$500 for 4 GB VRAM: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 12 GB is extremely expensive

Nvidia surprisingly released a GeForce RTX 5070 laptop GPU with 12 GB of GDDR7 graphics memory instead of just 8 GB like the older version, and thus catches up with the GeForce RTX 5070 desktop graphics card ($635 on Amazon). Nvidia has only replaced the 2 GB memory modules with 3 GB memory chips and has not made any other changes to the GPU.

The first gaming laptops with this new version of the GeForce RTX 5070 are due to start shipping in the coming weeks, but Nvidia has not officially announced the price. Framework has now opened pre-orders for a GeForce RTX 5070 12 GB upgrade module for the Framework Laptop 16, which is to be delivered from June. The price is surprisingly high - the GeForce RTX 5070 12 GB costs $1,199 instead of $699 like the variant with 8 GB graphics memory. This means that customers pay a surcharge of $500 or 71.5 percent for 4 GB or 50 percent more VRAM.

This is despite the fact that the two graphics chips are otherwise identical, right down to the 4,608 CUDA cores with boost clocks of up to 2.4 GHz. The memory bandwidth remains unchanged at 384 GB/s and the maximum TGP remains at 100 watts. If other laptop manufacturers charge similarly drastic surcharges, laptops with GeForce RTX 5070 12 GB should only be minimally cheaper than notebooks with GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, although the Ti GPU also offers 5,888 CUDA cores and a significantly higher memory bandwidth of 672 GB/s in addition to 12 GB of VRAM.