Nvidia's 4070: A Dud the Company May Never Recover From 🖥️

Featured image generated using Kadinsky 2 using the following prompt: “Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Holding a graphic card At a Tech Conference while crying”

Nvidia has shot itself in the foot. And if that sounds familiar, it's because it is. It was only a few months ago that we highlighted how HackerNoon readers were just as likely to buy an AMD graphic card as they were an Nvidia chip, but with the launch of team green's 4070, the company may have just crowned its competitor's cards king. 👑

The fact that HackerNoon readers were near evenly split on whose graphic card they'll purchase next was a miracle unto itself. Had AMD not reinvented itself under CEO Lisa Su, it's likely that the company would have faded to obscurity-given its poor products and absence from both the CPU and GPU markets for years on end in the early to mid 2010s.

But with the launch of Nvidia's latest graphic card, the 4070, the company has solidified AMD's position in the GPU market. It is a rare occurrence to see tech reviews of an Nvidia graphic card ending with a strong recommendation for an AMD GPU instead. So, what went wrong?

Well, at debate is 4070's performance and price point: for $600 MSRP, you get a graphic card that is virtually no different from the last-gen 3080 but for $100 less, since the 3080 launched at an MSRP of $700. But because the world was going through a pandemic AND a crypto boom at the time, it was near impossible to find any graphic card at their suggested MSRPs, forcing consumers to dish out more than $1k per unit depending on make and model.

For some odd reason, Nvidia looked at this, and said.. "Hmm.. what if we could milk consumers instead of scalpers."

Enter: the 40 series. The launch of the flagship 4080 graphic card at $1,200 MSRP really set the tone for what the company was aiming for in gaming — reallllllyyy high prices for reallllllyyy high performance boost generation-over-generation. But as Gamers Nexus rightfully pointed out in their own reviews, "The needle has not moved if you're moving everything with it."

However, with the launch of the 4070 Ti at $800 MSRP,reviewers started noting a troubling pattern. Sure, you were still paying a high price, but without the generational uplift in performance. Nvidia's 70 class GPU variants are deemed to be the most accessible to gamers because of an affordable price-to-performance ratio, but at $800, the 4070ti was neither affordable nor significantly better than what came before it.

Which brings us to the 4070. Consumers might be tempted to think that for $600 MSRP, they're basically getting the last-gen flagship — the 3080 — but there are other factors to consider. For one, historically, every 70 class GPU variant has offered better performance than the previous 80-class variant. For the 4070's, that's not the case.

But what's worse is, sure, the 4070 is cheaper than the 3080, but it's actually more expensive than the last-gen 70 variant card, the 3070, which had an MSRP of $500.

Another limiting factor for the Nvidia cards has been the vrams. Consumers who had hoped to future proof themselves by buying higher class Nvidia variants like the 70 class or the 80 class last gen have been in for a rude awakening lately, with those cards struggling to pump out the maximum frames (and visuals!) needed to play optimally on players' hardware because of their limited vram.

While the 4070 does come with a higher vram (12 GB vs. the 3080's 10 GB), most reviewers note that this is now the bare minimum in 2023. Moreso, future gaming needs might necessitate more than what Nvidia's selling, raising worries about whether the company is engaging in planned obsolescence.

With all that in mind, only a die-hard Nvidia fan would look at the 4070 and think nothing's wrong with it — and sadly for Nvidia, it doesn't look like there are many die-hard Nvidia fans out there. As of today, the 4070s are just sitting on shelves and are available for purchase, at MSRP, across multiple websites, indicating that consumers really aren't interested in dishing out $600 for an "OK" card.

What consumers might be interested in spendingon are the cheaper, and often better performing, AMD cards, which, despite being one generation old, have wiped the floor with the 4070 due to their crazy price-to-performance ratio.

Reviewers recommend starting from the RX 6800 and the RX 6800 XT to the high-end RX 6950 XT. Depending on which one you opt for, you can pay either a little more (RX 6950 XT @ ~$630+), a little less (RX 6800 XT @ ~$540 to $580), or significantly less (RX 6800 @ ~$480+) for on-par (RX 6800/RX 6800 XT) or much better (RX 6950XT) performance. In addition to better price-to-performance ratio at current market prices, reviewers have also pointed to the 6000 series cards' higher vram (all of the aforementioned cards come with 16 GB of vram) for a reason to opt for AMD.

Anyway, it was a bad week for Nvidia. On HackerNoon, both Nvidia and AMD saw crazy spikes in their trending interest over the internet this week. The internet chatter re: Nvidia was 9x more than last week, helping it land on the #47 spot while AMD was resting comfortably on the #70 spot on HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings.

In Other News.. 📰

• The Chinese government is courting Intel, asking the company to "take root" in the country. Intel ranked #53 this week.
• Calls to regulate AI have begun. Here's a primer on which government is doing what.
• Bing Search is coming to a Samsung device near you. A new report indicates that South Korea's Samsung Electronics may replace Google as the default search engine on its mobile phone devices in favor of Microsoft's Bing, which is powered by ChatGPT. Samsung ranked #11 this week.
• Was Netflix's lower-cost subscription plan a success? We'll find out in the near future. Netflix ranked #1 this week.

And that's a wrap! Don't forget to subscribe to my profile and share this newsletter with your family and friends! See y'all next week. PEACE! ☮️