“MSRP is completely irrelevant now,” says der8auer
There have been many rumors about the RTX 50 series lately, and many have been wrong. However, as we explained earlier, NVIDIA has implemented a new prioritization approach for the RTX 50 lineup. This means some SKUs will be extremely limited in supply, while higher-end models get more allocation.
One model in particular, the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, is often seen as the best value in the upper tier, at least it was until few months ago. Hardware Unboxed previously claimed the card was effectively being killed off, but ASUS and NVIDIA responded that no changes were being made and that the SKU would remain available. In a recent video, Roman “der8auer” Hartung said the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti is effectively gone , with little to no supply expected.
Open Price Program is dead
Roman’s new video is not only about the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti. Roman explains that board partners buy GPUs as a bundle that includes the GPU die and the full set of GDDR7 memory chips required for each card. That model ties partners to NVIDIA’s bundle pricing. When memory gets more expensive, the cost passed to partners rises too, and partners cannot offset it by sourcing memory elsewhere.
The video centers on NVIDIA’s OPP program. Roman says the meaning of OPP is unclear, but Hardwareluxx identifies it as the “Open Price Program.” Hardwareluxx describes OPP as support meant to help partners sell certain cards at MSRP. Roman says sources confirmed the program existed, and that NVIDIA ended it a few days ago.
Roman says that removing OPP makes “MSRP cards” less likely in practice, because partners could not realistically sell some models at the suggested price without that support. Hardwareluxx adds that MSRP versus above-MSRP positioning also shaped launch coverage, with MSRP-priced models eligible for day-one reviews. It was a shady practice that prioritized some models for no reason. Some of those models would immediately jump to a higher price a week or two later (and yes, ASUS was one of these companies involved).
Roman expects RTX 5070 Ti availability to remain limited, with GB203 supply shifting toward the higher-margin GeForce RTX 5080, which uses the same GPU and the same memory package. In fact, after speaking with his sources, he believes that RTX 5080 will see a major price increase very soon.
Obviously, we saw this coming for weeks and have been writing about the uncertain GPU market situation for a while. We knew the DRAM shortage would eventually hit GPUs; we just didn’t know when this would happen or which cards would suffer the most. In the end, gamers will suffer and will likely have to endure yet another round of GPU price hikes.
Source: Der8auer via HardwareLuxx
