If you wanted to grab an Nvidia RTX 40 graphics card on the cheap, well, you may have missed your chance. U.S. retailer Best Buy marked a number of Nvidia’s graphics cards as clearance and heavily slashed their prices, with some cards seeing as much as $500 off. Predictably, the cards sold out extremely quickly, and as of writing, there seem to be none left in stock. But this won’t be a spur of the moment decision for Best Buy, and instead we’re wondering if this mass selloff was to create room in Best Buy warehouses for more graphics cards. Perhaps, in fact, the long-awaited variants of the Nvidia RTX 40 series?
The Nvidia RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 have been out for a few months now, but those are extremely high-end cards with a fairly limited audience. As such, it’s the RTX 4070, 4060, and 4050 cards that most people are patiently waiting for. They’re also the card series which will traditionally push the most sales, with a very attractive price-to-power ratio, so it makes sense people would wait for them.
We’ve previously covered some leaks of the new RTX 40 series cards, and based on specs alone, it certainly seems as if those particular cards will be a mixed bag. However, even with that in mind, there will be many people for whom these cards will be a considerable upgrade.
At the moment, this is just speculation, but it does make sense that retailers would look to clear out soon-to-be replaced tech ahead of a new release. After all, a premium card seems a lot less desirable when the replacement is right next to it on the shelf, and it doesn’t make sense for those cards to be taking up space in a warehouse that could be taken up by the newer, more expensive product. So while this isn’t conclusive proof that Nvidia is winding up for an imminent release, it is a strong indication that Best Buy knows something is coming down the track.
Keep a close eye on the news, and keep your wallet handy if you’re looking to snag one, as graphics cards have definitely been a scarce commodity recently, and you’ll want to grab one quickly.