Halloween is not far away now – it’s just a few short weeks until spookiness abounds – but if you want a real scare, this rumor of Nvidia’s potential pricing for RTX 5000 graphics cards is truly frightening.
What’s nothing short of a shocking revelation – add seasoning, as with any leak – comes from Moore’s Law is Dead (MLID) on YouTube, but in fairness, it also has a bag full of caveats in tow, which we’ll come on to shortly.
But first, the rumored prices themselves, which apparently come from one of the leaker’s best sources for Nvidia info.
All of this is US pricing – though it’ll be theoretically proportional to this wherever you live, plus the ever-present import charges and relevant taxes – and we’re told that the RTX 5090 will land at between $1,999 and $2,499. MLID further observes that the likelihood is that it’ll be closer to the latter, than the best-case scenario – yikes, in a word.
With the RTX 5080, Nvidia is supposedly looking at $1,199 to $1,499, again with more likelihood of a $1,300 or more asking price. And apparently when it comes to the RTX 5070 – which, as per other rumors today, MLID says has 12GB of VRAM – Nvidia might plump for between $599 and $699.
We’ll come back to discuss those prices in a moment, but the leaker has a few other details to share, including that the launch of these graphics cards is scheduled for early 2025, and not late 2024 as some past rumors had indicated. Pretty much all signs are pointing to a CES 2025 launch at this stage.
In terms of performance, MLID also adds that the RTX 5070 is expected to offer similar frame rates to the RTX 4070 Ti in rasterization (non-ray tracing), perhaps a touch faster, and it will only be meaningfully better than that last-gen model in ray tracing (where the new Blackwell GPU could be maybe 10% to 20% faster). Remember, that’s the plain 4070 Ti version, not the Ti Super.
Analysis: Let Nvidia know – if this rumor is right, it’s so, so wrong
This rumor is pouring more misery on the disappointment around the RTX 5070’s spec, reinforcing the 12GB of VRAM speculation, and suggesting a price to performance ratio that’s galling… to put it mildly.
The best-case scenario for the RTX 5070 appears to be a graphics card which clearly lacks in VRAM, and doesn’t offer much above the RTX 4070 Ti in many games, and yet carries the banner forward for excessive pricing, matching the RTX 4070 in that respect. The latter GPU also came in at $599, a 20% generational price hike compared to the RTX 3070 at launch – and indeed Nvidia might even push it a hundred bucks further up the pricing ladder with the 5070.
The RTX 5090 pushing north of two grand – maybe a long distance north – is another daunting prospect, and one which could guarantee Blackwell GPUs a frosty reception (or indeed a downright frigid one). Ditto for the RTX 5080 with its 16GB of VRAM, though we’ve heard predictions that this might tip $1,200 before.
Okay, so let’s put the brakes on for a moment. As MLID makes clear, these are just prices Nvidia is (supposedly) considering currently, and they’re far from set in stone. Indeed, the leaker raises the prospect that part of this contemplation could be wrapped up in the expectation of these prices leaking, in order to gauge the reaction.
Does Nvidia really need to guess what the reaction to these Blackwell pricing rumors might be, though? As is noted by MLID, the feedback from retail partners has been that these theorized price points are nothing short of disastrous.
What can we do, then, in this situation? Well, it’s obvious – everyone needs to take to their favorite social media outlets or forums and make their feelings known. We can but hope Nvidia will listen, and maybe readjust things.
For us, the RTX 5070 performance and pricing rumors as they stand don’t make any sense – so we’re hoping this pans out very differently.
Sadly, we can actually well believe the RTX 5090 speculation – mainly because Nvidia can afford to charge a massive premium on these kind of flagship graphics cards.
With the focus of the GB202 chip being heavyweight AI GPUs, where the real profits are, Team Green may not want to make that many Blackwell GeForce flagships anyway. Given that, pricing them stratospherically is kind of a no-brainer in that there’ll be a hardened core of enthusiast buyers that will pick up these graphics cards whatever the cost (within some kind of vague, remotely sane ceiling – and Nvidia is pushing it with 2.5K it has to be said). Really though, if priced like this, the graphics card should be a Blackwell RTX Titan, rather than a 5090.
Broadening our perspective, perhaps one of the biggest problems with all of this might just be if Nvidia’s pricing pans out along the lines suggested here, it leaves a whole lot of room for AMD to be less competitive, price-wise, with RDNA 4 graphics cards when they also arrive early in 2025. It takes all the fire out of that battle, and in this case, everyone loses (or looks to Intel Battlemage for salvation: a somewhat forlorn hope, perhaps, especially as Arc’s 2nd-gen may be budget level only – not that this sector of the GPU market couldn’t use the help, we might add).
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