Nvidia RTX 3070 just got delayed — and that's good news for AMD Big Navi

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By Roland Moore-Colyer
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Nvidia RTX 3070 will have more stock than RTX 3080 — but there's a catch

Nvidia RTX 3070
(Image credit: Nvidia)

The launch of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 has been pushed back from October 15 to October 29, seemingly to avoid customers getting frustrated at a lack of stock.

The RTX 3070 will launch at a price of $499, the same price as an Xbox Series X or PS5, yet will offer performance that beats the $999 GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. It could be the best value graphics cards Nvidia has ever made and will likely be snapped up by PC gaming fans. 

However, the appetite for Nvidia's new GeForce RTX 3000-series graphics cards has been a bit of a double-edged sword for the graphics giant. The $699 GeForce RTX 3080 sold out nearly instantly, much to the frustration of some PC gamers. And even the $1,499 GeForce RTX 3090 sold out very quickly. 

So we’d expect a well-priced and powerful next-gen Nvidia GPU to have even more demand. And it seems like Nvidia has learned from the launch of the RTX 3080 and is taking action to avoid huge stock shortage by pushing back the RTX 3070’s release. 

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“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 29,” Nvidia said. “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.”

Such a move makes a lot of sense. But it puts Nvidia in a slightly tricky position, as the RTX 3070 will launch just after AMD takes the covers off its Radeon RTX 6000 series graphics cards, including Big Navi, on October 28. These cards are expected to deliver high-end performance but also be priced rather competitively, meaning the RTX 3070 could face stiff competition at the end of the month.

Roland Moore-Colyer
Roland Moore-Colyer

Roland Moore-Colyer a Managing Editor at Tom’s Guide with a focus on news, features and opinion articles. He often writes about gaming, phones, laptops and other bits of hardware; he’s also got an interest in cars. When not at his desk Roland can be found wandering around London, often with a look of curiosity on his face.