Nvidia has been under fire recently for it’s handling of the RTX 3080 and subsequently the RTX 3090 graphics card launches (and rightly so) for poor stock levels and not meeting the expectations of the consumers. The release of the more budget RTX 3070 is still to come, which may paint the company in a more positive light if it goes a little smoother. However, it seems that Nvidia wants to give itself the best chance of this occurring by delaying the GPU launch from October 15th to October 29th.
This new date, for once, isn’t a ‘leak’ as such with a number of official RTX 3070 sellers changing the launch date on their buy buttons, GPU listings, and more on-site areas with Nvidia officially announcing the change following these alterations:
“Production of GeForce RTX 3070 graphics cards are ramping quickly. We’ve heard from many of you that there should be more cards available on launch day. To help make that happen, we are updating the availability date to Thursday, October 29th.
We know this may be disappointing to those eager to purchase a GeForce RTX 3070 as soon as possible, however this shift will help our global partners get more graphics cards into the hands of gamers on launch day.
The GeForce RTX 3070 delivers incredible performance and features, including NVIDIA Reflex and Broadcast, for $499. Across a variety of ray-traced and rasterized DirectX and Vulkan titles, the GeForce RTX 3070 delivers similar or faster performance than the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (which sold for twice the price) and is on average 60% faster than the original GeForce RTX 2070.”
This delay, we hope, as communicated in the above statement, is related to giving more time for themselves and third-party retailers to put more preparation in place for the huge demand that will almost certainly be seen come launch, having more cards available. If you’re still skeptical you have every right to be considering how the past two launches went but, this seems like a positive step in the right direction, simply delaying the launch to give everyone more of an opportunity to secure an RTX 3070.
If you’re into conspiracy theories, the new RTX 3070 launch does come one day after the announcement of AMD’s Radeon 6000 series graphics cards, which some are suggesting is a marketing ploy by Nvidia, throwing AMD off their stride. This very well could be true considering Radeon 6000 series cards will be in direct competition with the RTX 3000 series, but it could also be a coincidence with Nvidia simply trying to help prospective buyers as much as they can.
If we were to guess, it’s probably a bit of both, delaying the initial launch to ensure there’s more stock available but it’s also lucky timing that their direct competitor is announcing their flagship product at that time.
We hope that this delay does result in fewer speedbumps compared to the previous debacles but, there are certainly no guarantees.
If you are in the market for an RTX 3070, head over to our where to buy page where you’ll have the best chance of securing one before the inevitable out-of-stock button appears on retailer’s websites.
