The GeForce RTX 5070 is out today, at least on paper. Yet despite having already slipped from its original February release plan, the RTX 5070 looks set to launch directly into the same stock shortage problems that have been causing frowny faces all around the rest of the RTX 50 series graphics cards – and, while you’ll still be able to try your luck with most of the GPU’s board partner variants, the one version you definitely won’t be buying today is Nvidia’s own Founders Edition.
Hardwareluxx editor Andreas Schilling txeexed that Nvidia warned the German tech site, shortly before their review embargo lifted, that “The RTX 5070 Founders Edition will be available later in March.” Weirdly, then, you can currently count the RTX 5070 FE as being exclusive to hardware reviewers, and I promise that’s not a brag. They didn’t send me one either.
Elsewhere, signs point towards a more general lack of RTX 5070 units ready to go on sale this crisp March morning. OC3D report that “multiple” UK retailers have no 5070s at all, a plight shared by major Swedish store Inet.se. By contrast, supply for the rival AMD Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT, which launch tomorrow, is supposedly in much healthier shape.
It’s easy to point the finger at bot-wielding resellers for graphics cards shortages like this, because to do so is both largely accurate and morally correct. Fuck those guys. Though we remain bereft of an explanation as to why, in the absence of any Covid-worsensed manufacturing problems like the RTX 30 series faced, supplies are so low to begin with. That a Founders Edition is among the casualties is especially disappointing – say what you will about the 50 series’ modest performance gains or arguable over-reliance on Multi Frame Generation, but the FE designs are excellent, all sleek aluminium and tastefully muted greys. I’d have one in my PC. If I could buy one.