Press F5 all you want, it won’t help.
I’m sure many of you, who like myself attempted to purchase any of the RTX 3080 or even the mighty RTX 3090, without much luck. Mainly due to a shortage of available graphic cards and an uphill battle against scalpers who mobilized Skynet to do their bidding.
Now Nvidia’s head honcho, Jensen Huang, has mentioned he doesn’t expect the demand of either card to end anytime soon. In fact, mentions during a Q&A session that we could see this situation play out well into 2021. As mentioned over at Tomshardware, Jensen has stated they we’re heading into what he calls “The Double-Whammy”, this upcoming shopping holiday season. Everyone will be on the hunt for these cards, so he’s right there.
I believe that demand will outstrip all of our supply through the year. Remember, we’re also going into the double-whammy. The double-whammy is the holiday season. Even before the holiday season, we were doing incredibly well, and then you add on top of it the ‘Ampere factor,’ and then you add on top of that the ‘Ampere holiday factor,’ and we’re going to have a really really big Q4 season.
He goes on to state that the lack of available cards doesn’t rest with Nvidia’s supply, but solely due to the demand for both cards. This is basically a demand that Nvidia and partners haven’t been able to keep up with – so it’s sort of on them as well, but I digress. Needless to say, this is going to disappoint a large majority of PC gamers.
Especially given that one of the biggest games of this generation, Cyberpunk 2077, is almost here. A game that not only incorporates Nvidia’s DLSS 2.0 but also Ray-Tracing. Something of which can only (successfully) be demonstrated on Nvidia’s RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 GPUs. I suspect that we’ll see some worthwhile performance from Nvidia’s other upcoming GPU, the RTX 3070, which has been delayed to allow Nvidia and its partners to try and produce as many as possible before they go on sale.
For now, you’ll have to do with whatever GPU you have, as the demand of the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 has also introduced another issue; the older RTX 2000 series cards are also either selling out or have seen a price increase. Take a look for yourself. The RTX 2080 Ti, RTX 2080 Super and even the RTX 2070 Super’s have seen price hikes on several retailers’ websites, as well as auction sites. Some locations are even sold out of those cards as well.
Of course, you can always head over to eBay and pay an outrageous price if you simply must have either the RTX 3080 or RTX 3090, but I really hope you don’t. Paying the scalpers what they want will only cause them to purchase more cards and price them even higher. The only real recourse is to wait for these mystical beasts to become more available. And believe me, I’ve been waiting since they were released.
Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-ceo-geforce-rtx-3080-and-3090-shortages-to-last-until-2021
