Nvidia’s (NVDA US) new gaming chips are not getting as high reviews as expected. Gaming is an important segment for Nvidia (NVDA US). A bad launch of these chips could be a negative for the stock price.
Nvidia , the chip-making company, with the share price having skyrocketed over the last couple of years, has just released their 2 new highly anticipated GPUs (Graphic Processing Unit), GeForce RTX2080Ti and RTX2080. These type of chips are mostly used by gamers. For Nvidia gaming is an important segment (it grew 52% y/y last quarter). The launch/sales of these GPUs will be important for them. By the looks of it the reviews are not as strong as expected.
Respected Tech-site, TechSpot writes;
Right now the RTX 2080 makes little sense. At the $700 AIB MSRP it’s okay, I guess. Basically it’s a few percentage points better than the GTX 1080 Ti and while the gains are impressive in titles such as Rainbow Six Siege and Wolfenstein II, for most titles the gains are only marginal, and we’ll illustrate this better in tomorrow’s 35 game benchmark feature.
So after a year and a half we’re getting GTX 1080 Ti-like performance for GTX 1080 Ti money. But then, that’s not even true. We’re getting GTX 1080 Ti-like performance for a 20% price hike and the hope that Ray Tracing won’t be a complete bust for this generation. So after a year and a half of gaming with the GTX 1080 Ti, color me rather unimpressed.
Then we have the extremely impressive RTX 2080 Ti, the sock blower. I lost so many pairs of socks benchmarking this thing in a few dozen games that I’ve had to restock my drawer. It’s a mighty impressive GPU in terms of sheer performance, as we saw it’s on average 31% faster than the already fast GTX 1080 Ti. So finally, high quality 4K single card gaming is a reality.
But it’s a reality you’ll need a second job to support. At the $1,000 AIB MSRP it’s not too bad as crazy as that sounds, you still pay a premium, but it’s less than 10% over the 1080 Ti. However at the current market pricing it’s a bad joke, a 35% premium over the 1080 Ti, no thank you.
Horrible pricing aside, I’m in awe of the performance Nvidia has achieved with these new GPUs, particularly the GTX 2080 Ti, shame they had to spoil it with the price tag.
Another tech-site Anandtech, mirrors that sentiment;
So generationally-speaking, the GeForce RTX 2080 represents a much smaller performance gain than the GTX 1080’s 71% performance uplift over the GTX 980.
It appears by the sentiment from these tech-sites that even though these new chips are impressive, the improvements seem less than people seem to have expected. Furthermore, they are more hesitant of value proposition of these chips, as prices are rather high.
Even though the new chips have not hit the market, it could be a good data-point to assess the review they received so far. In addition, we have previously written about Nvidia (NVDA US) and its large China exposure in conjugation with US-China Tariff spat as potential risk.
Nvidia chart feeling the pinch today.
Source: chart by Bloomberg
Summary: Nvidia (NVDA US) new GPU chips appear not to meet review sites (gamers) expectations. As gaming is big segment for company with high growth rates, any potential miss on these numbers could affect the company and stock.
