We knew the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT's release would impact the GPU market, but we didn't realise it would cause Nvidia to drop prices. Well, one price in particular. Prices for the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 have been mysteriously dropping by $50 at a number of retailers, and the suspicion is that Nvidia is behind this price change.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070's official MSRP is $599, and this price was apparently fine for a long time — that is, until the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT came along. AMD's new GPU starts at $499, a full $100 lower than the Nvidia card's MSRP.
This wouldn't really be a problem if the Nvidia GPU provided $100 worth of stronger performance over the AMD card. Only, er, it doesn't. The Radeon 7800 XT may not be stronger than the RTX 4070 in every situation, but it has been showcasing very strong performance in any game where rasterization is key. The Nvidia card wins back a lot of points in any area where ray tracing is concerned, and with upcoming updates being centered around Ray Reconstruction being added to DLSS 3, the Nvidia card is sure to push that advantage even further.
Of course, that advantage would be much lessened with a $100 price gap. But $50? The Radeon 7800 XT's slim advantage in a number of areas is likely to seem less important when there's only $50 on the table between the two of them. Add the RTX 4070's significantly better 12GB GDDR6X, and the AMD card is going to have a much harder time tempting people over to its side.
Of course, there's no official word on the price drops, and Nvidia's official word on the matter is that the RTX 4070's MSRP remains at $599. However, it does seem a little odd that so many retailers decided to drop the Nvidia card's price at the same time, without word from the Green Guys. Hopefully the price will stay at this level and make the GPU market a whole lot more affordable than it has been, though it's likely we'll see prices start to creep back up again towards the Festive Season.