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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 11, 2024

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Shouldn't it be the other way around?

This isn't saying absolute performance hasn't increased: it has.

What I'm saying is that a 4090 performs twice as well as a 3090, but at roughly twice the price. That's "same price/performance ratio", it's just that the right tail on the graph grows.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/1364477/nvidia-rtx-4090-vs-nvidia-rtx-3090.html

The GeForce RTX 4090’s $1,599 MSRP is significantly less than the $1,999 whopper of a price that the RTX 3090 Ti launched with. It’s also $100 more than the original RTX 3090’s debut $1499 price. Good news, however – the RTX 3090 Ti has dropped to a much lower $1099 for the Founders Edition, and sometimes can be found for less. The 3090 can often be found for under $900, and even closer to $700 if you’re OK with a used graphics card.

The 3090 price fell precisely because of the 4090, due to market forces. Today, the 4090 seems to be back up to around 2000 USD due to the AI boom and sanctions/sanctionsbusting. But anyone would rather have a 4090 for $2000 than a 3090 TI for $2000. In theory, you could get a 4090 for $1600 compared to a 3090 TI for $2000, which is a very good deal. Progress continues.

When the 5000 series emerges, the 4090 will fall to the $1000-1500 range too.

Secular falls in GPU prices (and heightened price/performance) are being suppressed by high demand but they're still observable.