in the lab
LAB NOTES
GUY COCKER, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Nvidia nonchalance
A reader is perplexed by the 4000-series and so is the market
THIS MONTH, WE RECEIVED a letter from a reader, BJ Koho (see page 94), who didn’t understand the fuss we’ve made over Nvidia’s RTX 4000-series. He says that although the new cards are fast, that’s the least we should be expecting—his issue is that this speed comes with such hefty financial, thermal, and power demands, that he doesn’t understand the point of them in the current economic climate.
True, we were impressed with the RTX 4090 in our review in the December 2022 issue, and I was blown away by DLSS 3 4K gaming in my build in the Holiday 2022 issue, I immediately went out and bought a card for myself. A luxury, for sure, but how else is a PC gaming nerd meant to keep himself warm this winter!?
Joking aside, we’ve been rather less effusive about the RTX 4080. Jeremy Laird wrote that the card was straight up “bad” in his column in the December issue, while our review in this issue (see page 74) finds the card difficult to recommend overall. The price-to-performance ratio is so poor compared to the 4090, and it’s effectively priced so close to the flagship card, it just doesn’t offer good value for money.