Nvidia Confirms October 17 Launch for GeForce RTX 2070
Nvidia announces that the GeForce RTX 2070 will hit the market on October 17 with a Founders Edition price of $599. However, the launch raises questions about whether the card's key ray tracing features will actually be ready in time.
Nvidia confirms that the GeForce RTX 2070 launches on October 17, with the Founders Edition model costing $599 and third-party cards starting at $499. The announcement comes just days before the delayed RTX 2080 Ti reaches consumers, filling in the missing details from the initial Gamescom reveal. In practice, custom cards from partners like EVGA, Asus, and Gigabyte will likely use the higher Founders Edition cost as the true baseline price.
The timing of this release creates an interesting dilemma for PC gamers because the cutting-edge Turing architecture features are not fully available yet. Real-time ray tracing and Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) remain inactive in traditional games, leaving the RTX 2070 to rely on standard rendering performance. Based on how the higher-end RTX 2080 performs, the RTX 2070 likely matches the older GTX 1080 in standard gaming workloads.
Because the RTX 2070 arrives exactly a month after the RTX 2080, buyers face a leap of faith regarding the new hardware's standout capabilities. Microsoft plans to deliver the DirectX Raytracing API in the Windows 10 October 2018 update, but a firm release date for that patch remains unconfirmed. If ray tracing support does not arrive by October 17, customers will pay a premium for future-facing features without any immediate benefit over older, cheaper graphics cards.