Earlier this week we reported a rumour that Nvidia had slightly delayed the upcoming RTX 5070 GPU from some time in February to early March. Well, it turns out that's true. Nvidia has updated its website and given a March 5 on-sale date for the 5070's release, plus February 20 for the RTX 5070 Ti.
As we discussed, back at CES Nvidia originally said both GPUs would be available in February, though didn't put a specific date on that. So, a March 5 release for the RTX 5070 is definitely a delay. The question is why?
Hopefully, the delay is mostly about making sure there's plenty of availability at launch, what with RTX 5080 and 5090 cards predictably selling out in picoseconds after their launch. Pushing the launch of the RTX 5070 back by a couple of weeks could help with that.
However, we suspect it's as much about triangulating the 5070 release to undermine the launch of AMD's competing Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT. Those two GPUs were originally rumoured to launch earlier this year.
AMD never said that would happen. However AMD has said that it decided to delay both cards to give them a little polish. "We are taking a little extra time to optimize the software stack for maximum performance and enable more FSR 4 titles," AMD's Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics rep David McAfee said on January 22.
Likewise AMD has since inked in "early March" as the launch window for those new GPUs. With that in mind, Nvidia also moving the RTX 5070 to early March seems like a little too much of a coincidence. Odds are, it's an effort to win the PR war with AMD by ensuring that the RX 9070 GPUs have to share the news cycles with the RTX 5070.
Incidentally, it could be quite the fight. The latest rumours suggest the 9070 XT could have a boost clock of 3.1 GHz and offer performance comparable to a 7900 XTX in the Monster Hunter Wilds benchmark.
Copious caveats apply and we'll have to wait and see just how good the 9070 XT is. But if those rumours are right, this could be one of the most exciting GPU launches in years. Oh, provided AMD gets the pricing right.
Of course, all of this will be academic for most gamers unless both Nvidia and AMD manage to get a decent number of cards onto retail shelves. Comments on X in response to Nvidia's announcement of the launch dates say it all. "When will availability for the 5090 and 5080 cards start?" one X user replied. Well, quite.
