ng it irrelevant and/or forcing Nvidia to lower the price.
Now it's just "not so bad" and kinda makes 4080's price valid.
I'd say "kinda' being the key word here, but it's close enough where the recent small price cut of just $100 for 4080 in the euro market certainly makes comparisons far more difficult than I think AMD would like. For that extra $100 over the XTX, you're gonna lose in some rasterized titles yes - but not all. You'll win in every RT title though, sometimes just a small amount which is a bit better than I was expecting for the XTX so that's nice, but still - lose in all. DLSS is still a big win for Nvidia atm, as Rich from DF pointed out, AMD/Intel need to get XESS/FSR support in more games, the trend is positive sure, but they're still lacking, especially for some older titles like Metro Exodus that could really use it. I've tried those drop-in FSR mods for DLSS, and uh - they're really not a solution, you need native support from the developer.
DLSS in turns ties in rasterization speed as well, as for games that have DLSS but not FSR support, then even without RT the game is likely going to be a significantly better experience on the 4080 because of it, unless the DLSS implementation is exceedingly poor - and that's not even factoring in the frame generation part. Yes yes, AMD is planning their own - but Nvidia has already solved some of the more significant issues with it, and it's in shipping games now.
All of that, in turn with a significantly lower TDP, and hence, lower noise to boot. No doubt the 7900 series can actually
fit in a lot more smaller cases which is the first step to using one of course, but heat/noise are also big concerns in SFF systems too, and yikes man:
For the $200 more the 4080 is still asking in most markets, although it's far from cut and dried, I can see the argument for a 7900XTX. There is a hard price ceiling for some after all, and the $1200 asking price, regardless of some benefits, may breach it. If Nvidia lowers it to $1100 in all markets - or even less though - then the familiar critique you hear from AMD fans that the GPU market is driven by blind Nvidia loyalty looks even more silly (I mean that argument was largely dusted with the 4080's sitting on shelves, clearly there's a limit!). I'd really have to question how much actual research the
AMD buyer is doing if they choose a $1k 7900XTX over a $1.1K 4080. You're saving $100 for...what? To get a win in some rasterized titles, and losing everywhere else? Who's not doing their homework in that situation? I can't see that extra VRAM being a factor in any game over the cards lifespan, it's different when we're talking 10-12 gigs but when the 'lesser' amount is 16...meh. But hey, that's 'if'. It's still $1200 (and far more here in CAD) atm.
All of this is assuming these cards are available at MSRP too. If AMD has enough stock the price differential may be more significant, but it doesn't exactly look like 4080's are hard to find at MSRP either. That is Nvidia's main competition, not AMD unfortunately - just the market realities it's running up against with cards in the $1k+ bracket, let alone when many are financially constrained right now.
One thing is perfectly clear though as it was during the announcement weeks ago: The 7900XT is useless. I called it an upsell product, but in these reviews it's acting more as a 'downsell' for the entire 7900 line. It completely undercuts AMD's argument that it wasn't raising prices, as it's previous gen competitor was the 6800XT - so they
have raised prices, significantly - just not on the top-tier product that was considered an extreme niche price category just a few years ago. All its existence does at this point in every review is to remind viewers of this fact, just how much of a shit value it is. Frankly if this was the only price this product was feasible, it shouldn't have been released. Maybe Nvidia is dumb enough to release the 4070 TI at the same $899 price the 4080 12GB was supposed to go for - they're certainly arrogant enough to - then it
may have some relevance. But really, $899 is just nuts considering the performance delta with the XTX. $799 absolute max.
So overall, largely similar to every other AMD release in the past few years. Ok. Decent. That's...nice. If they could have gotten those clocks to ~3ghz as the earlier rumours indicated, and the XT was priced accordingly, we'd be looking at something quite different (albeit at what tdp considering what they're already leeching now, so uh).
Apropos of it being the holiday season - if/ands/buts, candy & nuts, etc etc.
