‘The 3080 and 3090 have a demand issue, not a supply issue’
Shortages of Nvidia’s new RTX 30 series GPU are expected to last significantly longer than each card’s launch window. It has been incredibly tough to get an RTX 3080 or 3090 at MSRP. That’s not going to change anytime soon.
During a Q&A session with press (and as reported by Tom’s Hardware), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said that he “[believes] that demand will outstrip all of our supply through the year.” That means RTX 30 cards probably won’t be widely available until sometime in 2021 at the earliest.
In an economics spin for the ages, Huang explained that “The 3080 and 3090 have a demand issue, not a supply issue. The demand issue is that it is much much greater than we expected — and we expected really a lot.” When supply can’t meet demand and shortages ensue, it really seems like a supply issue.
Things don’t look much better for the RTX 3070 either. Nvidia recently pushed that release back to October 29 in order to get more cards on shelves at launch. From a price-to-performance approach, the 3070 (which retails for $500) is expected to be the best value of the three 30 series GPUs. There might be more 3070s available at launch but demand will also be highest. That pesky “demand issue” will rear its head and cause shortages here too.
As expected it’s not going to be easy to give Nvidia your money to adopt the Ampere architecture. Either you have to be lucky or you have to be patient. Or you have to fork over a ton of cash to scalpers. Don’t do that last one. Just accept that you’ll probably have to wait until 2021.
Nvidia CEO: GeForce RTX 3080 and 3090 Shortages To Last Until 2021 [Tom’s Hardware]
