I think the reality is most people see the only thing the 4080 does better, is RT and most people don't seem to give a crap about RT. No matter how much RT fans bleat to the contrary, it is really not high on tha majority's must have list. I mean the best I can say is that I personally consider considering it, so £150 extra for a 4080 is just about within "worth it to me" territory, but certainly only just and only because both are over £1k. So personally at current pricing I would be edging more towards a 4080 for the better RT.
Of course power efficiency matters as well but 50W extra over a 4080 is not deal breaking. The other issues I think will be solved in drivers.
All things considered £150 - £200 less cost for similar or slightly better raster, an extra 8GB VRAM, smaller size and uses normal power connectors. Just those points alone clearly make it more attractive for many people. Not to mention that £150 - £200 will get you your RAM, or a motherboard, or an extra SSD, or bring you up a tier (or even two) on your CPU.
So I can see a 4080 price drop soon considering how well received the 7900 XTX has been by the actual people that matter (buyers). I mean as you pointed out, Nvidia dropped some RTX 4080 FE stock to "disrupt" the 7900 XTX launch and they are still in stock 8 hours later. That level of "up yours Nvidia" from buyers is unheard off. So if Nvidia do yet another 4080/4090 price drop then AMD just need to do the same, the 7900 XTX still remains a more attractive proposition because it "costs under £1k".
Strangely even though I would take a 4080 at current prices. If the 7900 XTX was £950 and the 4080 was £1100, I would have had the, "it's under £1k" feels and the 4080 would not get a look in.
I see you did mention power efficiency/consumption too but a 4080 does better by quite a bit better here across the board:
And before we say PE/PC doesn't matter, rdna 2/amd fans used to/do swear by this according to the poll:
My money lending days are over :cry: Yikes. Fair enough, how about this? https://www.overclockers.co.uk/-b-grade-sapphire-radeon-rx-6800-xt-pulse-16gb-gddr6-pci-express-graphics-card-bg-160-sp.html Or this...
forums.overclockers.co.uk
So odd seeing such a u-turn here.... especially as I imagine most "pc gamers" would have multi monitors.... Of course it might very well get fixed.
As for other advantages, I couldn't care less about some of the below but whether we like it or not, they are pros/advantages of a 4080 over a 7900xtx:
- based on videos so far as
locky pointed out here, looks like 4080 has better/smoother frame latency, another thing which supposedly was/is the be all when it came to rdna 2 vs ampere in likes of cod and so on.....
- as you mentioned, we all know rt is better
- cuda (I couldn't give a rats ass about this but plenty of people do)
- nvidia streaming/recording, amd have closed the gap big time but nvidia are still regarded as winning here
- dlss, some don't care but arguably it is better than fsr 2 still in IQ "overall" and uptake and main thing is, nvidia has access to both
- frame generation, again some hate it with a passion but some seem to love it so may not be an advantage for you or others but it could be for others
All that could be very much worth it for certain users.
The only real advantages as of right now with the 7900xtx over a 4080 is:
- smaller and thus fits in more cases
- miles better if you only play cod as your main game
- has an ever so slight edge in raster "overall"
- extra 8gb vram
- £150 cheaper, which is perfectly good/valid if said buyer doesn't care at all about any of the above advantages of the 4080 (but as you kind of touched upon yourself, when spending 1+K, chances are, an extra £150 isn't going to be that big of a deal if it means getting a better package overall)
If issues get fixed and the weird performance variance is fixed then 7900xtx could be more appealing but as it is, lets keep shaming people who buy 4080 but pat everyone on the back for buying 7900xtx
Time to upgrade that PSU , you own a 4090
