One of my main complaints concerning Nvidia's RTX 4000-series of graphics isn’t, surprisingly enough, the massive wattage (though that is a legitimate concern) but the pricing. For the past couple of generations, Nvidia has been massively hiking up the cost of its cards, especially its best graphics cards like the RTX 4080. But it's mid-range offerings haven't been spared either. It’s become particularly noticeable with the absence of budget-minded cards to offset this phenomenon.
When rumors for the RTX 50-series began to accelerate, buyers rightfully worried that prices would face a far steeper climb while offering a performance return that didn’t reflect the increase. However, the 50-series received its full announcement at CES 2025 and we now know that the MSRP is shockingly affordable.
The flagship Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090, widely thought to be a Titan due to its incredible specs, is priced at $1,999 / £1,999 / AU$4,039 — while steep, it’s not too far off from the original $1,599 price tag of the RTX 4090. This is especially promising since the rumors all pointed to a price nearly double what it ended up being.
Then there’s the RTX 5080, which is $999 / £939 / AU$2,019, and the RTX 5070 and 5070 Ti with respective retail prices of $549 / £549 / AU$1,509, and $749 / £749 / AU$1,109. The 5080 is $200 cheaper than the RTX 4080 was at launch, and will hopefully have a solid increase in performance to boot.
Most impressively, Nvidia claims that the RTX 5070 will offer comparable performance to the RTX 4090's native performance with some help from DLSS 4, but at around a third of the initial MSRP, while the RTX 5070 Ti will come in at just $150 more with even better performance.
This is also incredibly promising since it is a generational decrease in price, as the RTX 4070 Ti initially retailed for $799, and the RTX 4070 launched at $599.
AMD has been fumbling hard lately
I’ve long complained about how graphics cards need to be made more affordable, and how Intel has been stepping in the right direction with its Intel Arc Battlemage series. Now it feels like Nvidia is finally doing the same, capping overall price increases while lowering the cost of its mid-range offerings somewhat to remain accessible.
This, unfortunately, is in direct opposite of AMD’s current approach. AMD has been known for years as being the more affordable option for cards, balancing solid performance with more competitive price tags. However, some troublesome new reports suggest that the upcoming RDNA 4 cards may miss the mark in terms of pricing.
The RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 don’t currently have official prices (though apparently will be ‘competitive’ with Nvidia), and it’s been officially confirmed that it won’t launch until at least March 2025. This puts Team Red on the back foot as Team Green’s RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5070 will be launching in February 2025 with a healthy MSRP. By the time AMD releases their GPUs, everyone might already have bought new Nvidia cards, or may just opt for the more premium Nvidia offerings if AMD's prices are too close to its competitors.
Even worse, new reports indicate that the RX 7400 and 7300, which would have been new aggressively budget-friendly RDNA 3 options, have been axed in favor of fully supporting RDNA 4. If this turns out to be true, then Team Red is giving up a serious advantage in the market.
Right now, we’re looking at a potentially major upset in terms of better budget options for graphics cards. Nvidia has been at least responsive to complaints about price inflation, while AMD seems rather lost on the GPU front.
It’s a shame too, as it would be more beneficial to consumers to have two giants on an even playing field in order to keep prices low.
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