NVIDIA Can Counter AMD With GeForce RTX 40 GPU Price Cuts At Any Time But In No Hurry

NVIDIA seems to have potential price cuts prepped for its GeForce RTX 40 GPUs to tackle AMD but is in no hurry & waiting to see an actual response from the red team, as reported by DigiTimes and Igor's Lab.

Last week, DigiTimes put out an article citing industry sources that NVIDIA seems to be in no rush to increase the supply or shipments of its latest GeForce RTX 40 GPUs including the recent NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card. One of the main reasons why this is happening is to let partners (AIBs) get rid of their last remaining GeForce RTX 30 series inventories.

Due to this, NVIDIA hasn't asked its manufacturing partners to increase production of components and boards for current-gen parts which include the entire Ada Lovelace lineup. There are a total of five GPU silicon currently shipping to consumers on both desktop and laptop platforms and these include AD102, AD103, AD104, AD106, and AD107 (the latter two have yet to make an entrance on the desktop platform).

It is stated in the report that NVIDIA produced a big enough quantity of its current-gen Ada GPUs through TSMC during 2021-2022. All chips are based on TSMC's 4N (Custom NVIDIA 5nm process node). The green team will be launching its GeForce RTX 4060 series mainstream cards soon and looks like the company has no intention to increase chip supply yet. One reason could be the low demand in the PC market which has affected almost all brands and while the market is still within its recovery phase, it looks like NVIDIA plans are to hold off any additional production which might end up piling up inventory as we saw with the RTX 30 series.

With that said, NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs are currently available in plenty of supply at retailers. Most retailers (especially in the US) have the cards in stock and at MSRP which is good to see after several years and was also recently reported by Videocardz where they tabulated several current-gen cards retailing at or below their MSRPs.

But there's a small chance that NVIDIA's partners may hit consumers with a surprise price cut by the mid of 2023. Igor's Lab reports that NVIDIA is offering a rebate of up to $50 US to AIBs on the GeForce RTX 4070 MSRP cards (those that retail at $599 US). This rebate could allow AIBs to drop prices of the MSRP cards below $600 US in a few weeks but it looks like AIBs are waiting for the RTX 4060 Ti to launch as a potential price drop on the 4070 might eat up the sales of the 4060 Ti if they end up being too close in terms of pricing.

Behind this is this time an additional payment (or rebate for new orders) to the manufacturers of up to 50 USD for these so-called MSRP cards, which on the one hand increases the possible leeway at the FoB and on the other hand also lets the manufacturers breathe a little freer again if you don’t pass on everything (right away).

If you take everything into account and also consider the current buying restraint (which is similar to the launch of the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti), then the cheapest models could well fall below the 600 mark in a few weeks. However, some of the big buyers first assume that the next few weeks should rather serve as a financial rejuvenation cure for the manufacturers and that a slide in the price structure could only happen after the rumored early launch of the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti in May to avoid possible cannibalization effects.

Machine Translate via Igor's Lab

There are rumors (RedGamingTech) that the RTX 4060 Ti may have an MSRP of around $449 US (+$150 US vs RTX 4070). If the RTX 4070 does end up being much faster (with more VRAM) and AIBs drop it down to $549 US, then consumers might be willing to drop $100 US more on the 4070 than getting the 4060 Ti, hurting its sales figures. But even more than that, NVIDIA also seems to be keeping its eyes open for what AMD has to offer in its Radeon RX 7000 lineup. So far, AMD has only launched two cards at the very high end, & it's been months since we have heard about (officially & rumors) new cards.

Speculation is that if AMD was to launch its Radeon RX 7800 and RX 7700 cards which would compete directly against RTX 4070 and RTX 4060 series cards, the company wouldn't have them out until after Computex 2023 which commences later next month. Based on the performance & price that mainstream RDNA 3 cards have to offer,

NVIDIA will finally decide if the price cut on the RTX 40 series cards is warranted or not. In the case that AMD fails to impress gamers with its new mainstream options, consumers will end up buying the RTX 4060 and RTX 4070 cards in masses which is when NVIDIA might likely start increasing supply to AIBs.