Nvidia RTX 5070 early pricing hints at plenty of GPUs at the MSRP – but I’ll believe it when I see it

• A number of RTX 5070 models have been listed at MSRP in the US
• This appears to hint that pricing for the GPU could come out favorably
• There are plenty of reasons to doubt that, though, sadly

Nvidia’s RTX 5070 graphics cards have been spotted complete with pricing at retailers ahead of their imminent release (tomorrow, March 5), and what we’re seeing is something of a pleasant surprise – on the face of it.

There are reasons to be very wary here, though, which I’ll come back to.

At any rate, first the prices themselves, and Wccftech reports that a regular hardware leaker on X, @momomo_us, picked up on B&H Photo over in the US listing a number of RTX 5070 models with price tags (which are still live at the time of writing).

These are RTX 5070s from third-party card makers which are pitched at the official MSRP, and while some are entry-level boards as you might expect, there are overclocked models in here too.

The latter are PNY’s RTX 5070 OC variant which is priced at the MSRP of $550, along with Gigabyte’s WindForce OC – and the entry-level WindForce is at the same $550 price, as well as the Asus Prime RTX 5070.

Previously, Best Buy has also listed the Asus Prime RTX 5070 at the $550 recommended price, too (and that product listing remains unchanged as I write this).

So, as mentioned at the outset, this could be read as an encouraging sign that the cost of RTX 5070 GPUs might fall reasonably in line with Nvidia’s recommended pricing.

As I indicated before, though, I’m not reading it that way, and let’s dive into why that’s the case.

Analysis: Getting real for a moment

Okay, there are a few bones to pick with this one (perhaps an entire carcass). Firstly, with the B&H Photo pricing, it doesn’t make any sense that the WindForce models would be the same – the entry-level and overclocked model – the latter surely won’t be at MSRP (the former should be, granted).

Just look at these same variants in the case of the existing RTX 5080 and you’ll see that Gigabyte prices the OC version at just over 25% more expensive. There’s no way this won’t be mirrored with the RTX 5070 (at least to some extent, anyway, even if it’s not as big a jump).

What this shows is that these are (at least partially) placeholder prices from B&H, though that said, it’s entirely likely that the entry-level Gigabyte WindForce, and indeed the likes of the Asus Prime RTX 5070, will be at MSRP. Remember, the latter is priced at the MSRP over at Best Buy as well, and these are entry-level boards that should be fixed at the base recommended pricing.

Anyway, the broad point here is let’s not get carried away with the notion that somehow overclocked RTX 5070 boards away from the baseline models will be at MSRP – they won’t. Hopefully entry-level flavors will – they absolutely should be – but there’s an obvious second problem here that looms large.

Namely that pricing might be kind of academic anyway, based on how the Blackwell GPU launches have gone so far – stock levels have been very low in general, and all RTX 5000 models have sold out in a flash. Going by the latest rumors, RTX 5070 stock is going to be much the same story, or maybe even worse than the RTX 5090 (which was particularly shaky).

The problem in that case is that pricing tends to be pumped above MSRP (even by retailers, not just scalpers) simply due to demand, as we’ve seen already with Blackwell.

And you can get pricing dynamics coming in such as MSI reportedly hiking its entry-level Blackwell boards well above MSRP (as VideoCardz noticed). This happened briefly in the case of the RTX 5070 Ti, but the card maker now seems to have thought better of it, and reduced pricing again at the MSI store. (Not at Newegg, mind, at the time of writing, where the Ventus 3X OC version of the 5070 Ti remains at its artificially inflated price of $900 – and MSI’s RTX 5080 boards remain well over their MSRP at its own online store, too, for now).

Not that you can buy these GPUs anyway, even if you wanted to pay that much.

In short, the whole situation around Blackwell graphics cards is a bit of a mess, and I’m going to be very surprised if things turn out much different with the RTX 5070. And definitely don’t expect any reasonable prices for overclocked 5070 models, that really is just pie in the GPU sky.

Meanwhile, AMD has RDNA 4 graphics cards sweeping in on March 6, apparently with healthier stock levels, causing an extra headache for Nvidia, potentially.

You might also like...

• AMD warns its RX 9070 GPUs are strictly ‘UEFI-only’ – and if that sounds worrying, don’t panic, it probably doesn’t affect you
• Some lucky RTX 5080 buyers may not be so lucky after all, as Nvidia confirms ‘rare’ chip fault also applies to this GPU as well as the RTX 5090 and 5070 Ti
• Worried your Nvidia RTX 5080, 5090 or 5070 Ti isn't performing as well as it should? CPU-Z can now check your GPU for missing ROPs