The cost of GeForce RTX 40 Series graphics cards in Europe is 22% higher than the previous generation of GPUs

Although the GeForce RTX 4090 will sell $100 and $400 cheaper compared to the RTX 3090 and RTX 3090 Ti at the time of release, NVIDIA has markedly raised the cost of the pre-flagship RTX 4080.

For example, the RTX 4080 (12 GB) was $200 more expensive than the GeForce RTX 3080 (10 GB), and the RTX 4080 version with 16 GB of memory was $400 more expensive than the 12 GB RTX 3080 version released at the beginning of the year.

It is noted that this was influenced, among other factors, by the transition to chips based on the TSMC 4N process, the production of which is much more expensive than at the 8LPP production site of Samsung Foundry.

However, it is not clear why NVIDIA decided to sell RTX 4090 cheaper than RTX 3090.

It is rumored that this decision was made "at the last minute" and may be related to the preparation of the more expensive RTX 4090 Ti.

Tom's Hardware portal compared the recommended retail value of the RTX 40 reference graphics cards and concluded that in Europe, the prices of the new high-end NVIDIA accelerators had risen even more compared to the previous generation.

This is due to the fact that the American RRP does not include taxes, while in the same Germany, VAT in the amount of 19% is predetermined in the RRP.

In addition, over the past two years since the release of the GeForce RTX 30 series, the euro has weakened against the United States dollar.

As a result, European prices for the new GeForce RTX line turned out to be on average 22% higher than in the previous generation. Below is a table with a comparison.

The columns show the recommended retail prices for RTX 30 and RTX 40 in the US and Germany at the time of the start of sales.