Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti early pricing rumors are making me fear the worst for the cost of this mid-range GPU

• An MSI RTX 5070 Ti graphics card has been priced over in Europe
• This early sighting sees price tags pitched well above the MSRP
• We should still be very careful about any prerelease pricing, but this remains a worrying hint

Nvidia’s RTX 5070 Ti is rumored to be almost upon us – indeed, we know it’s supposed to be out in February from Team Green itself – and early pricing hints are now emerging.

The bad news is that these nuggets feel depressingly similar to what we’ve seen with the RTX 5090 and 5080 GPUs. What’s that, exactly? The specter of inflated pricing, which has been a definite motif with the Blackwell graphics cards Nvidia has deployed thus far.

VideoCardz picked up on an MSI RTX 5070 Ti (Gaming Trio OC) appearing at an Austrian retailer, Media Markt (sic), priced at €1,169, which is around a third more than the official MSRP in Germany. (And that recommended price should be roughly equivalent for Austria, given that these European countries have the same level of sales tax, and likely similar import costs too).

Okay, so that’s just one price, but unfortunately, it’s mirrored by a French retailer, as spotted by Tomasz Gawroński on X, which has the same MSI RTX 5070 Ti entry-level board at €1,150, a very similar level.

Analysis: More fretting about RTX 5070 prospects

Yes, the mentioned price tags could well be placeholders, I fully accept that, and some care is needed here as ever with this kind of prerelease speculation.

However, the fact that two European retailers are coming up with around the same lofty price tag for this same MSI graphics card has got to be a little concerning. Especially given what we’ve seen with the RTX 5080 and 5090, namely retailers, and graphics card manufacturers themselves (on their own web stores), pushing costs well above MSRP level (or even previously announced launch pricing from board makers).

All in all, the situation has been messy, and we’ve got to wonder whether the stock and pricing woes seen with Nvidia’s Blackwell GPUs so far will continue to apply to the RTX 5070 Ti when it arrives. (Incidentally, the Austrian retailer pins a release date of February 20 on the RTX 5070 Ti, which aligns with a whole bunch of other leaks, including one from MSI itself, funnily enough).

What we must also bear in mind with the RTX 5070 Ti is that this will be the first Blackwell offering to not have a Founders Edition made by Nvidia. Meaning that third-party retailers will be wholly responsible for sticking to the MSRP, with no graphics card from Nvidia to hold the recommended pricing line, as it were. Not that this mattered much with the RTX 5090 and 5080, given how quickly Founders Edition supply dried up (and indeed how swiftly all stock sold out).

There’s still hope, of course – maybe these prices will turn out to be off the mark. Perhaps RTX 5070 Ti stock will be more plentiful, although running against that idea is the fact that this GPU uses the same chip (GB203) as the RTX 5080. And supply of the latter GPU has been distinctly strained as gamers have struggled to buy the RTX 5080.

Given that, perhaps the real Blackwell hope, at least for the nearer-future, lies with the RTX 5070, which is powered by the lower-tier GB205 – might those chips be produced in greater quantities for this vanilla model’s launch? We can but keep our fingers crossed, although the lack of any rumors about the RTX 5070’s launch date – when speculation on the subject of the 5070 Ti is rife – brings worries of its own (and lends a bit more weight to chatter of a delay to March for this GPU). None of which exactly lends confidence to the idea of the RTX 5070 blazing into town with a load of stock behind it, or at least a decent amount.

Still, come March, there’s also AMD’s RX 9070 graphics cards entering the fray, and doubtless that’s something Nvidia is keenly aware of.

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