New RTX 5070 variant could help bolster GPU supply but it surely won’t help prices

There are reports today that Nvidia is going to be releasing a new variant of its GeForce RTX 5070 graphics card with a cut-down GB203 GPU instead of the GB205 chip it originally launched with. Could this be good news for consumers? Well, no and maybe.

The idea behind using bigger chips to fill out the inventory of smaller cards basically gives manufacturers something to do with graphics processors that don’t have enough functional units to power a bigger card. Here we’re talking about the same GPU as that used in the far more powerful RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5080 graphics cards.

The RTX 5070 doesn’t currently use the full GB205 die, but its complement of 6144 CUDA cores isn’t far off the maximum of 6400 the full chip can offer, so it already has some failsafe headroom built in. Compare that with the GB203 used by the RTX 5080 and that card is using the full silicon package of its chip. That could maybe be seen as quite a gamble on the yields coming from the TSMC 4N process, but it is mature, and Nvidia already has the RTX 5070 Ti, with its 8960 CUDA cores to mop up any GPUs that don’t quite fit the full RTX 5080 bill.

But what’s a GPU manufacturer to do if there a a bunch of chips from a wafer that can’t fit into even an RTX 5070 Ti’s cut-down CUDA core requirement? That’s where this proposed new RTX 5070 would come in, taking that bigger core, chopping it down to 6144 cores and giving it a new badge.

So yes, don’t expect that because it’s using a bigger chip that the corresponding RTX 5070 would be any quicker or more powerful, or have a bigger memory bus. Nvidia has done this sort of thing in the recent past—the RTX 5060 has its own GB205 variant—and hasn’t given it any greater performance for the privilege of having higher quality silicon at its heart.

GPU price tracking

I’ve been tracking the lowest price of each GPU in this generation since August 14, 2025

Lowest pricing (Price, $)

35040060080020 Week40 Week35040060080020 Week40 Week

Week

Nvidia RTX 5070Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB

Lowest pricing Data

Timestamp (Week)	Nvidia RTX 5070 (Price, $)	Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB (Price, $)
1	550	430
2	550	430
3	524	430
4	546	430
5	481	430
6	499	379
7	520	430
8	500	430
9	500	430
10	480	430
11	489	400
12	500	400
13	527	420
14	540	420
15	499	430
16	499	430
17	549	430
18	540	450
19	549	450
20	620	520
21	620	520
22	620	520
23	630	520
24	625	520
25	630	550
26	604	550
27	640	570
28	630	515
29	636	500
30	630	500
31	599	500
32	599	515
33	599	490
34	599	550
35	599	550
36	599	550
37	599	570
38	599	570
39	599	570
40	599	565
41	560	560
42	550	570
43	755	650
44	763	780
45	800	773
46	759	570

The recent price spike for both the RTX 5070 and RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB make it tough recommendation against the relatively new RX 9070 GRE.

And just because it’s using cast-off GPUs don’t expect it to be any more affordable, either. With the RTX 5070 currently retailing for around $800 you can see why Nvidia would be keen to ensure there’s good supply of this fourth-tier card when its retailing for so far beyond its $549 MSRP.

Is there any benefits for us PC gamers? If you wanted to be very, very optimistic (as is my wont) then you could say that at least this is going to deliver more supply of the RTX 5070 into the channel. But pricing is unlikely to trend downwards, so there will just be more cards to spend $800 on.

Given that, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a variant of the RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB, another ~$800 graphics card, coming out soon using some more of the sweepings off the original RTX 5070 factory floor. If it’s good enough for an RTX 5060, it’s good enough to turn into an RTX 5060 Ti, after all.