I’ve been wanting to upgrade from my old RTX 3070 for a while now and finally made the plunge. I managed to find an RTX 4080 Super for only a little more than MSRP ($1100 USD). It’ll be coming in at the end of the month from Germany of all places. Now I’m seeing the price on that exact same card (a Zotac 4080 Super Trinity OC) anywhere from $1700 to $2300 which is absolutely ridiculous.

I wanted to see what the market would look like when the 5000 series came out but I got pessimistic about the pricing. Yes the MSRP on the similar 5080 is $999, but with the upcoming 25% tariffs in the US, the remaining crypto mining price increases, AI use, and scalpers I don’t plan on seeing the prices realistically going less than $1500 at a minimum.

I know I’m getting a now obsolete generation so the longevity won’t be as good but even the new 5080 has the same VRAM amount (16 GB) as the 4080 series, so I’m trying not to feel too bad about not having the latest and greatest generation. At the same time I’m working with the budget I have and not spending hundreds of dollars more than needed.

As much as I like my 3070 it’s starting to really show it’s age. It struggles on low settings on the latest patch of Stalker 2 on 3440x1440 ultrawide, can’t handle Ray tracing in Alan Wake 2, can’t load HD textures in Far Cry 6 due to only having 8 GB of VRAM, and only gets marginally passable framerates (30 fps or so) on medium settings with Ray tracing and DLSS 3 performance on Cyberpunk 2077.

I’m definitely going to appreciate the uplift in quality and performance, especially considering I just dropped $1100 on a card.