The main sticking point with the RTX 50s is clearly their price. Obviously, the availability, Nvidia’s magic hat, etc., don’t help the matter. But some information may give us a different view of the current situation regarding RTX prices. During a conversation with a major card tester, an NVIDIA partner in China stated that the main reason for the high prices of the RTX 50 would be the cost of the GPU/VRAM pair (sold by Nvidia), which is much higher than that of previous versions.
Translation of the key part of the exchange:
The truth is, it’s very difficult for factories to implement MSRP these days. The cost of a chip BOM and video memory represents 80% of the cost. The cost of a set of radiator packaging materials varies from a few dozen to nearly a hundred dollars. As a result, the current market policy is to increase the recommended retail price slightly in response, with the remainder being sold at an operating margin. Supply should stabilise in March, and we haven’t even received many test card samples from the media yet.
RTX 50: What is Nvidia trying to do?
If we take this statement seriously (let’s be cautious though), selling RTX 50s at MSRP is an unprofitable commercial operation. Brands are therefore pushing for custom models. In the case of the production RTX 5080, it can cost up to $900, whereas the MSRP announced by the Greens is $999. Obviously, if we follow this logic, the phenomenon we’ve been seeing since the launch, i.e. a sprinkling of cards at the brands’ MSRP and then an increase a few days later, is unfortunately completely implacable.
Once again, we must remain cautious, but if all this information is confirmed, it becomes difficult to understand Nvidia’s strategy. For some years now, we’ve been suggesting that the Greens are looking to sell direct and do away with brands. Let’s be clear, this is a hypothesis based on our observation of the market, the feudalisation of brands… But we have no concrete information to back up this thesis.
The other possibility is that Blackwell ‘s costs (and to a lesser extent GDDR7’s) are slipping. We would also have to add (to hypothesis 1 as much as hypothesis 2) the practice of distributors and resellers who also want to maintain their margins when the volumes to be sold are not there. This also explains why the same trend can be seen, in part, for AMD’s RX 9070s.
It’s hard to give you a reliable analysis, because in our view the two hypotheses hold together. We’ll leave you with them for your own consideration. One thing seems certain: the fall in the US dollar could do the trick for European customers in the coming weeks, if volumes are finally delivered.
