Trinity Triple Fan: $1,199.99
Of course, this situation isn't unique to the GeForce RTX 4080. And to be fair, Micro Center's listings of custom GeForce RTX 4090 models range in price from NVIDIA's MSRP of $1,599.99 on up to $1,999.99. So while the gap between the ROG Strix 4080 and 4080 FE is $50, the gap between the ROG Strix 4080 and ROG Strix 4090 is $450.
It all boils down to availability, anyway. High-end graphics cards don't stay on store shelves very long before selling out these days, and we anticipate the same will be true when the GeForce RTX 4080 releases to retail on November 16 (next Wednesday).
