Nvidia has delayed the launch of its upcoming GeForce RTX 3070 graphics card so there’s more stock available on launch day. Writing in a blog post, the company admitted that the news “may be disappointing” to some, but said that “this shift will help our global partners get more graphics cards into the hands of gamers on launch day.” The graphics card will now launch on October 29th, rather than October 15th.
The delay comes after Nvidia had to apologize for stock shortages after the release of the GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card last month. The company said it was not prepared for the amount of demand for these new GPUs, which lead to the card selling out almost immediately. Hopefully this means it will have enough RTX 3070’s to satisfy demand at the end of October.
With a starting price of $499, the GeForce RTX 3070 is the cheapest of the three Ampere-powered graphics cards Nvidia announced at the beginning of September alongside the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090. Nvidia says the RTX 3070 should match the performance of last generation’s RTX 2080 Ti, and is an average of 60 percent faster than the RTX 2070.