Nvidia RTX 5070 launch day live: Retailers ready heaps of non-MSRP cards and a handful of MSRP ones for release today

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 launches today, March 5, at 6am PT/9am EST/2pm GMT. That means it’s time for us to yet again man our watchposts and keep a close eye on major retailers for any available cards to buy and prices to report.

But will this launch be a scrabble like the rest?

In our RTX 5070 review, our Dave says it’s impossible to recommend this card right now. Not a great start. The threat of AMD’s RX 9070-series looms overhead, and we’ll hear about those later today, too.

Prices have also been astonishingly high for many of the third-party RTX 50-series, entirely demolishing any sense of value, though we do have a Founders Edition RTX 5070 to ensure some cards are available at Nvidia’s MSRP this time. That’s a $549 MSRP (or more like $550).

Though if you must have Multi Frame Generation, the RTX 50-series’ hot new feature, then the RTX 5070 is the cheapest way to score it. For now, anyways. While the RTX 5070 feels like an RTX 5060 in all but name, we’re still expecting an actual RTX 5060 at some point.

All things considered, it might be a good idea to wait around until AMD’s RX 9070-series shows up to decide between these cards. It currently looks like AMD’s cards will offer the better performance-per-dollar versus Nvidia’s options, but there’s still the question of whether third-party manufacturers stick close to MSRP for either red or green team’s forthcoming cards. The lack of reference card for AMD’s launch has us a little bit concerned, too.

Quick retailer links

US RTX 5070 retailers:

• Best Buy: A handful of RTX 5070 cards listed, with more likely on the way
• Newegg: Listings for Gigabyte, MSI, Asus, and more RTX 5070 cards
• Amazon: Keep your eyes peeled for RTX 5070 listings, but unlikely at launch
• B&H Photo: A range of RTX 5070 graphics cards

UK RTX 5070 retailers:

• Nvidia: The place to go for the Founders Edition RTX 5070
• Scan: RTX 5070 from several manufacturers
• Overclockers: Likely to list a few RTX 5070s at launch
• CCL: A heap of RTX 5070s ‘coming soon’
• Amazon: Keep your eyes peeled for the RTX 5070, though look elsewhere at launch
• Currys: Palit, Asus, MSI, and Gigabyte RTX 5070 GPUs
• Ebuyer: MSI, Gigabyte, and Asus RTX 5070 cards

Founders Edition

Good news, there will be a Founders Edition reference card for the RTX 5070. This card is designed by Nvidia and that means it is guaranteed to be sold for the MSRP of $549—direct from a trusted retailer, anyways, there are no guarantees for the second-hand market.

This card is a twin-fan design, though unlike previous 40-series cards, both fans are on the same side in more traditional positions. It’s a fairly compact design by modern standards, which makes it truly deserving of a small form factor build.

This card is good-looking, compact, cool, and comes with a price tag set at Nvidia’s MSRP. That means it’s sure to be in very high demand among a sea of overpriced alternatives. If you want a hope of buying one, I’d pay close attention to the retailers below:

• In the US, you can pick up an RTX 5070 FE from Best Buy.
• In the UK, we’re expecting you can pick one up straight from Nvidia.

MSRP model retail links

Below you’ll find all the models that are already listed at MSRP, or we’ve been told will be MSRP, at launch.

There are once again only a handful of options, same as the RTX 5070 Ti, and that does mean we’re rather worried about how many of these cards actually exist and are ready to be sold.

Word of warning: We had a similar list of third-party MSRP models for the RTX 5070 Ti launch, but the cards seemingly never showed up. In the US, we never saw a single MSRP card noted as ‘in stock’, while in the UK many of the supposed MSRP models were selling above MSRP. The more expensive third-party models were more readily available, and that might be the case again here.

Non-MSRP model retail links

Here’s the extensive list of non-MSRP cards. Notice how many there are compared to MSRP cards? Yeah, that slims down our chances of any good deals, that’s for sure.

Though we don’t know the prices for many of these models just yet, some have placeholder prices… or at least I hope they’re placeholders. Who knows these days?

Tips and tricks

• Set up user accounts at large retailers ahead of time.
• Don’t refresh too often, you might get blocked by automated systems. Try to be patient if pages load slowly.
• Hedge your bets with various retailers—keeping an eye on only one retailer can cause disappointment.
• Don’t give up on Best Buy (and others)—in recent years Best Buy has gradually rolled out supply, meaning there’s sometimes still a chance to score a card after the launch hour.
• Sign up for stock alerts ahead of time—some retailers (Micro Center) demand it.
• Keep an eye on stock lottery programs, such as the Newegg Shuffle.
• If you don’t score one this time, don’t fret. Considering the poor response to this card, prices may come down in the future, and there’s always AMD’s launch later in the week.

Live updates

Hello hello, and welcome to the pandemonium.

Jacob here. I’ll be spending today keeping my eye on stocks and prices for all these RTX 5070 cards and will keep you posted on anything of interest. Hopefully that’ll be some MSRP cards actually in stock, but we’ll see…

The RTX 5070 is a graphics card that arguably depends on sticking to MSRP or close-to-MSRP pricing more than any other 50-series card launched so far.

That’s primarily because, as Dave points out in his RTX 5070 review, the gen-on-gen performance improvement (excluding Multi Frame Gen) is just 13%, and there’s the looming spectre of the RX 9070-series cards which should offer serious competition if the promised performance is anything to go by.

So yeah, just a handful of MSRP RTX 5070s doesn’t fill me with confidence, but we’ll see…