Unexpected RTX 4070 price and supply requirements allegedly caught AIBs off-guard as NVIDIA reportedly offers rebates to ease the situation

According to various reports, the RTX 4070 launch reviews will go live today and the card will be up for sale from tomorrow, April 13. We already have a pretty good idea of what the RTX 4070 price and performance are going to look like. Tom from Moore’s Law Is Dead, who previously mentioned that NVIDIA was considering a US$749.99 price for the GPU, has claimed in a recent video that the final MSRP of RTX 4070 being US$599 has caught AIBs off-guard.

One of Tom’s AIB sources lamented that, because the RTX 4070 Founders Edition boards are set to be US$599, it will make the AIB’s 8-pin models uncompetitive as the cards have lower boost clocks than the FE boards.

Another AIB source claimed that NVIDIA had mandated 50% of the RTX 4070 cards to be priced at the US$599 MSRP. This has allegedly caused the AIB to start “frantically” changing plans to prioritize cheaper models. The AIB also expected to “take a loss on many of the Day 1 cards”.

Interestingly, one source who allegedly works at NVIDIA suggested that the company was “always going to surprise” with an MSRP that was less than the initial US$749.99 pricing target. However, the source maintained that the US$600 price is “actually below what I heard we’d consider”.

Now, the question becomes: why is NVIDIA pricing the RTX 4070 lower than what it had considered in the start? Tom’s insider claimed that NVIDIA is realizing that the RTX 4070 VRAM may be insufficient. 

VRAM capacity has become a hot topic in recent days following the launch of The Last of Us Part 1 on PC. The game reportedly consumes more than 12 GB of VRAM at 1080p/Ultra making GPUs like the RTX 3070 with 8GB of VRAM, which are sufficiently powerful for 1080p otherwise, perform horrible in some instances.

Finally, in a video that followed, Tom suggests that NVIDIA may have decided to lighten the RTX 4070 pricing pressure by offering rebates to AIBs on some of the launch volume. In other words, NVIDIA could stomach the price difference between the actual cost of some AIB models and the MSRP. However, this respite could be temporary as we could see AIB boards creep up in price post-launch.

It needs to be mentioned that the RTX 4070 is yet to be put on sale. So, we don’t know the final pricing situation, supply, and how it might affect the AIBs. Therefore, take the information presented here with a grain of salt.

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