If you’re trying to build or upgrade a PC, now is the best time to purchase several different components. Black Friday brings huge discounts on parts, making it the best time of year to stretch your dollars to the furthest point. But this year, there’s one important part you should wait for: a new Nvidia graphics card.
That’s not because Nvidia’s latest GPUs are bad – they’re some of the best graphics cards you can buy – but because we’re on the verge of a major change in Nvidia’s current lineup of GPUs, and the deals we’re seeing now . Perhaps in a few months this will become the norm.
A super refresh is coming?
For several weeks now, we’ve been hearing about a super refresh of Nvidia’s RTX 40-series GPUs. Rumor has it that Nvidia is preparing to release the RTX 4080 Super, RTX 4070 Ti Super and RTX 4070 Super to replace the RTX 4080, RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 4070 respectively.
Rumors of new GPUs continue to surface, but the refresh got a lot of credibility after Nvidia announced a “special address” at CES 2024. Even before this announcement, leakers had claimed that the cards would arrive in January 2024. Nvidia hasn’t said anything official on the matter yet, and probably won’t. However, there is good reason to believe that some kind of renewal is on the way (more on that later). Furthermore, VideoCardz reports that board partners have already been informed about the upcoming launch.
In the context of Black Friday, a big reason why super refreshes are so important is that these cards are expected to come at the same price as the cards they are replacing. This will inevitably drive down prices for the base RTX 4080, RTX 4070 Ti, and RTX 4070 as retailers sell them to make room for the new supermodels. Plus, we’ve already seen prices for these base models drop over the past few months, and a super refresh could push them down further.
All three cards are rumored to come with the same memory configuration as their base models but with a huge bump in core count. Leakers claim the bump will be around 5% for the RTX 4080 Super, up to 22% for the RTX 4070 Super. Even if the cards don’t offer huge performance boosts, their impact on current GPU prices is obvious.
What if they are wrong?
I hear you – what if the Twitter and YouTube GPU leakers are wrong about the upcoming refresh? This definitely wouldn’t be the first time. The big deal for the RTX 40-series Super Refresh isn’t just the leaks we’re hearing about. That’s what we’re hearing leaks about and it would make a lot of sense for Nvidia to extend the lifecycle of its Ada Lovelace generation.
According to Nvidia’s roadmap, Ada Lovelace-Next – currently suspected to be the Blackwell generation of RTX 50-series GPUs – is not expected to arrive until 2025. This breaks the release cadence we’ve seen with Nvidia releases since 2014. GTX 900-series graphics cards. The company typically introduces a new generation every two years, but if Nvidia’s roadmap holds true, there will be three years between the releases of the RTX 40-series and RTX 50-series.
This leaves next year open to Nvidia, and it doesn’t have a lot of GPUs to release in its RTX 40-series. It feels like we’ve seen the whole stack, and that’s true on both desktops and laptops. The only possibility for gamers with a limited budget is the RTX 4050, but we haven’t heard anything about that card yet.
It makes sense for Nvidia to extend the life of its RTX 40-series generation, not only because of the timing of next-generation GPUs, but also from what we’re seeing with GPU prices now. For example, the RTX 4080 is seeing a price drop, but its cheapest price is still around $1,100. AMD’s RX 7900 XTX offers similar performance, and you can get it for around $950. Similarly, RTX 4070 prices have dropped from $600 to about $550, but AMD’s competing RX 7800 XT is available for $500, and is available on sale for even less.
From the competitive pricing we’ve already seen, it’s clear that Nvidia doesn’t want to push the prices of its GPUs down any further. So, what do you do instead? You release a more powerful version at the same price. This isn’t a new strategy for Nvidia either. With the RTX 20-series GPUs, the company immediately released a super refresh to maintain a competitive edge during a relatively disappointing generation of graphics cards.
I need to point out that all this context does not mean that confirm That a super refresh is coming. This gives more credibility to the leaks we are seeing. There’s no harm in waiting a few months to see if the rumors pan out as a product. From the deals we’re seeing now, it doesn’t look like anyone will miss out on the big GPU discounts.
There’s no harm in waiting
If we’re seeing huge discounts on GPUs right now, it wouldn’t make sense to wait a few months for a potential super refresh. However, we are not. It’s possible we might see some flash deals, but even among the best Black Friday GPU deals, most cards are selling for the same prices they’ve been selling for for the past several weeks.
I’ve seen some discounts on the RTX 4080, and they’re only for overclocked cards that are already sold above list price. It’s possible to get a good deal on a high-end card this year, but if you just want the RTX 4080, you can find a cheaper card that isn’t on sale. For example,
Part of Newegg’s Black Friday sale for $1,250. Although
Also available for $1,150, and it’s not on sale.
The same is true for the RTX 4070. This card was supposed to cost $600, but Nvidia dropped the price to $550 in response to AMD’s RX 7800 XT. You can usually find the model at that price, whether there’s a sale or not. I’ve seen an RTX 4070 for $520, and it’s a solid deal. But $30 isn’t enough when there’s a good chance the price will drop in a few months.
Now, this approach is not correct All Nvidia GPUs this Black Friday. I’m focusing on the RTX 4070, RTX 4070 Ti, and RTX 4080 here. If you’re looking for a deal on a lower-end card, or a last-gen RTX 30-series GPU, you may be able to track down a good deal. If you’re interested in one of the cards rumored for a Super Refresh, it’s best to wait until we see what Nvidia has in store for next year.