A few weeks ago, I wrote that NVIDIA is mulling pricing the NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti at an MSRP of $899 and had informed AICs that this would be the launch price tentatively. Multiple sources have informed us that they have received a last minute update from big green with what appears to be a pre-launch price drop and the current tentative MSRP of the NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti: $799.
NVIDIA quietly informs AICs of a price cut for the 4070 Ti's MSRP: tentatively launching at $799
NVIDIA likes to keep the pricing of its GPUs close to itself before launch and some AICs had already started taking orders at an MSRP of $899 from some of their channel partners. However, they have been informed today that the tentative launch date is now $799 and the difference will be adjusted for existing orders. Since we are closer to the launch, this price point is likely going to stick (although that is just my educated guess).
That said, this extract form my original article still remains relevant (although price is unlikely to go up, and more likely to go down if Jensen changes his mind again):
Keep in mind, however, that Jensen wields the black leather jacket and all of us must submit to its power. So he could very well snap his fingers and change the MSRP at the very last moment should he want to. This is also why I am still tagging this post as a rumor - because until the marketing and documentation gets made for the launch, details like this can still change.
A big reason for why NVIDIA might have had a change of heart could be because of the fact that 25% GPU tariffs were set to resume on 1/1 and were pushed back by the US government by 9 months. This meant that if NVIDIA and AICs kept the pricing of their cards constant, it would have shrunk their margins. They might have figured to take the hurt anyways and pass on the savings from the lack of resumption to the consumer.
GPU tariffs that were resuming on 1/1 have been pushed back 9 months. #NVIDIA #Intel #AMDhttps://t.co/GVLjFYotnY
— Usman Pirzada (@usmanpirzada) December 17, 2022
But of course, the biggest reason is probably the completely lackluster traction of the NVIDIA RTX 4080 which has had serious difficulty in flying off the shelves unlike its much more expensive sibling: the NVIDIA RTX 4090. The updated value proposition of NVIDIA's RTX 40 series based on the value that the RTX 4090 offers is below:
| GPU | FP32 TFLOPs | MSRP | TFLOPs/$ | Value (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GeForce RTX 4090 | 82.59 | 1599 | 0.05165 | 100.0% |
| GeForce RTX 4080 | 48.74 | 1199 | 0.04065 | 78.7% |
| GeForce RTX 4070 Ti | 40.09 | 799 | 0.05017 | 97% |
As we can see, the RTX 4070 Ti with this new MSRP is far closer to the value that the TITAN offers from a TFLOPs/$ perspective and should enable the card to take the burn to AMD's recently launched Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs. With just a few weeks to launch, NVIDIA has decided to reduce the price of its relatively-mainstream entry and further price cuts could be in the pipeline should the wielder of the black-leather-jacket deem it so. If there any more price changes, I will report on them right away.
