Friday, October 2nd 2020
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Launch Postponed to October 29th
When NVIDIA introduced its Ampere consumer graphics cards, they launched three models - the GeForce RTX 3070, RTX 3080, and RTX 3090 GPUs. Both the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 have seen the light of the day as they are now available for purchase, however, one card has remained. The GeForce RTX 3070 launch was originally planned for October 15th launch, but it has officially been postponed by NVIDIA. According to the company, the reason behind this sort of delay in the launch is the high demand expected. Production of the cards is ramping up quickly and the company is quickly stocking up the cards. Likely, NVIDIA AIBs are taking their time to stock up on cards, as the mid-range is usually in very high demand.
As a reminder, the GeForce RTX 3070 graphics card features 5888 CUDA cores running at a base frequency of 1.5 GHz and boost frequency of 1.73 GHz. Unlike the higher-end Ampere cards, the RTX 3070 uses older GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus with a bandwidth of 448 GB/s. The GPU features a TDP of 220 W and will be offered in a range of variants by AIBs. You will be able to purchase the GPU on October 29th for the price of $499.
Source:
NVIDIA
As a reminder, the GeForce RTX 3070 graphics card features 5888 CUDA cores running at a base frequency of 1.5 GHz and boost frequency of 1.73 GHz. Unlike the higher-end Ampere cards, the RTX 3070 uses older GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus with a bandwidth of 448 GB/s. The GPU features a TDP of 220 W and will be offered in a range of variants by AIBs. You will be able to purchase the GPU on October 29th for the price of $499.
121 Comments on NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Launch Postponed to October 29th
One of Swedens biggest retailer had a Zotac 3070 low end sku prepared on site for Oct 15 release with a price of 5700sek and now, due to 3080 shortage, they increased the price to 6500sek.
We will not only see a delay of the 3070 BUT also most certainly a price increase due to overwhelming demand.
EDIT: Just noticed several other retailers jacking up prices for different 3080 sku by £50-70. This is leaning towards significantly higher prices for all graphic cards before xmas.
3070 is a main stream sku that much more people can afford and will be in 100x more demand than 3080.
They will need 1 million at least at release day BUT that wont happen.
Since they predicted 3080 demand wrong they did the same thing to 3070, ordering large volumes of components for manufacturing is done 6-9 months before manufacturing starts.
Only reason for the delay is to try to have a little more stock BUT it will still not be nearly enuf.
That said, my opinion is that, if you can wait, buying now is just dumb, the prices are still high because of the lockdown after-effects and the competition hasn't made their announcement.
So if there's another shortage, well, I consider it a favor to people who lack any discipline :D . Probably, but it should last more than 10 seconds.
Don't forget, the 3070 will be a cheaper card with cheaper VRMs and lower capacitor counts to save costs. If the extremely complex and expensive voltage regulation of the 3080 and 3090 weren't stable, how do you think the cheapo cut-down variants are going to fare without some serious driver work? It's too late to change the board design at this point, likely thousands of cards have already been manufactured with inadequate bypass capacitors on Nvidia's rushed and inadequately-tested reference design.
I'm not buying anything for now. There's a lot in few months to come to make such a rush decision.
Your last paragraph, is 100% true. :) There's a lot of people who require somebody to making decisions for them. :D I think it's for the best :P
Jensen wants to beat their pricing. Simple as that.
Nvidia postponing a launch 2 weeks later, using the stock reason is total buls**t. Everyone knows they are now waiting for AMD to unveil their RDNA2.
And this I believe is a BIG win for us consumers. Competition seems to be back... At least theoretically.
That aside, I think that 'price fixing' is the probable reason - from all those "leaked rumours" (sic!) it's more or less sure that AMD has competitive product line. What is not known is what will compete with what, and how 'disruptive' the pricing will be - that's what happened to Intel with their Sandy Bridge++++ architecture, when they suddenly had an epiphany that i3 could actually have 4 real cores and that whole product line could actually cost less.
Zen1 line wasn't actually better CPU than Intel, but it was similar enough in performance and much cheaper. For the same money, users could generally get at least 'good enough' and more 'future proof' (more cores, also more for many- core supporting software), and there is undeniable factor of 'fanboyism' - which is never good to underestimate.
AMD never talked about the money, so we don't know the degree of 'disruptiveness' they will go for - I guess they could make near-3070 performance card, and if they decide to charge something like 350g for it, then NVIDIAs hand will be pretty much forced - goes the same for other models, price/performance dependent.
I would, personally, like to see some 'disruption' in GPU scene - remember old GPU comparison tests here? "Best card for 30g", "Best card for 50-70g", "Best card overall" (where "overall" meant 250-400g)? Thing is, as time passed most components become better and faster and of more capacity, but the overall price that went in (say) mid-range configuration remained similar - CPU for ~200+g, RAM for 100g, HDD for 200g (well, for me - I need lots of slow space, and add it constantly - but ssd+hdd is about that same price for less storage-oriented user)... And now, I "understand" that 500g GPU is midrange??? Great! Sure, GPU needs a lot of things CPU takes from MB, ok, but for me, GPU prices are bit out of control... I need a replacement for RX580 8Gb and... crap, there is none...
I really wish they would just start selling their products based on straightforward performance, features and value, letting their merits speak for themselves.
As londiste said this is probably a strategic move to make it tougher for AMD to market their new cards.
The number of shaders or bandwidth doesn't matter, performance does.
The 3080 will be 30-35% faster for 40% more money which is quite resonable.