I personally won't think it will be $1500. Everytime there was a price leak prior to launch for Nvidia cards, they have been incorrect. Since they are using the same process node as Lovelace with similar amount of cuda cores, I really doubt we will see much of an increase if any for 5080.

I err on the side of them being overpriced. My viewpoint is based on consumers more than Nvidia. I wouldn't wish the RTX 3050 8GB on my worse enemy and that card outsold the RX 6600 several times over as much as 10 to 1. Not only has the 6600 been the cheaper card, it's 26% faster on average. Raytracing at this class of video card is a non issue because the 3050 is not good at it either. When consumers starting buying the best option and not blindiy buying Nvidia, pricing will get better.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm completely sure Nvidia's cards will cost more, but the doubt I have is how much more. The 4070, for example, was slower than the 7800XT, in raster, yet it launched with a $100 premium over the AMD card, and the 4060 was only around $50 more than the 7600 despite performing the same (RT doesn't matter in this class either).

And so I'm curious to see if the premium for ther new 5000 cards will be similar or if Nvidia may be willing to cut it down a little bit.

Apparently Nvidia/AMD are "scrambling" due to the approaching onset of the Trump tariffs, so that has me thinking; either both of them take a hit and try making them cheaper at entry price, and release revised models at a more expensive price once the tariffs are in place, or they launch their entry price at a higher than normal to offset the tariff price increase.

Either way, the customer is going to be paying for it, as well as retailers. I don't see a world anymore where Nvidia will take the hit first over the customer. So I'm fully expecting a price increase to allow them to ride out the new tariffs. Besides, we know Nvidia has it's earned rep, so why would they take a profit loss for rep gain, when they are already so far ahead in terms of mindshare? (From a business perspective that doesn't make sense, even to me). 

Just so you know, today's free game on the Epic Store is KILL KNIGHT: https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/kill-knight-e981b3

The problem is the rest of the world.

Sure, they can set a lower price now just so when tariffs kick in the retail price doesn't skyrocket, but then that leaves them having to deal with your other (admitedly, smaller) markets. Would they price them the same as the original US price or for the guessed after-tariffs price? After all, we don't even know how big the tariffs will actually be. They could be the rumored 60%, but they could also be 40%, you never know. And that's quite a margin to deal with.

Also, there are companies that have taken action to try to prevent this. The company that makes the Zotac and Inno3D cards moved their assembly factory out of China, so they could ship GPUs to the US without being affected by tariffs to Chinese goods. What willhappen with them? Will they be able to keep selling the GPUs at the original price since they're tariff free or will Nvidia raise they cost of the chips so the ards end up costing the same? After all, you'll have to be very, very loyal to Asus or another brand to pay hundreds of dollars more for the same product.

We can't forget about profit margins either. Both AMD and Nvidia have to meet certain profitability goals, and you can bet the shareholders won't be happy with them earning an hypothetical 20% margin over their chips instead of the usual 33, 40 or 50% one. And that goes especially for Nvidia where shareholders don't care about game GPU when they could sell those for more AI chips for much more money.

And stores are the same. They won't cut their profit margins to sell more cards, and may actually raise them even more to keep the same % margins (LTT made a video touching it some weeks ago).

So yeah, it's a messed up situation where any guess is possible because we know so little. We don't know the price Nvidia, AMD and Intel want for their next cards, when the tariffs will take effect, how bif the tariffs will actually be, what will happen to the other markets, etc.

The only thing we know, as you said, is that we, consumers, will end paying more for them.

Even if it's a 40-60% increase, that's still going to end up being offloaded to the retailer and then to the customer at the end of our days. We still have to deal with the brunt of the bill and we know Nvidia doesn't care, nor will they ever take the hit for retailer/customer sake (we've seen them string up 3rd parties before and drove one of them to just bow out of the industry entirely).

AMD on the other hand doesn't have much of a choice, with their margins being low enough as is, and their market share dwindling, so they have to take the hit somewhere, or just follow Nvidia's route and drown themselves out of the market. The thing is, nvidia is so rich at this point that they could take the hit, but we all know AMD can't just keep following Nvidia like this, because we know they can't afford to take too many hits with how low their market share is.

While the US market will be a primary effected target, the UK and Australia/GER will also see their own forms of price increases, or at the worst, scalping/AI tech bros buying them up, but again, we're all going to suffer in some form or another, but I can see the US suffering more due to the tariffs. 

My guess is that Nvidia flat out does not care. They know they can bank on AI/Data centers now more than ever, so them losing some customers, or watching retailers choke to death doesn't seem high on their concerns list. I imagine they're even happy to watch things burn around them, since it's not directly impacting them to change course (they likely know that someone else will crop up and replace another retailer for them to make deals with, or at best, Nvidia become the sole sellers giving them complete control, which I'm sure they'd want).

I truly wish to god we could do something about this, but I'm just left rolling my eyes at all the guppies and parrots murmuring "don't buy the cards duuuh", because they fail to see the bigger picture. They don't seem to realise that us not buying the cards out right isn't going to happen, because reality doesn't always pan out that way, and for another, AI/ Data centers atm outrank us, so that's even more leverage stripped from consumer bargaining power. We are currently damned if we do, damned if we don't, and yeah, we did land ourselves into this situation 2 decades ago (We just didn't pay attention, while Nvidia was the whole time).

Nvidia has the brand power to do nothing and still win. There were people that bought 3090Tis for $2500 or even more during the last crypto boom/pandemic, and all the other cards were also overpriced and still sold well enough. So, Nvidia doesn't need to do anything because it's Nvidia and people buy Nvidia.

AMD is in more trouble, but at the same time their CPU division is doing fairly well, and has done so for a while, and so I could see AMD taking a small hit on their margins to sell more cards in order to try to increase their marketshare. But they're not a charity, don't expect miracles.

And yes, I do expect that chip makers/AIB partners will try to partially offload some of that price hike due to tariffs to the other markets to subsidize US customers so they don't angry with them. It sucks, but sometimes it works this way.

In any case, despite checking prices every now and then and looking forward what the new cards bring to the table, I'm still not really looking to upgrade my GPU. It's old but it still does its job well and I can run my games just fine.

Besides, the more I wait, the more options I have in ront of me. Just look at this:

Even the B580, which launched two weeks ago and oddly enough it's still nowhere to be seen in any Spanish stores other than Alternate, or the 7600XT would bring me quite a nice upgrade, and bring some RT capabilites on top (not that RT matters at this market segment). Surely the 9060 XT (?) would push that even more. So well, the more I wait, the less I'll have to pay to double my GPU power.

And you, with a 1080Ti, it's about 7900GRE or 4070Ti class to get that 2x jump, so the 9070 XT or 5070 should do the trick. Shame for the VRAM capacity of the 5070, tho. Unless you aim for the best of the best, of course.

By the way, while chekcing the graph above to compare the GPUs, I found this article about a potential leak of the prize points of the 5090 and 5080 in China. Take with a grain of salt.

https://www.techpowerup.com/330284/potential-rtx-5090-and-rtx-5080-pricing-in-china-leaks

Would be funny if my 4090 retains it's value due to tarrifs cuckholding prices

I mean... I bought my RX580 8GB for about $400 AUD and during the Crypto boom sold it for $800 AUD.
Then used that cash to buy the RX6600XT. Basically doubled my gaming performance for free.