Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Nvidia ditches the RTX 4070 as it turns to cheaper options

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 RTX 4070 graphics card on a pink background.
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends

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.

Recommended Videos

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.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!

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

Gamer using Discord on a gaming desktop PC.
ELLA DON / Unsplash

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.

Alex Blake
Alex Blake has been working with Digital Trends since 2019, where he spends most of his time writing about Mac computers…
Nvidia’s RTX 5090 may not be back for up to 4 months
The RTX 5090 sitting on top of the RTX 4080.

Two of Nvidia's best graphics cards finally hit the market last week, but it was really more of a brief appearance. The RTX 5090 and the RTX 5080 are sold out pretty much everywhere, and if you're waiting for a chance to buy one, don't hold your breath. According to Overclockers, a UK retailer, the new Nvidia flagship may not be back in stock for up to 16 weeks.

Overclockers, one of the biggest PC hardware stores in the UK, posted a stock update for the RTX 5090 and the RTX 5080. According to the retailer, both cards are sold out, and the store is also not accepting preorders anymore. The demand was so high that some people are in a preorder queue; those customers can either wait it out or cancel and get a refund.

Read more
AMD missed its shot for the top
Lisa Su, the CEO of AMD, pictured holding an AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card.

There's an unfortunate irony in the world of PC gaming right now. As soon as AMD decided to concede the flagship battle to Nvidia, Team Green put out what might be its most disappointing flagship offering in a decade in the form of the RTX 5080.

Each generation, we talk about the dynamic between AMD and Nvidia. And for close to a decade now, there's been a linear progression between the two brands. AMD originally focused on budget offerings to undercut Nvidia's mainstream range, but it slowly built up power each generation to eventually contest what Nvidia was able to do at a flagship level. We got two generations of a true, one-to-one battle between AMD and Nvidia. And right when AMD was about to get a leg up, it decided to drop for the count.
One step behind

Read more
Nvidia RTX 5090 ‘lottery’ reportedly ends in screams and chaos
rtx 5090 lottery chaos gihqqgxaiaajarv

Nvidia is launching its RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 graphics cards today -- read our RTX 5090 review and RTX 5080 review -- and the anticipation is clear. In Japan, multiple stores held a lottery to give attendees an equal chance at scoring one of Nvidia's best graphics cards, but the event ended in chaos, with screaming and the destruction of a sign at a kindergarten, according to VideoCardz.

The report of chaos came via X, where a user shared that "angry shouts were heard" as customers began lining up, and that "some people even climbed over the fence of the kindergarten next door."

Read more