Nvidia’s RTX 5070 graphics card rumoured to be delayed from February until March but that could actually be good news

Back in early January when Nvidia announced the RTX 5070, the mid-range member of the new RTX 50 family was given a February launch date. Now rumours indicate the GPU has been pushed back to March.

Long time GPU-rumour leaker on X, MEGAsizeGPU, says, “the RTX 5070 will be delayed. Instead of February, it will be on the shelf in early March.” How much of a delay that would constitute, if true, isn’t clear.

That’s because Nvidia never said anything more specific than “availability in February” for the RTX 5070. As for what’s going on exactly, one obvious reason for the delay could be to increase stock level before launch.

The RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 sold out almost instantly on launch day on January 30 and have been very scarce since. So, a delay for the RTX 5070 would allow time to build up a bigger buffer of cards.

On a related note, Nvidia may have originally been expecting arch rival AMD to roll out its RX 9070 and 9070 XT GPUs a little earlier than March. But AMD has since inked in “early March” as the launch window for those new GPUs, which are expected to go up against the RTX 5070 and perhaps the even the RTX 5070 Ti.

We don’t know exactly when AMD was first intending to release the RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT. But the company has revealed that the GPUs have been delayed in order to improve performance and add support for AMD’s new FSR 4 upscaling technology to be added to more games.

“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. AMD may also be using the time to build up stock levels.

Anyway, the point regarding those AMD GPUs is that their delayed launch has given Nvidia a little time to tweak its own plans with the RTX 5070. Apart from allowing more time to improve stock levels, a delay until March will mean that AMD’s GPUs will have to share the limelight and news cycle with the RTX 5070.

That said, what Nvidia won’t be able to do very easily, at least without losing face, is change the 5070’s pricing to respond to AMD. Nvidia has already announced a $549 MSRP for the RTX 5070 and it would be a distinctly uncharacteristic climbdown for Nvidia to lower its price, even if a change to an announced but unreleased GPU wouldn’t be totally unprecedented for the company.

Nvidia infamously cancelled the RTX 4080 12GB before it was released and rebadged it as the RTX 4070 Ti but with a $100 price cut from $899 to $799. We very much doubt Nvidia will give the RTX 5070 a similar haircut before launch. But it’s not absolutely impossible.