Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti release date leaked – but I don’t care until I see a price
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A new leak has apparently confirmed the release date of Nvidia’s midrange RTX 4070 Ti graphics card – the GPU previously known as the RTX 4080 12GB.
The 12GB model of the RTX 4080 used to be hastily launched less than two days after the release of the new flagship RTX 4090after complaints that Nvidia misled consumers by giving it the same name as the RTX 4080 16GB, despite the fact that it actually used a less powerful GPU chip, rather than simply having 4GB less VRAM.
The new leak, coming from the well-known hardware leaker MEGAsizeGPU (@Zed__Wang (opens in new tab) on Twitter), shows what appears to be a box art for the Founders Edition of the GPU, with a list of features. There’s nothing new to see here – it’s all stuff that the existing RTX 4000 cards already pack.
More interestingly, MEGAsizeGPU indicates in the tweet that the new graphics card will be available January 5 (presumably for consumers to buy) from January 5. We don’t know where they got this information from, so take it with a grain of salt. However, the date coincides with CES 2023where Nvidia will definitely be present, and it looks like Nvidia will unveil the GPU and launch on the same day.
Advice: the release date is not as important as the price tag
There’s only one thing about this leak that bothers me: I don’t care. The release window is more or less irrelevant at this point – at least until we know the launch dates of AMD’s competing midrange Radeon RX 7000 Cards. Both Nvidia and AMD have gone on to unveil their respective high-end flagship GPUs, which are super expensive.
Yes, price is the thing that really matters here. The best graphics cards can cost a pretty penny, so it’s hard to muster any enthusiasm for GPUs over $1,000, while the previous-generation midrange cards are still perfectly suited for everyday gaming.
Until the official price for this reanimated RTX 4070 Ti (a much more apt name, I admit) is revealed by Nvidia, I won’t get excited. Team Green could be in a tricky catch-22 position here; if it sticks to its original $899 price tag, it’s bound to be panned by critics and consumers alike, but dropping the price could leave a big gap between the new GPU and the $1,199 RTX 4080 — ripe ground for AMD’s $899 and $999 flagships to dominate.
There is already plenty of speculation about the potential price of the RTX 4070 Ti, and hopefully people are suggesting a $699 list price in MEGAsizeGPU’s tweet replies. For reference, the last generation RTX 3070 Ti cost $599 at launch. This means that a $699 price tag would be in line with the RTX 4090’s $100 generation price increase, although the RTX 4080 16GB’s generation price increase is a whopping $500.
Personally, I think we’re more likely to see a price around or just under $800. This would be a reasonable move for Nvidia, if not an outright win for consumers. I consistently recommend one of our favorite cheap GPUs about any card that costs over $800, so if Nvidia could keep the price within that range, the RTX 4070 Ti could be a great midrange card for 4K gaming.