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Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070: release date, price, news and features

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 is on its way, having been announced at Nvidia’s launch event. After months of speculations and rumors, the GPU is slated for an October release. And, it’s already looking to be much better than many had hoped.

So far, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 is the most affordable entry in Nvidia’s new Ampere lineup, setting you back $499/£469. While ‘affordable’ is certainly a relative term – it’s still an expensive card for many consumers – it won’t come with the wallet-busting price tag that the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 come with. Better yet, with that much lower price tag, it puts the RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti to shame, rocking specs that seem too good to be true.

It does have slower RAM than the rest of the Ampere line-up, and new rumors point to both an RTX 3070 ‘Super’ and an RTX 3070 Ti being in the works. Still, for most people excited about the new tech that Nvidia is ushering in with its RTX 3000 series, then the RTX 3070 will be the best GPU. To add even more value, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 will be bundled with a free copy of Watch Dogs: Legion and a free year of subscription to GeForce Now.

If you have the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 on your wishlist, read on. We went ahead and gathered up all the information on the graphics card that we have right now in one spot. We’ll be updating this article with any new information that comes our way, so be sure to keep it bookmarked.

Cut to the chase

  • What is it? Nvidia’s current entry level Ampere GPU
  • When is it out? October 2020
  • How much is it? $499 (£469, around AU$680)

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RTX 3070 release date

Nvidia announced the RTX 3070 alongside the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 at its event on September 1. However, it won’t be coming out at the same time as the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 or RTX 3090.

Instead, it looks like Nvidia is doing more of a staggered release this time around, and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 should be hitting store shelves sometime in October 2020. Unlike the RTX 3080 with its September 17 release date or the RTX 3090 with its September 24th release date, however, we don’t have an exact date.

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RTX 3070 price

Out of the three new GPUs that Nvidia has announced, the RTX 3070 is the cheapest at $499 (£469, around AU$680). It’s definitely not going to be an easy expense to swallow, but considering the level of performance that Nvidia is claiming with the RTX 3070 – it beats the RTX 2080 Ti on paper – it could be a lot worse.

Plus, it will come bundled with a free copy of Watch Dogs: Legion and a free year of subscription to GeForce Now, making it an even better value for gamers.

RTX 3070 specs

The official specs of the RTX 3070 are:

  • CUDA cores: 5,888
  • Memory: 8GB GDDR6
  • Memory interface: 256-bit
  • TDP: 220W
  • Required power connectors: 1 x PCIe 8-pin
  • PCIe interface: 4.0

Don’t take the (relatively) low price for granted, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 is nothing to shake a stick at. With a whopping 5,888 CUDA cores with a 1.73GHz boost clock, you’re looking at 20TFLOPs of theoretical FP32 performance – that’s more powerful than the RTX 2080 Ti, and that’s just on paper.

What may hold it back from really blowing the 2080 Ti out of the water – especially at 4K – is the fact that the RTX 3070 is limited to just 8GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit memory bus.

This compares to the GeForce RTX 2070 Super, the card it replaces, which comes with 2,560 Nvidia CUDA cores, 14 Gbps of 8GB GDDR6 memory, a boost clock of 1,770MHz and a base clock of 1,605MHz.

So, essentially we’re getting a much stronger GPU with the same memory as the last generation. This will probably be a disappointment to many, but there’s no reason to panic just yet. In our testing, many games at 4K still aren’t using more than 8GB of VRAM at any given time, with just a few super-demanding exceptions.

What will likely further optimize this, however, is the new Nvidia RTX IO API. This will work alongside the new Microsoft DirectStorage API to optimize the pipeline between your storage and your graphics card. Ideally, this means that less data will need to be stored in your graphics memory in the first place, and should limit the performance loss – though obviously more VRAM still would have helped.

Unlike the RTX 3080, which sees a massive boost in power consumption, with the flagship rocking a 320W TDP, the RTX 3070 is a bit more restrained, coming in at a 220W TDP. This is still an increase over the 185W TDP of the RTX 2070 Founders Edition, but not so much that you’ll need to replace your power supply.

In fact, the massive boost to CUDA cores, along with a higher boost clock means that the RTX 3070 will probably be looked at as the most power-efficient graphics card in the Nvidia Ampere lineup. We haven’t had the chance to test performance yet, so we’re just relying on the spec sheets Nvidia has provided, but the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 looks like it’s going to make 4K gaming much more accessible for everyone.

Source: techradar.com


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