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NVIDIA RTX 3080
As with consoles, power doesn’t mean a thing when it doesn’t match price. I can show you the most powerful gaming machine in the world, but it won’t matter much if it costs $ 5000. Similarly, I can show you a pretty broken machine that can barely run high-end games, but you might start listening if I tell you it costs $ 100. Yesterday, NVIDIA unveiled its new RTX 3000 line: 3070, 3080 and 3090. The 3090 is a monster, but it is starting to fall squarely into the latter category. However, the 3070 and 3080 are some of the most aggressively priced cards in years, destined to put pressure on Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Sony’s PS5.
The highlight here is the 3070 at $ 499, a card designed to outperform the 2080 ti, which I like I bought as recently as last year. The 3080 isn’t a joke either, a more powerful card that probably outperforms my 2080 ti, the Xbox Series X, and the PS5. That one is priced at $ 699 higher, which is still pretty cheap, historically speaking. I’m not a technical expert on these things, but here are some sources for a more in-depth look at what these things are capable of.
Just as a point of clarification, it’s clear that, at a basic level, a gaming PC will still cost more than a console. The RTX 3070 might only cost $ 499, after all, but you need a few other things in that box to make a PC. You also need the box. But this is offset by the fact that a PC is a much more versatile device than a console, a feature that becomes even more important in an age when remote work seems poised to continue its rapid expansion even after COVID. .
And while a PC is obviously a capable device when it comes to broader applications, it’s even more versatile when you ignore all productivity and other things and only focus on gaming. Not only does a PC give you all of the Microsoft exclusives, it also gives you an ever-increasing number of Sony games and entire genres that are nowhere to be found on the console. It offers you a complete library of free games on Epic, smaller games that never make it to the console, mods, etc. It will play games released in the 90’s, even the 80’s. You could play this game, originally created in 1962. Don’t think you’ll need the 3080 for that one, of course.
None of this matters as much if you need to spend $ 1,200 on a graphics card just to match the performance of the X Series or PS5. But when that price drops to $ 499, things get a lot more interesting.
All of this remains mostly theoretical until we know the price of the PS5 and Xbox Series X, but educated guesswork puts them somewhere in the $ 499 range. I’m deeply interested to see how this push and pull of decades between consoles and PC continues in a new generation. It’s worth noting that here are some interesting dynamics from a console war perspective: Sony is insulated from this threat by its strong exclusive development, and Microsoft is insulated in being able to offer Game Pass and Windows to PC customers as well.
