The Nvidia RTX 4090 is undoubtedly the best graphics card money can buy, but even its power seemingly isn’t enough to escape the effects of this GPU generation’s mixed reception. Prospective pixel pusher purchasers appear unmoved by the Lovelace flagship and prefer instead to seek value in AMD and discounted older GeForce cards.
According to anonymous retailers speaking to YouTuber Moore’s Law Is Dead, “RTX 4090 sales are way down” in the United States. This isn’t an isolated incident, with another US retailer echoing that “4090 sales are nearly gone” while also worryingly highlighting that they “don’t think we sold a single RTX 4080 this month.” Things aren’t much better outside of America either, with the Lovelace GPU selling “badly” elsewhere.
So, what GPUs are selling? In a win for AMD, the Radeon RX 7900 XT and XTX are apparently selling well, but the bulk of sales are coming from “clearance pricing GPUs”, namely the RTX 3060, RTX 3050, RX 6700 XT, and 6600 XT. It’s not looking good for high end GPUs.
Another source paints a miserable picture for smaller hardware stores, saying those who focus on selling GPUs are under a lot of pressure in the current landscape. The best gaming CPU offerings are helping to keep them afloat.
If these rumors are true, it’s bad news for graphics card manufacturers. Of course, Nvidia’s 60 class cards are often the generation’s blockbusters, and crucially bestsellers, but the reaction to the RTX 4060 hasn’t been hugely positive so far, suggesting it won’t be the mid-range savior retailers are hoping for.
Check out our Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 review to see our perspective on the latest entrant into this GPU generation.