RTX 4070 price and launch date leaks suggest Nvidia hasn't learned from past mistakes

(Image credit: DC Studio via Stutterstock)

The supposed pricing for Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4070 graphics cards, which are due to launch next month has been revealed and as expected - it’s not great. Youtuber and regular leaker Moore’s Law is Dead (MLID) leaked the planned pricing for the RTX 4070 as starting at $749.99.

The launch of the GeForce RTX 4070 will come in two parts, with the standard variant dropping on April 12th and premium third-party variants expected on the 13th. This release date comes courtesy of another leak by Twitter user @hongxing2020 who dropped the hint over the weekend. The rumor also states that Nvidia has made clear to AIBs (manufacturing partners like MSI, Colorful, etc) that they can only include graphics cards that do not cost more than $749.99.

3.11 update4070 --->4/13March 11, 2023

If these rumours from MLID are true, that would make the proposed pricing 50% higher ($250 more) than the RTX 3070, which is a significant price jump. The RTX 4070 Ti is just $50 more than what the RTX 4070 might cost if the leaks are accurate, though nothing has been made official yet and that could change as we lead up to launch day.

Analysis: Worth the wait?

Following the RTX 4080 debacle, we can only hope that Nvidia has learnt from that slight wobble and is planning to present gamers with cards that are worth whatever price they decide to slap on. It’s hard to guesstimate the performance of the RTX 4070 but we can expect it to fall somewhere between the RTX 3080 Ti and the RTX 4070 Ti.

So far this is a pretty significant generational price jump between graphics cards, as it’s a higher price jump than the RTX 4070 Ti. There’s a difference of about $250 between the RTX 3070 and the RTX 4070 MSRP, with only $200 between the RTX 3070 Ti and the RTX 4070 Ti. It’s not as bad as the $500 difference between the RTX 3080 and the RTX 4080, but not far off.

For a little more context, the RTX 4090 saw just a $100 increase which makes it -surprisingly- the most reasonable of the whole lot. Again, the pricing is all speculation at this point but if it lands anywhere near predicted by these likes it’ll be hard to recommend the RTX 4070 to gamers, you’re better off just waiting for the RTX 4060 or RTX 4050.

Muskaan is TechRadar’s UK-based Computing writer. She has always been a passionate writer and has had her creative work published in several literary journals and magazines. Her debut into the writing world was a poem published in The Times of Zambia, on the subject of sunflowers and the insignificance of human existence in comparison. Growing up in Zambia, Muskaan was fascinated with technology, especially computers, and she's joined TechRadar to write about the latest GPUs, laptops and recently anything AI related. If you've got questions, moral concerns or just an interest in anything ChatGPT or general AI, you're in the right place. Muskaan also somehow managed to install a game on her work MacBook's Touch Bar, without the IT department finding out (yet).