We're winning this thing, people, let's stick at it. That's the sentiment as rumours of lower-than-anticipated Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti pricing of $399 emerge and real-world prices of the RTX 4070 edge below MSRP in several markets.
First, that RTX 4060 Ti rumour. RedGamingTech reckons the RTX 4060 Ti will arrive next month at $399—the same MSRP as the last-gen RTX 3060 Ti, which of course wasn't available at anything close to MSRP until quite recently.
$399 is a fair dip versus the $450 number that was previously rumoured and fully $200 below the RTX 4070's MSRP. Now you could—and we definitely would—argue that even $400 is too much for what is likely to be second lowliest RTX 40-series GPU. Put another way, even $400 is an awful lot of money for near entry-level gaming graphics.
Indeed, if the RTX 4060 Ti does have 8GB of VRAM, as seems likely from rumours and the fact that the higher-spec RTX 4070 is 12GB, $400 is going to seem like a lot of money for a card that's going to run out of graphics memory at 1080p in quite a few modern games.
But if the RTX 4060 Ti does land at $399 it will still be a good thing. Because it will mean graphics card pricing is continuing to move in the right direction. And it means the push back against the really high pricing of the latest generation of GPUs—from AMD as well as Nvidia— is working. Bit by bit, we are getting there.
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Speaking of getting there bit by bit, there's ever more evidence that the RTX 4070 is being discounted in several markets. In the UK, Overclockers has several RTX 4070 options at well below the local £589 local MSRP, the cheapest of which is a £549.95 card.
In the UK, you can even get a whole PC with an RTX 4070 for just £1,150. Okay, it only has a 500GB SSD and an 11th Gen Intel CPU, but it's still a decent gaming rig at a distinctly non-silly price. Especially when you think that you're getting performance at the level of an RTX 3080-based PC, which could easily have cost £2,000 just a few months back.
Meanwhile, in Germany, Alternate.de will flog you an RTX 4070 for €599, a decent chunk below the local MSRP of €659. Again, you could take the view that even at these lower numbers, the RTX 4070 is still pretty majorly overpriced. This is hardly an RTX 4070 price crash. And, so far, RTX 4070 pricing in the US hasn't dipped below MSRP, save for fleeting moments. But everything is moving in the right direction.
This is hardly an RTX 4070 price crash... but everything is moving in the right direction.
So, yeah, constant complaints about horrible GPU pricing can get a little old. But it is having an impact. Really good graphics card pricing isn't going to happen overnight, it's going to take time to drag prices back to where they really ought to be.
But we're winning this thing. We don't have to just accept that PC gaming has become a premium-priced hobby for the wealthy. So, let's hang in there a little longer.
Megabuck graphics cards are now very much an outlier. That's reflected in the fact that pricing has dominated the discussion with the launch of every new Nvidia RTX 40-series GPU.
At the very least, Nvidia's "unlaunching" of the RTX 4080 12GB and repositioning it at a lower price point with RTX 4070 Ti branding was a direct response to the negative reaction to its premium pricing strategy.
With the negative PR building with each new release, the RTX 4070 not selling well, and Nvidia possibly being forced to restrict supply as a consequence, it will be interesting to see where the company finally prices future RTX 40-series cards like the RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4060. While we're not expecting to love the prices Nvidia goes for, we suspect they'll still be lower than Nvidia was originally intending or indeed hoping for.
