(Credit: MSI Store)
Nvidia's GeForce RTX 5070 launched this morning, and to our surprise, we actually had several chances to buy the PC graphics card — but not at the $549 starting price.
Instead, the units we found available cost $649, $699, and even $719. “Not even the scalpers want this,” joked one user in a Discord chat devoted to buying GPUs.
In our case, we spotted Best Buy opening sales for a single RTX 5070 model at about 6:03 a.m. PST. We immediately pounced, hit the add to cart button, and were added to a digital queue.
(Credit: Best Buy)Recent attempts to snag an RTX 5090, 5080, and 5070 Ti through Best Buy all failed. But today, we were surprised to see the retailer give us the chance to buy an MSI-branded RTX 5070 model. For the first time, we reached the final stage of Best Buy’s checkout process.
The only problem is that the RTX 5070 model up for order cost $649 — or $100 more than we wanted to pay. We canceled our order, only to see the product as sold out. But what’s funny is that Best Buy’s site made the model available again at around 6:43 a.m PT.
(Credit: Best Buy)Once again, we hit add to cart, and were eventually given another chance to buy the card. Meanwhile, other RTX 5070 models, including those at the $549 price, were immediately listed as sold out on Best Buy’s site. The Founders Edition RTX 5070 also wasn’t available; Nvidia has delayed its release to later this month.
(Credit: Best Buy)We also had chances to buy other RTX 5070 models through MSI’s online store and Zotac’s online store early Wednesday morning. But like before, the vendors were asking us to pay $719 or $699. The cards seemed to remain in stock for a solid 15 to 20 minutes before they sold out.
(Credit: MSI)
(Credit: Zotac)However, all other attempts to buy the RTX 5070 at the more reasonable $549 came up empty. Like Best Buy, Newegg listed most models as sold out. But the retailer is offering two RTX 5070 models for $549—though only through its lottery system, the Newegg Shuffle.
The sales suggest the RTX 5070 is facing less demand although supplies remain low. One Micro Center store in Maryland is carrying only 32 units of the RTX 5070 on launch day while another location has 62 available, according to Reddit users. Meanwhile, Central Computers in the San Francisco Bay area had none on launch day. But despite the lower demand, a few scalpers are already trying to resell the RTX 5070 on eBay for between $1,000 to $1,150.
Overall, the low availability and high pricing for the RTX 5000 cards has disappointed many PC builders. But it’s possible that rival AMD will try to swoop in and fill the gap. Tomorrow, the company is launching the Radeon RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT, starting for $549 and $599, respectively. One vendor has even posted a photo of dozens of Radeon 9070XT units at a warehouse, suggesting stock might be plentiful.