Good news, everyone: the price of Nvidia RTX 3000-series GPUs is slowly falling. Time for gamers worldwide to rejoice, right?

Not so fast there.

While RTX 3000-series GPU price decreases are absolutely a good thing, gamers are about to have a bit of a rude awakening as Nvidia prepares to launch its next-gen GPUs, the RTX 4000-series.

The new generation of top-tier GPUs is expected to launch mid-way through 2022, and as that period is rapidly approaching, it's time to consider everything we know about Nvidia's RTX 4000 GPUs.

When Will the Nvidia RTX 4000 Launch?

If you can believe it, the RTX 3000-series GPUs launched nearly two years ago, with the RTX 3080 hitting the shelves in September 2020. A great deal has happened since then, not least the COVID-19 pandemic and its dramatic and ongoing impact on the global computer hardware market. Anyone that's attempted to buy a GPU in the past two years will attest to the hellscape it has become.

So, the prospect of Nvidia launching its new generation of video cards, the RTX 4000-series, is a warm and welcome prospect.

Throughout the first half of 2022, we've seen the rumor mill ramp up considerably, and we've reached the point where specific quarters and even months are being billed as the RTX 4000 launch date. Specifically, well-known, and most importantly, well-respected and frequently accurate leaker kopite7kimi posted a potential date on Twitter.

Wait, Q3 2022? Like, the next quarter of the year we are currently in? You can understand why the RTX 4000 train is gathering steam. However, although that could mean July, August, or September, the smart money says September, as that's when Nvidia typically releases its new hardware.

So, there is nothing confirmed yet, but it's looking increasingly likely that Nvidia's RTX 4000 GPUs will launch in September 2022, likely starting with the RTX 4080. We would also expect to see the RTX 4070 and potentially RTX 4090 at launch, with other iterations like an RTX 4050 or RTX 4060 arriving in 2023.

How Much Will the RTX 4000 GPUs Cost?

It's difficult to predict how much Nvidia's new GPUs will cost. You'd typically expect a price rise between generations to account for the latest hardware, years of research, and so on, but the ongoing issues in global hardware markets, such as the chip shortage, will definitely push the prices up. At least, it will at launch.

The RTX 3080 MSRP is $699, and the RTX 2080 was also $699 at launch. Can we assume that the RTX 4080 will become the first in the new generation and carry the same price? We're more than likely to see at least a small price increase, if only because the cost of living worldwide has also ramped up, and there are still difficulties acquiring certain bits of hardware.

Will Nvidia's RTX 4000 GPUs Be Better Than RTX 3000?

It should go without question that an RTX 4000 GPU will outperform an RTX 3000. But as we've seen with the RTX 2060 and RTX 3050, that isn't always the case.

We know that RTX 4000 GPUs will use the new Lovelace architecture, along with the new AD102 die. As summarized by another serial leaker, harukaze5710, it appears the RTX 4000 GPUs could feature up to 18,432 CUDA cores, a phenomenal 71% increase on the flagship RTX 3090. CUDA cores are the hardware vital for parallel processing and boosting your video performance.

Also expected is support for PCIe 5.0 (this is all but guaranteed), another huge increase in power requirements from the already ravenous RTX 3000-boards, along with boosts to memory, memory bus, clock speeds, boost speeds, and more.

How About AMD's Next-Gen RDNA 3 GPUs?

Nvidia and AMD don't release new hardware in lockstep, and Team Green's (potential!) September launch date has likely been on the cards for years. However, it does appear both Nvidia and AMD will be launching the latest GPU generation simultaneously, leading to the question: will Nvidia's RTX 4000 beat out AMD's Zen 4, RDNA 3-based GPUs?

Well, a whole lot less is known about AMD's RX 7000-series GPUs, bar the fact they'll use a new architecture and a new GPU die, and there is potential for AMD's 3D V-Cache to feature to boost its memory cache drastically. Indeed, there are (unsubstantiated) rumors that AMD's RX 7000-series GPUs could feature as much as 512MB Infinity Cache!

It'll Be Time for Nvidia vs. AMD Again—So Don't Upgrade Just Yet

Will September 2022 launch the latest round of Team Green versus Team Red? If so, it could well be worth waiting to upgrade your GPU until then.

Whether you're waiting for a shiny next-gen GPU or hoping for a price reduction in Nvidia RTX 3000 or AMD RX 6000 hardware, it might well be worth waiting until later in the year to see how the market plays out. However, if GPU prices continue to drop as they have been, you might be able to save a few bucks.

Oh, and this is all without getting into the prospect of Intel's Arc Alchemist GPUs, which, while they've been consistently delayed, are believed to have performance comparable to the current GPU generation.

A new challenger enters.