The RTX 4090 has been the head honcho of GPUs for more than a year, and despite prices creeping down, it’s not worth picking up the GPU right now.
In October 2022, when I first reviewed the RTX 4090, I called it “both a complete waste of money and the most powerful graphics card ever made.” That’s even more true now that it was more than a year ago. The AI boom shortly after the launch of the RTX 4090, combined with some international restrictions on the GPU, has caused prices to skyrocket to unattainable places, moving the affordability from unlikely to basically impossible.
But that’s changing. Reports indicate that prices are slowly dropping, moving from a high of $2,200 down to around $2,000. That’s still way above the GPU’s list price of $1,600, but the trajectory now is at least positive.
Even with prices starting to drop, the RTX 4090 isn’t worth the money, and it might never be. That’s OK. It has nothing to do with the performance of the GPU. The RTX 4090 represents the pinnacle of a halo product in a GPU stack, and although it’s great to look at and salivate over the performance the GPU offers, it makes a lot less now than it did in 2022.Shifting value
When Nvidia first launched the RTX 4090, it didn’t look as crazy as it does today. Would you believe that it actually provided a better value than the RTX 4080? If you picked up an RTX 4090 around the time it was released, you got one hell of a deal. It’s hard to call a piece of hardware built for playing video games that costs $1,600 a “deal,” but at least Nvidia gave buyers a compelling reason to spend that much money.
That’s not the case today. Not only is the RTX 4090 still selling for above list price, with prices ranging between $1,800 and $2,000, the RTX 4080 is also much cheaper. Nvidia’s refreshed RTX 4080 Super offers basically identical performance to the base model, but it comes in at a new price of $1,000. The value equation between the RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 is much different today than it was a year ago, with the RTX 4080 getting cheaper and the RTX 4090 getting more expensive.
