One of my main complaints about the NVIDIA RTX 4000 graphics series is not, surprisingly, the massive power (although it is a legitimate concern) but the price. For the last two generations, Nvidia has been greatly raising the cost of its cards, especially its best graphics cards such as RTX 4080. But its average range offers have not been saved either. It has become particularly remarkable with the absence of cards with a budget mentality to compensate for this phenomenon.
When the rumors of the RTX 50 series began to accelerate, buyers legitimately worried that prices faced a much more pronounced increase while offering a performance performance that did not reflect the increase. However, the 50 series received its full announcement in CES 2025 And now we know that the MSRP is surprisingly affordable.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 flagship, widely considered Titan due to its incredible specifications, has a price of $ 1,999 / £ 1.999 / AU $ 4,039, although steep, it is not far from the original price label of $ 1,599 of the RTX 4090 .
Then there is RTX 5080, which is $ 999 / £ 939 / AU $ 2,019, and 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 at the launch, and hopefully will have a solid increase in performance to start.
The most impressive, Nvidia states that the RTX 5070 will offer a yield comparable to the native yield of RTX 4090 with some help of DLSS 4, but at around one third of the initial MSRP, while the RTX 5070 TI will reach only $ 150 more With even better performance.
This is also incredibly promising, since it is a generational decrease in the price, since the RTX 4070 TI was initially sold for $ 799, and the RTX 4070 was launched to $ 599.
AMD has been looking for a lot lately
For a long time I have complained about how graphics cards should be made more affordable and how Intel has been stepping on the right direction with its Intel Arc Battlemage Series. Now it seems that Nvidia is finally doing the same, limiting the general increases in prices while reducing the cost of its average range offers to remain accessible.
This, unfortunately, is directly opposite to AMD's current approach. AMD has been known for years as the most affordable option for cards, balancing solid performance with more competitive price labels. However, some new and problematic reports suggest that the next RDNA 4 cards can lose the brand in terms of prices.
RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 have no official prices (although apparently they will be 'competitive' with Nvidia), and it has been officially confirmed that it will not be launched until At least March 2025. This puts the red team on the rear foot when the RTX 5070 TI and RTX 5070 of Team Green will be launched in February 2025 with a healthy MSRP. By the time AMD launches its GPU, everyone could have bought new NVIDIA cards, or they can simply opt for Nvidia offers more premium if AMD prices are too close to their competitors.
Worse, the new reports indicate that RX 7400 and 7300, which would have been new aggressively new options from RDNA 3, vouchers of RDNA 3, have been eliminated in favor of completely supporting RDNA 4. If this turns out to be true, then Team Red is giving a donation, they will be a serious advantage in the market.
At this time, we are seeing a potentially important surprise in terms of better budget options for graphics cards. Nvidia has responded at least to complaints about prices inflation, while AMD seems quite lost in the front of the GPU.
It is also a shame, since it would be more beneficial for consumers to have two giants in a uniform playing field to keep prices low.