The launch of Nvidia’s RTX 3070 graphics card was another disappointment

(Image credit: Nvidia)

It was a terrible experience.

Nvidia’s RTX 3070 went on sale this morning at 6 a.m. PST, but the card was immediately out of stock at all major retailers, angry but not surprising to consumers – including us.

The result is a repetition of the RTX 3080 and 3090 launches; Both products sold out almost instantly on the first day, causing outrage among customers. To break the cycle, Nvidia decided to postpone the release of the RTX 3070 for two weeks in hopes of building more inventory.

Unfortunately, today’s start was another kick in the bar. We were among those hoping to purchase the RTX 3070 Founders Edition from the Nvidia website. The sun wasn’t even shining, yet our adrenaline had run out trying to get that damn card.

But when it rolled off at 6 a.m., we were immediately concerned. Nvidia’s website did not offer a buy button even after several updates.

Minutes later, a “See All Purchase Options” button appeared on the Nvidia website. Clicking on that took us to another page where it turned out that Nvidia had no plans to sell the product directly. Instead, the company has redirected us to buy the RTX 3070 from Best Buy. For a moment we were relieved. The “Add to Cart” button appeared on the Best Buy website. But after clicking on it, we were presented with more disappointing news. Instead of actually adding the RTX 3070 to our cart, we were told on the side to wait and were given some post-processing instructions.

“We’ll be releasing more inventory every few minutes,” said a pop-up. “The button below will soon turn yellow again (unless we’re sold out). At this point, try again to add it to your cart. ”

So we waited. And waited. Then we could finally add the RTX 3070 to our shopping cart and start the buying process.

SUCCESS! WE MADE IT! We are on our way to buy the card!

Oh wait … no. Never mind. Sigh…

An error occurred while trying to complete the ordering process and the RTX 3070 has been removed from our shopping cart. We later found out that we couldn’t have bought the card anyway. It appears that Best Buy was out of stock in our San Francisco area. We tried to repeat the process over and over in the hope that something could change. However, on Best Buy’s website, the product was labeled as out of stock at 6:30 a.m.

The closest we were to the map was Newegg. We managed to add a Zotac RTX 3070 card to our shopping cart. However, we were unable to complete the checkout process in time and the card disappeared at 6:04 am

For other consumers who have tried not to purchase the product on launch day, the situation does not seem to be any different. Nvidia’s official forums are already filled with angry complaints about the limited shipments of the RTX 3070.

“I had it on the Best Buy website and then everyone said it was said they would no longer deliver,” wrote one user.

“The launch of the RTX 3070 also seems to be a bust! I couldn’t find a single card on any website… ”wrote another.

In fact, the whole experience felt like a game to us. One moment we had the card and the next we didn’t. And now regret it. Our main mistake was that we didn’t try to buy the card directly from Best Buy at 6am

Not everyone came empty-handed on launch day. Some scalpers are already selling the card on eBay, showing screenshots to prove that they successfully ordered the card on the first day. Others have managed to buy the card in physical retail stores and have it in hand. Prices range from $ 750 to over $ 1,200 for a product that typically costs $ 499.

PCMag is also in a discord chat server full of Nvidia users to buy the card. And at least some users said they successfully purchased the card from Best Buy and Newegg. Users on the Ndidia Reddit forum also seem to have had some better success buying from Best Buy and physical Micro Center stores.

We asked Nvidia for a comment and will update the story if we hear anything. However, the company anticipates that demand for the RTX 3000 series will exceed shipments for the remainder of the year. Perhaps it is best to try EVGA.com, which has an online queue notification system in place to sell the cards to consumers as soon as more inventory comes in.