Despite the fact that the RTX 4070 Ti has been reviewed poorly, Nvidia’s latest GPU seems to be doing well in terms of sales numbers — at least as far as the European market is concerned.
According to newly published sales figures, Nvidia managed to sell a huge quantity of RTX 4070 Ti GPUs. It effortlessly defeated its biggest rival, AMD, even though the AMD RX 7900 XT is the better value. Regardless of how it’s reviewed, the RTX 4070 Ti seems to be the king of all the new graphics cards that have out in 2023 so far.
The data comes from TechEpiphany on Twitter, which talked about the sales of AMD, Intel, and Nvidia graphics cards at a German retailer, Mindfactory. Those numbers are not limited to the RTX 4070 Ti. Other cards from Nvidia have also been selling well, such as the ever-so-popular RTX 3060, as well as the Lovelace-based RTX 4080 and RTX 4090. However, the new GPU beats all of these by a significant amount of sales.
In the third week of January, Mindfactory noted 545 sales of the RTX 4070 Ti. Also on the podium are the RTX 3060 (485 units sold) and the AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT (410 units sold). This generation of graphics cards is only just getting started in the popular midrange segment, so it’s no wonder that the majority of the list is made up of cheaper, last-gen cards such as the RTX 3060 Ti and the RX 6600.
Things get interesting as we move down the list, though. It takes a while for AMD’s RDNA 3 cards to make an appearance, and once they do, it’s in fairly small quantities. The RX 7900 XTX only sold 300 units, and the RX 7900 XT, which is cheaper, but a worse value, only mustered 200 units.
Intel doesn’t have a horse in the GPU race for this generation yet, and it might not have one for a while, so the only numbers to take into account are those of Arc Alchemist. The Arc A380 and the Arc A770 sold 20 units combined, which is a sad, but not unexpected figure.
The market is begging for affordable GPUs
Of course, these numbers are a very small sample that isn’t necessarily indicative of the situation of the worldwide market at all. But assuming the rest of the world follows suit, there seem to be a few important reasons for the trend.
AMD’s RDNA 3 range so far is good, but the pricing of the RX 7900 XT makes it an unlikely pick — it’s a far worse deal than the flagship RX 7900 XTX. When the AMD RDNA 3 duo was initially released, the RX 7900 XT was doomed to lower sales. After all, the RX 7900 XTX, with an MSRP of $1,000, is simply a better value.
The release of the RTX 4070 Ti had the chance to shake things up for AMD, though — Nvidia kind of did AMD a favor, in a way. Comparing the RTX 4070 Ti to the RX 7900 XT reveals that the Nvidia card is actually slower than the AMD counterpart, which could give AMD’s less-than-stellar GPU an opportunity. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Brand loyalty certainly plays a part. Nvidia controls the vast majority of the market, and many people continue buying Nvidia GPUs instead of trying AMD because their previous cards did a good job, so they don’t feel a need to change. Similarly, AMD often gets a bad rep for buggy drivers, and although that claim is kind of outdated, it’s still there.
The pricing offered by Mindfactory also works in Nvidia’s favor. It’s cheaper than both the RX 7900 XTX and the RX 7900 XT. This isn’t always the case in the U.S., but the list price of the RTX 4070 Ti is $100 lower than that of the RX 7900 XT. Coincidentally, it’s also $100 lower than it was when the GPU was first released as the RTX 4080 12GB, only to be “unlaunched” a while later.
While the RTX 4070 Ti is slower than both AMD cards, it does offer access to DLSS 3 and historically better ray tracing (although our own testing puts it somewhat on par with AMD). That’s enough for many gamers to choose it over AMD, even if the performance margins are very close.
No matter the reason, the really interesting part here is that previous-gen cards continue dominating the sales charts. This shows how much the market is begging for more affordable midrange cards. Perhaps when Nvidia launches the RTX 4060 and the RTX 4070 at some point in the future, and AMD hopefully follows with cards of its own, they will start topping the charts in place of the RTX 3060 and the RX 6700 XT.
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