Report on poor RTX 4070 sales casts doubt on NVIDIA's appetite for gaming GPUs

NVIDIA's RTX 4070 graphics card sales are flagging more than expected, if a new report is to be believed.

IT Home, a regular source of leaks from China - but one that must be treated with some caution in our books - claims it has heard that NVIDIA is extending the pause on the manufacturing of RTX 4070 chips for longer than originally intended.

That original plan had been to take a break from shipping RTX 4070 GPUs to Chinese graphics card makers for one month, to let unexpectedly sluggish levels of sales catch up with the existing stock out there (and the graphics cards coming through already in the pipeline).

It seems that sales have been even slower than predicted, though. IT Home says that NVIDIA anticipated normal shipments resuming in May, but that the temporary halt on shipping RTX 4070 chips may now last until June. Furthermore, the sales forecast for this graphics card is not optimistic, with 'weak desire' from consumers for the GPU.

There may be other factors at play than the current appetite of consumers for the RTX 4070, though. The report also points out that NVIDIA's business strategy is now focusing elsewhere - namely heavyweight AI and HPC server platforms, not consumer products.

An ominous hint for the gaming market?

Indeed, more broadly, there are some signs that NVIDIA's GeForce gaming cards are becoming less of a priority for Team Green.

Arguably, you could say this is where Lovelace's high prices have come from - NVIDIA isn't overly concerned about its performance in the gaming sphere, because it views future profits as elsewhere (like the lucrative server market). So, the company is prepared to push GeForce GPU pricing (and cut back production if necessary, rather than cut prices), because that arena is becoming less and less relevant. That's certainly one line of reasoning you could go down.

True, this report - which must be taken with plenty of seasoning, as mentioned - is about the apparent situation in China, but it must also be something of a reflection on other markets.

Let's face it, we know the RTX 4070 hasn't gone down all that well in the US and Europe either, with price drops observed below the MSRP just after its launch - a very unusual state of affairs.

On top of this, it also seems that NVIDIA may be being more cautious about Lovelace supply, after being faced with the excesses accumulated with Ampere, where the firm overshot with its stock levels (and took a long time to clear that backlog).

Speaking of clearing excess Ampere stock, we've also just heard an interesting rumor about what's happening with the RTX 3060 Ti. Apparently NVIDIA intends to cease production of the GPU imminently, so remaining stock will be cleared out ahead of the launch of the RTX 4060 and 4060 Ti.