The RTX 4070 Ti is the 4080 12GB, rebranded. It’s supposed to launch at CES, which is right around the corner. Due to its impending launch, it’s already being listed overseas. Several Chinese sellers are offering the GPU for sale, and all are rather expensive. For example, according to TechSpot, two e-tailers are selling cards from Gigabyte, Inno3D, MSI, and Colorful. The prices start at 7,000 RMB, which translates to $1,003. The prices go up from there, peaking at $1,200 for the Inno3D RTX 4070 Ti iChill. It seems like the Founders Edition will start at $1,000, with the overclocked versions going for more.
Listings from Chinese e-tailers paint a grim picture of the upcoming RTX 4070 Ti launch. (Image: Techspot)
Nvidia still hasn’t announced the price of the RTX 4070 Ti, so we can’t jump to conclusions just yet. However, it was rumored the company would lower the price of the poor-selling (by some accounts) RTX 4080 16GB, and that never came to pass. The reason it never happened was the 4080 performs quite well against the less expensive Radeon RX 7900 cards. Plus, it doesn’t suffer from some of the issues that seem to be plaguing the new Radeons, melting cables aside.
The RTX 4080 12GB’s original $899 price is a huge price jump for a card using the smaller x04 die. In this case, it’s the AD104, which is 295mm². The AD103 die in its big brother, the $1,200 RTX 4080 16GB, is 100mm larger. It also has a 192-bit memory bus, which is unheard of for a card in this class. It was those factors along with its high price that likely made Nvidia reconsider its branding. Therefore, since it was cancelled at $899, some thought it might arrive at $799 or so. With the prices being so high overseas, we’re not so certain anymore.
The specs of the RTX 4070 Ti are already known, so it’ll be an interesting launch.
In the end, the price will likely be determined by how it fares against the Radeon 7900 series GPUs. Those are priced at $999 and $899, making it a very interesting situation for Nvidia because the $899 Radeon RX 7900 XT is notably slower than the RTX 4080. That could be exactly where the RTX 4070 Ti lands on the benchmark charts. That makes it feasible Nvidia sticks to its guns and launches at $899., which would immediately outrage gamers who think Nvidia is jacking up prices too much. As an example, the 4080 received a $500 price increase from the RTX 3080. A lot of people opined that it’s a great card, just priced wrong, including us.
Nvidia has already released benchmarks for the RTX 4070 Ti, formerly the 4080 12GB.
However, with the RTX 4070 Ti launch drawing near, Nvidia has a decision to make. It could easily undercut AMD by offering it at $799, but that leaves a yawning price chasm between the two GPUs in the stack. That’s not something Nvidia usually does. With the 30 series, Nvidia had Ti versions for every card it sold, and sometimes more than one version of the same GPU with different memory allocations.
Complicating things is Nvidia has already released its own benchmarks for the RTX 4070 Ti. Those show it being neck-and-neck with the RTX 3090 Ti in rasterization. That’s a $1,000 GPU, at least, so $899 doesn’t seem so crazy. Time will tell, as the GPU is expected to be unveiled at CES alongside the 40-series mobile products. Reviews for the newest member of the Ada Lovelace family are expected on Jan. 4.
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