GPU Pricing Update, April 2023: Is the Nvidia RTX 4070 Another Flop?

It's that time of the month when we look at the GPU market and see what's been happening. The big news for April is, of course, the launch of Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4070, which has been met with mixed reviews overall. The new GPU offers somewhat better value than the previous-gen GPUs it's replacing, but it's hardly an exciting uplift – so let's see how well the RTX 4070 has launched and what impact it's had on the market.

There's good and bad news associated with the new launch depending on your perspective. The good is that stock and availability of MSRP models is abundant, and demand even for base models has been somewhat weak, so it's super easy to pick up a 4070 even a week or two after launch.

Updated: See our latest GPU Pricing Update here.

If you head to Newegg or Amazon right now, you'll find half a dozen models available for $600, so there is no reason whatsoever to spend more – and that's a good thing because the RTX 4070 is only an attractive product at the MSRP. It's not good at $650 and it's terrible at $700. It seems Nvidia made sure it was launching in big numbers at the $600 MSRP and that has occurred... at least in the United States.

In some other countries – and this is region dependent – the starting price was higher but after waning demand, pricing has been corrected and now you can find models that are priced around the MSRP. Australia is one such example, where Nvidia wasn't overly keen on setting a $600-equivalent MSRP and were changing the final price right up to the last minute.

A quick check of other regions does show that most countries have models available at the correct MSRP. In Canada, for example, the cheapest models on Newegg are 810 Canadian, which is very close to the $600 US MSRP after conversion. In the UK, the cheapest models are 590 pounds, or about $610 US after equating for tax. Some regions also show a large discrepancy between the cheapest and most expensive RTX 4070 models, but at least those MSRP cards seem to be readily available a week after launch in most countries.

The bad news for Nvidia, which is good news for consumers, is that the RTX 4070 is selling badly even at the MSRP. This is made obvious from the abundant stock at $600 that never sold out even on day one. Typically, for any remotely popular product, the cheapest models will be snapped up quickly. This never happened for the RTX 4070, as the reception for this model among the PC gaming community has been lackluster.

Things are even more dire when speaking to retailers though, especially in places like Australia where pricing was set too high at launch. One retailer told us sales volumes for the RTX 4070 were even worse than the RTX 4070 Ti in the first week, suggesting another RTX 4080 situation where cards are likely to sit on shelves for months.

The only current generation models that have seen any sort of reasonable demand have been the GeForce RTX 4090 and AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XTX, although things have been picking up for the RX 7900 XT following recent price cuts.

While this may not be great for Nvidia, it's good for consumers. If you think the RTX 4070 is a poor value product, the last thing you want as a prospective buyer is for that card to sell well, sending the wrong message to Nvidia that this pricing is acceptable. Now they are receiving the opposite message loud and clear – just think how bad the RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 4070 MSRPs could have been if the RTX 4080 sold well at $1,200 – we'd probably still have the RTX 4070 Ti named the RTX 4080 12GB at $900, and the RTX 4070 coming in at $750 or something.

What's unclear for now is whether Nvidia is going to do anything substantial to counter consumer pushback, like lowering prices, or if this is all planned for the longer term.

If Nvidia is more interested in a long term strategy of reconditioning the market to accept higher prices, they might not care that much about short term sales of these models. That would be a terrible outcome for the gaming market, but we're not going to have a clear look at that until their financials for this quarter are revealed and they field investor questions. Let's not also forget that Nvidia is selling expensive GPUs to AI data centers en masse these days, they dominate the enterprise GPU market, and a big portion of their revenue now comes from those sales.

In the meantime, the RTX 4070 has been released with zero competition as far as current generation models go, so Nvidia can do whatever they want until AMD responds with a more affordably priced RDNA3 card.

New GPU pricing

The RTX 4070 launch has had a limited impact on the rest of the GPU market. There have been a few localized discounts for various products, but otherwise no substantial price movement. On the Nvidia side, the direct performance competitors to the RTX 4070 like the RTX 3080 10GB are all sold out and have been for several months, which means there is little competition from older models being sold at a lower price – nice move, Nvidia.

The only other card that saw any substantial price drop is the RTX 3070 Ti, which used to sell at the $600 price point now occupied by the 4070, so the cheapest 3070 Ti model dropped to $540 this month. Based on the amount of models being sold, it seems the 3070 Ti won't be in stock for much longer, although the $540 price point is hardly compelling.

Also not compelling is the RTX 3070 which remains at $500. If Nvidia wants to clear this model from the market to make room for newer products, they'll need to do better than that. Right now it's worse value than the RTX 4070, and really a two year old product being sold at the MSRP in the face of new generation cards is nothing to be excited about.

On the AMD side, the only recent move is the price reduction on the Radeon RX 6950 XT, seemingly wanting this card priced as close to the RTX 4070 as possible. Right now it sits at $630, which is a very compelling price point as Steve covered in his RTX 4070 review.

Around this $500 to $700 range both the Radeon 6950 XT and RTX 4070 are probably the only cards you'd consider, and we'd say the 6950 XT is making a strong case selling for $30 more than the 4070 while offering 16% more rasterization performance at 1440p on average.

The Radeon 6800 XT is available for $540, down slightly from last month, while the RX 6800 has remained steady at $470. Both are reasonable buys, but perhaps not as eye catching as that 6950 XT.

Then for the lower parts of the market, pricing is quite solid with most models at the cheapest they have ever been, including the Radeon RX 6600 which has fallen to just $200, an excellent price for that mainstream model.

Nvidia GeForce GPU pricing

Current generation models also continue to see price adjustments on a monthly basis. All models from Nvidia and AMD saw price movement compared to last month. For some cards, this meant returning to the MSRP, like the RTX 4090 and RTX 4070 Ti. For others, this meant price drops below MSRP, including the RTX 4080 which dropped to $1,150, a first for this poorly received product in low demand.

It's taken a while for Nvidia and AIBs to realize the RTX 4080 was just never going to sell at $1,200. We want to say that $1,150 remains far too expensive, however it is a step in the right direction.

AMD Radeon GPU pricing

AMD's RDNA3 models are also both now available under MSRP, with the 7900 XTX sitting at $960 and the 7900 XT falling to $780, which is quite a bit below its $900 launch price.

Both prices are a bit flaky and seem to fluctuate on a daily basis, but it does seem possible to grab newer AMD cards for reasonable prices, so we'd be looking out for these occasional sales.

Meanwhile, Intel Arc GPUs are holding steady, with the exception of the Arc A770 8GB, which dropped in price by $30, adapting to AMD's pricing for their mainstream models.

Used GPU pricing

The used market hasn't responded yet to the introduction of the RTX 4070, although it's only been a week and usually the used market is slower to respond than the new retail market.

For Nvidia's RTX 30 series, the biggest news is a ~$50 price cut for the RTX 3080 Ti, though we suspect this will fall further in the next few months. The RTX 3080 Ti is only 15% faster at 4K than the RTX 4070, and right now a used 3080 Ti will set you back 9% more than a new RTX 4070. That's not a compelling price, and neither is the RTX 3080 12GB at $591, on average.

The RTX 3080 10GB and below are pretty normal though, with used RTX 3080s offering similar performance to the 4070 at a 14% discount.

AMD used GPU prices haven't changed much. The closest model in performance to the RTX 4070 is the 6800 XT, which is selling for $475 used. That's a 21% discount, more than the RTX 3080, which is to be expected given AMD's weaker feature set. That said, we'd probably be expecting to see the RTX 3080 and Radeon 6800 XT see further price drops over the next month. Lower tier cards are holding steady.

For older GPU families, there's not much to report. The RTX 20 series remains stagnant, though it is interesting to see the RTX 2080 Ti now worth more used than the RTX 3070 which has similar performance – perhaps the VRAM difference is coming into play as these cards age: the 2080 Ti having 11GB vs. the 3070 at just 8GB. In prior months both cards were priced very similarly, but now the 2080 Ti is 5% more expensive.

Nothing has changed for the GTX 16 series either. We're still seeing all models priced below $150. AMD's RDNA2 series is also quite cheap these days, and are probably the preferred option for budget shoppers interested in a GPU for around that mark.

The RX 5700 is about 30% faster than the GTX 1660 Ti at the same price, while the RX 5500 XT is also faster than the GTX 1650 Super at around the same price.

What We Learned

That's where the GPU market stands right now. It's still early days, but so far the introduction of the RTX 4070 hasn't shaken things up. Gamers don't seem to be overwhelmingly interested in the 4070 at $600, leaving plenty of stock on shelves.

Such low level of interest has surprised us a little as the 4070 is one of the better value cards on the market right now, but it seems that the PC community isn't interested in a new GPU just being slightly or somewhat better value than existing options; that isn't good enough and it's going to take a really compelling product offering outstanding value for things to pick up again.

There have been a few localized price adjustments in response to the 4070's introduction, like further price cuts for the RX 6950 XT and a new low price for remaining 3070 Ti stock, but if you were hoping to see big price cuts, that hasn't happened.

Even the used market hasn't flinched. Remember the days of people dumping their old GPUs for super cheap right before a new wonderfully priced card launched? That hasn't happened with this launch, not even close.

What's really lacking at the moment is an AMD competitor in the $500 range. It's been four months since the first RX 7000 series GPUs launched without a peep from AMD about expanding the line-up, so hopefully they do something soon.

With RDNA2, there was a four month gap between the 6800 XT and the 6700 XT launch, so we should be seeing something like a Radeon 7800 XT or 7700 XT soon. Fingers crossed we won't be waiting much longer.

Shopping Shortcuts:

• Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 on Amazon
• Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti on Amazon
• AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT on Amazon
• Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 on Amazon
• AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX on Amazon
• Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 on Amazon