Founders Edition (FE) NVIDIA video cards are sold in the US at Best Buy. Today, at the start of sales, this retailer sold out all GeForce RTX 4070 Super FE. However, as an exception, NVIDIA decided today to independently sell the new GeForce RTX 4070 Super through its website. But the company decided to protect itself from resellers – new video cards are released on a live electronic queue basis.
Image Source: Tom's Hardware
Having tried to purchase the GeForce RTX 4070 Super Founders Edition, journalists discovered that they were in line among 828 other potential buyers.. At the same time, the site reported that the waiting time for the opportunity to place an order for the accelerator at the recommended price of $599 is 23 minutes. However, after about 16 minutes, PC Mag representatives moved to the front of the line, after which the NVIDIA website redirected them to a page where they could complete the order.
Image Source: NVIDIA
During the re-check, the journalists were 400th in line. This may indicate that NVIDIA itself has a sufficient supply of RTX 4070 Super in the reference version.
Image Source: NVIDIA
NVIDIA abandoned independent sales of its video cards with the release of the GeForce RTX 3080 generation Ampere model. Back then, even during the time of the cryptocurrency boom and semiconductor shortages, all stocks of accelerators were bought up at the recommended price in a matter of minutes by speculators and their bots for subsequent resale at higher prices.
There is no rush for non-reference versions of the GeForce RTX 4070 Super. According to PC Mag, a few hours after the start of sales, various accelerator options from various manufacturers were available, for example, at Newegg.
Let us remind you that this month NVIDIA will release two more Super video cards. The GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super model will go on sale on January 24, and sales of the GeForce RTX 4080 Super will begin on January 31.