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Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti: A solid high-end graphics card
Nvidia's RTX 5070 Ti deserves plenty of accolades. It delivers solid high-end performance, taking over from where the 4070 Ti Super left off. It's not revolutionary, but at least it's (generally) faster and cuts the price by $50 — in theory. There's still work to be done by Nvidia on the drivers, however, as there's really no good reason why the 4070 Ti Super and even the slower 4070 Ti should, at times, beat the new 5070 Ti.
While the more expensive RTX 5080 felt disappointing for only offering minor performance improvements over the existing 4080 / 4080 Super, and for sticking with 16GB of VRAM, the 5070 Ti can get away with 16GB by virtue of costing $749 — again, in theory. It's only about 10–15 percent faster than its immediate predecessor, but it's also 20–30 percent faster than its direct namesake. And it has some extra stuff that the prior generation lacks.
Part of the difficulty with Nvidia's latest GPUs is that the names have shifted upward. The xx70-class GPUs at one point cost around $300–$400. Then they became $599 and even $799 parts. Now the 5070 Ti walks that back slightly with a $749 base MSRP. In a sense, it's actually carrying on from the $699 RTX 3080 and the $649 GTX 1080 Ti. Sure, the number has changed, but Nvidia has been trying to stretch the range of GPUs to much higher price segments and has changed the nomenclature as it sees fit.
Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti pricing: Will it ever be $749?
Let's talk about that pricing a bit more. Officially, the RTX 5070 Ti launches with a base MSRP of $749. That seems pretty decent, not that we wouldn't all want cheaper, faster, and better GPUs. But Nvidia has several problems it faces right now, some mostly of its own making, others from external factors. Let's start with the former.
There's a large backlog of people wanting to upgrade their graphics card. I remain firmly convinced that the original plan for Blackwell and the RTX 50-series GPUs was for the cards to begin launching last fall. It's not just about the "every two years, basically" release cadence that Nvidia has been using for about a decade. It's also about the dwindling supply of the RTX 40-series GPUs.
Every time a company releases new products, it has to clear out inventory of the existing product lines. This makes sense as presumably your new stuff is better than the old stuff — otherwise why make it? The difficulty is getting the timing as well as supply transition just right. Stop making the old products too late and you end up with a glut of parts, graphics cards in this case, that no one wants to buy. Conversely, if you halt manufacturing too soon, you end up with a void in the supply chain.
Looking at the past few months, it's pretty clear what happened this round. Blackwell was supposed to come out last year, all the wafer starts for Ada Lovelace RTX 40-series GPUs were phased out to clear the way ... and then Nvidia ran into a packaging problem on its data center Blackwell B200 parts. Most if not all of the original shipment of GB200 data center GPUs ends up in the scrap heap and needs to be restarted, and TSMC only has so much capacity to go around — and Nvidia is already using a lot of that capacity.
So, Nvidia has to push back the consumer Blackwell GPUs, which use the same process node and manufacturing lines as the data center GB200. And it can't order more Ada wafers because those also use the same wafer lines. Which means we end up with most of the previous generation RTX 40-series GPUs being sold out, prices go up, and everyone is champing at the bit waiting for the RTX 50-series to arrive.
That supply and demand imbalance still persists right now, which means the RTX 5070 Ti will almost certainly sell out fast, just like the 5080 and 5090. But while the 5090 offers a clearly new level of performance and features like 32GB of VRAM, the 5070 Ti is basically a cheaper, slightly slower replacement for the 4080 Super with some new features like MFG and FP4. It should sell well, but anyone that wanted a fast Nvidia card and was willing to spend $1,000 or more should have already purchased an RTX 4080 or 4080 Super in the past two years.
The other problem with pricing is that the MSRP seems to have been established with little consideration to new and upcoming tariffs. The new U.S. administration imposed a 10% tariff on imports from China in January, and another 10% tariff just came into effect. There are also 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada. In short, many or perhaps even all graphics cards will now have higher base costs.
That will have a cascading effect on retail prices, and certainly in the near term it doesn't look like there's any way to avoid that. 20% higher tariffs could directly equate to 20% higher prices, which means the "real" MSRP for the RTX 5070 Ti — as well as the 5080, 5090, and upcoming 5070, 9070 XT, and 9070 — should probably be 20% higher. If you don't like the $749.99 MSRP, $899.99 will feel even worse.
What we're getting at is that, short-term, RTX 5070 Ti prices are likely to shoot up from the base $749 MSRP. That's unfortunate but not really something we can stop, other than refusing to pay more and waiting. Long-term, however, the performance isn't there to support extreme prices, and the pent-up demand should eventually get cleared out with prices returning to normal. It might take several months, maybe even a year or more, but perhaps at some point in the future the RTX 5070 Ti will actually see widespread availability at $749. Or perhaps tariffs will keep all prices significantly higher than in the past.
We'll also need to see how AMD's upcoming RX 9070 XT stacks up, because frankly I think AMD might have expected a bigger bump in performance from the 5070 Ti. If it targeted "4070 Ti Super plus 30%" with its top RDNA4 part, it can now choose to either undercut Nvidia and gain market share, or increase its own price. Again, we need to wait and see.
RTX 5070 Ti Multi Frame Generation and final thoughts
On paper, the RTX 5070 Ti strikes a good balance between performance, features, and value. It's still an expensive high-end card, but it's certainly a better value than the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080. It's also not faster (most of the time) than the previous generation RTX 4080, at least not unless you want to factor in MFG — and perhaps you should.
Frame generation tends to be a polarizing topic, with Nvidia acting like it's the same as normally rendered frames. At the other extreme are the "never framegen" people who act like it has completely ruined every game that uses the technique. The reality falls somewhere in between.
MFG is not a bad option to have, is how we view it. On the right games, with the right settings, it can make them look and feel better. Sometimes it breaks, and you need to tweak some other settings to get the desired result, but again, It's not bad to have options.
MFG is one more tool in Nvidia's bag of tricks, and it can be helpful in the right situations. It's just not universally better in all situations. It also tends to work and feel better when the baseline performance is sufficiently high. If the final performance is only 100 FPS, meaning a 25 FPS input sampling rate with MFG 4X, that will often feel worse than a native 40 FPS to most people. Which is precisely the problem with MFG. If it's "2.5X faster" than 40 FPS but actually doesn't feel better, you know there's a disconnect.
So, who is Nvidia targeting with the RTX 5070 Ti? People with an RTX 3070 to 3080 (or lower) GPU who want to upgrade will find plenty to like. It will be about 50% faster in raw performance, and the new features can make it feel like more of a step up than that. At least there are no glaring flaws with the product other than concerns with availability and the possibility of scalpers spoiling the party. But if you already have an RTX 40-series GPU, you should give this generation a pass until something truly compelling comes out.
We also need to see what actual pricing and availability look like. At $749, the RTX 5070 Ti represents a reasonable high-end graphics card worth purchasing. If the price climbs to $899 or more, however, it becomes far less compelling. We’ve heard there will be more 5070 Ti cards at launch than all the 5090 and 5080 cards that have been sold so far, combined. But there are no concrete numbers, and Nvidia has a tradition of selling out on just about every new GPU generation. [Update: Yes, it sold out almost immediately. Additional supplies remain a question mark.]
The 5070 Ti will likely keep that trend going for at least the first month or two of its existence. Beyond that, we wait and see. Our overall view of the 5070 Ti comes primarily from its performance and suggested pricing, with the understanding that it will take time for supply and prices to stabilize. It's a good card at $749, and the AIBs are going to try to milk it for all its worth. If the price ends up being $899 and up for a while? Don't buy it, simple as that.
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