If I recall correctly, the 3090, 3090 Ti and 4090 were supposed to replace the Titan cards that had been Nvidia's top gaming cards, but were never meant for gaming.
Someone very clever at Nvidia realized that if they rename their professional card (Titan) to be part of their "gaming" line, you can convince adults with too much disposable income that they need it to play Elden Ring.
I didn't know of anyone who used the Titan cards (which were actually priced cheaper than their respective xx90 cards at release) for gaming, but somehow people were happy spending >$2000 when the 3090 came out.
As an adult with too much disposable income and a 3090, it just becomes a local LLM server w/ agents when I'm not playing games on it. Didn't even see the potential for it back then, but now I'm convinced that the xx90 series offers me value outside of just gaming uses.
>but somehow people were happy spending >$2000 when the 3090 came out
Of course they did, the 3090 came out at the height of the pandemic and crypto boom in 2020, when people were locked indoors with plenty of free time and money to spare, what else where they gonna spend it on?
