NVIDIA Reportedly Limiting Production of GeForce RTX 4070 GPUs Due To Poor Sales

NVIDIA's recently launched GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card doesn't seem to be doing well in terms of sales globally.

As per Chinese Board Channel Forums, there are reports that NVIDIA has informed its AICs that it will cut off supply for the GeForce RTX 4070 by one month. The reason being told is due to a poor response to the recently released graphics card which launched at $599 US.

Although the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card did manage to move lots of units during the initial launch day, the coming days haven't been great and since its launch on the 13th of April 2023, the card is still available in plenty of stock at worldwide retailers. The reference-priced cards are the ones that are moving units with no one seemingly paying extra for the premium models as they are priced very close to the RTX 4070 Ti which offers a bigger performance jump.

NVIDIA GeForce Generational Performance / Price Trend (Image Credits: Harukaze5719 & 3DCenter):

Cutting down the supply by one month will minimize the effects of a potential oversupply of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 graphics cards both in upstream and downstream supply chains. The thing to keep in mind is that NVIDIA has already pre-booked TSMC's 4N wafers for its RTX 40 GPU lineup so if more supply is required, they can push for it however that is something that NVIDIA is currently avoiding as it wants its AICs to get rid of the last remaining GeForce RTX 30 inventory.

It is expected that after the announcement of NVIDIA RTX 4070 products, the sales are not good, and the price is even a little bit broken. Countermeasures have been discussed internally. The first eve of the book is to limit the supply of the RTX 4070 series and maintain a stable price system.

The supply of AIC brand RTX 4070 in China is very large, and the next RTX 4070 series low-quality models will be released If there is a problem of out of stock, the company must order the source of goods and buy at the same time before accepting the order, so it is necessary to bargain at will.

Machine Translate via Chinese Board Channel Forums

An RTX 3060 Ti variant from MSI is a one-way AIBs will try to clear away their last Ampere chips. It looks like at least some retailers have started using the recently reported rebates to undercut the MSRP set by NVIDIA. Videocardz reports that in Poland, the RTX 4070 has fallen 9% below its MSRP of 3199 PLN and can now be bought for as low as 2913 PLN and several MSRP cards are retailing for 2999 PLN. A price of 2913 PLN converts to $695 US and although that is much higher than the US MSRP, the prices include hefty VAT.

https://twitter.com/TechEpiphany/status/1647231335575040000

As for sales in Germany, Techepiphany has the latest numbers in for the launch week of RTX 4070 and while it is doing well and selling more than the other cards, we have to remember that this is still a fresh launch and much can change in the coming week. At Newegg US, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 is still available in stock at MSRP prices and has yet to appear within the Best Sellers list.

Some of the factors as to why the card may not be selling well could be due to the price hike versus the last gen and the small performance bump. The NVIDIA GeForce 70-class GPUs have historically been around as fast as the last-gen flagship however, the RTX 4070 was the smallest performance jump over its 80-class predecessor. The RTX 3070 on the other hand retailed at $499 US and was able to be on par or ahead of the RTX 2080 Ti.

One can say that the introduction of the 90-class has taken the flagship performance one notch higher which is why the 70-class can't compete with the flagships anymore but still, the 4070 could've offered a decent bump over the 3080. If AICs do go for a price cut and settle close to $549 US, then the card may do well but it would also put pressure on the sales of the 4060 Ti which is why they are trying to avoid this for now. We will see how the next few months bode for the RTX 4070, meanwhile, you can check out our review of the card here.