Just as the RTX 4060 family of GPUs is being launched, a new report says Nvidia may be freezing production of its bigger brother, the RTX 4070. Sales of the RTX 4070 are reportedly so bad that the company has halted production in a desperate bid to turn things around. It’s just the latest bad news for a product that has been beset with problems almost from the day it launched.
As reported by Wccftech, the production stoppage is set to last until June, by which time Nvidia will be hoping sales have picked up. It’s apparently an extension of an earlier production slowdown, which reportedly began shortly after the RTX 4070 launched in April.
The idea is that by halting production, Nvidia is aiming to stop unsold RTX 4070 inventory from piling up at retailers. If that were to happen, outlets selling the cards would likely be forced to lower the price of the RTX 4070, thus cutting into revenues. That’s something Nvidia will want to avoid.
As well as that, the RTX 4060 Ti has officially been announced, and there’s a risk that the two cards could cannibalize each other’s sales. The 16GB RTX 4060 Ti is priced at $499, which is not too far off the $599 Nvidia charges for the RTX 4070. We’ll have to wait to see how performance compares, but it could end up be a narrow difference.
By ceasing production of the RTX 4070, Nvidia can keep it scarce and reduce the temptation for retailers to clear inventory at cut-price rates.
Off-putting price hikes
Perhaps the bigger problem for Nvidia is that users appear to be turned off by the generational price hike the RTX 4070 received. It launched at $100 more than the $499 RTX 3070, despite offering only meager performance improvements.
That buyer discontent is shown in the sales figures. The RTX 4070 doesn’t appear at all in Newegg’s top 20 best-selling graphics cards, for example, suggesting a collective shrug on the part of consumers.
That’s a shame in a way because as we found out when we reviewed the RTX 4070, it’s a really good card — indeed, we reckon it’s one of the best graphics cards you can buy. But that’s all meaningless if no one wants it. If Nvidia is indeed halting production, it suggests Team Green knows just how bad things are looking for this graphics card. Whether its latest move will help turn things around remains to be seen.
