A couple of days ago the new NVIDIA graphics cards were presented, which have generated quite a bit of controversy. They have not liked the prices of these graphics cards, which are becoming less accessible to users. In the face of criticism, Jensen HuangCEO of NVIDIA, has had to go out and explain that the low graphics card prices are a thing of the past.
So that we have all the data, the NVIDIA RTX 4090 Founders Edition is priced at 1959 euros. Besides, the RTX 4080 16GB it will cost €1469 and the RTX 4080 12GB it will cost 1099 euros. But these are NVIDIA’s own models, those customized by ASUS, Gigabyte and other assemblers, will be more expensive.
Crying about the price of graphics cards makes no sense
Those of us who are more veteran remember to buy graphics cards for very little price. For example, in 2014 I bought a Gigabyte GTX 770, belonging to the mid-range, for 299 euros. These prices are things of the past.
Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, spoke at an event organized by the company. As expected, he was asked about the high price of his new graphics cards. The truth is that it could not have been clearer: “Moore’s Law is dead. A 12-inch wafer is much more expensive today. The idea that the chip is going down in price is a story of the past»
For those who don’t know what the Moore’s Lawin short, says that the number of transistors of the microchips will double every year and the costs will go down. The reality is different, since the costs are not going downon the contrary, with each new manufacturing process they increase.
Due to this, the way of working is changing, focusing on the architecture optimization. You no longer work on raw computing power, but instead add AI performance enhancement technologiessuch as DLSS.
“The performance of the $899 NVIDIA GPU or the $1,599 GPU of a year or two ago, at the same price, leaves our Ada Lovelace performance monumentally better,” Huang said.
Furthermore, Huang has commented that the RTX 3080 10GB It is still an excellent graphic and they will continue to offer it.
Where are we going?
We must begin to think, then, that the prices of graphics cards will go up or, at least, will remain. This leads to two possible scenarios: rent hardware or use cloud gaming services.
We are already seeing how it is said that Google and Apple are working on smartphone rental lines of business. We could see something like this in the future in the hardware segment and especially in the graphics card segment if they continue at this price. At the moment, as far as we know, there are no plans in the industry in this regard.
The other option, and one that is on the table and growing, is to play in the cloud. NVIDIA GeForce Now and Microsoft’s xCloud are the two most interesting options today in this regard. Google Stadia is practically dead and Amazon Luna has hardly anything to offer at the moment. Everything indicates that this service will be the future of gaming.
