NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 FE Retail Launch Reportedly Pushed to Late March

Although the new GPU is officially launching tomorrow, you’ll have to wait until late March to get your hands on the Founders Edition.

NVIDIA has pushed back the retail release of the GeForce RTX 5070 FE by a few weeks. This information, albeit unofficial, was shared by Andreas Schilling, who received an email from NVIDIA about the delay. Reviews for the RTX 5070 just came out today, and it was originally scheduled for launch in stores tomorrow.

According to Andreas, NVIDIA contacted him shortly before the review embargo ended to inform him about the delay. So, if you were planning to snag a Founders Edition of the GeForce RTX 5070 when it hit the shelves, you might be out of luck. It’s unclear if this affects the launch of the AIB editions, but given the buzz about its availability, don’t expect to see it everywhere.

As Schilling tweeted, anyone hoping to purchase a GeForce RTX 5070 Founders Edition tomorrow will be disappointed: “The RTX 5070 Founders Edition will be available later in March.”

There’s a chance this could turn into a paper launch, similar to what happened with the RTX 5090, RTX 5080, and RTX 5070 Ti. Reviews from various sources have rated the GeForce RTX 5070 on par with the RTX 4070 Super in terms of performance. It’s not exactly showcasing major upgrades over its predecessor, but with a price tag of $549, it still seems to offer decent value for its performance.

If you’re unable to find it at the MSRP, holding off for the Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 GPUS might be wise. They’re both dropping on March 6th, with reviews coming out the day before. With a pricing structure of $599 for the XT and $549 for the non-XT version, they’re direct competitors to the RTX 5070.

The reasons behind the GeForce RTX 5070’s availability issues remain unclear. There have been whispers of performance-limiting bugs and supply chain troubles with the chips, but NVIDIA hasn’t confirmed these rumors.

Although the Founders Edition will be delayed, there’s hope AIB custom versions will show up in different markets sooner. We noticed the GPU listed on retailers like B&H Photo Video at the MSRP of $549 for both standard and OC models. If the price for AIB models goes over $600, you might want to reconsider your options unless there’s no other similarly powerful GPU available locally.