Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 release date, price, specs and pre-orders

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070
(Image credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia just unleashed its full lineup of powerful RTX 30-series cards, including the flagship RTX 3080 built for smooth 4K gaming and the insanely massive $1,499 RTX 3090 for those lucky enough to have an 8K setup. But if you don't need all that extravagance, the RTX 3070 might be more your speed.

Starting at $499, the RTX 3070 promises significant performance gains over the last-generation Nvidia cards while carrying a fairly attainable price tag. Here's everything you need to know about the most affordable member of the Ampere family. 

Nvidia RTX 3070 release date

After originally being slated to launch on October 15, the Nvidia RTX 3080 is now set to release on October 29. Nvidia announced the change in early October, noting that it's working on making more cards available on launch day to avoid the availability issues suffered by the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090.

Nvidia RTX 3070 price and pre-orders

(Image credit: Nvidia)

The Nvidia RTX 3070 starts at $499, making it a more affordable alternative to the $699 RTX 3080 — and a heck of a lot cheaper than the beastly $1,499 RTX 3090. To put that price in perspective, Nvidia says the 3070 is faster than the $1,200 RTX 2080 for a fraction of the cost.

You can sign up to be notified about pre-orders on the 3070 right on Nvidia's website.

Nvidia RTX 3070 specs

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Header Cell - Column 0 Nvidia RTX 3090Nvidia RTX 3080Nvidia RTX 3070
Starting Price$1,499$699$499
Nvidia CUDA Cores10,4968,7045,888
Boost Clock (GHz)1.701.711.73
Standard Memory Config24GB GDDR6X10GB GDDR6X8GB GDDR6
Memory Interface Width384-bit320-bit256-bit
Maximum Resolution7680x43207680x43207680x4320
PortsHDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4a (3x)HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4a (3x)HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4a (3x)

Packing 8GB of GDDR6 memory and a clock speed of 1.73GHz, the RTX 3070 is designed to deliver dependable performance for games running at 1440p and 4K.

For those upgrading, the RTX 3070 promises to be 60 percent faster than the RTX 2070, and will even outperform the pricier RTX 2080 Ti. You'll probably want to turn to the RTX 3080 if you want rock-solid 4K gaming at a steady 60 fps, but the RTX 3070 should prove to be more than enough for silky-smooth 1440p action.

Other key nitty-gritty specs include 20 shader-teraflops, 40 ray tracing teraflops and 163 tensor teraflops. All that means that the RTX 3070 will deliver even better ray tracing performance than the previous generation, and should help provide some of the most immersive PC gaming graphics you can get.

Michael Andronico

Mike Andronico is Senior Writer at CNNUnderscored. He was formerly Managing Editor at Tom's Guide, where he wrote extensively on gaming, as well as running the show on the news front. When not at work, you can usually catch him playing Street Fighter, devouring Twitch streams and trying to convince people that Hawkeye is the best Avenger.