At the beginning of the week, Nvidia admitted that it wasn’t prepared for the demand of its RTX 3080, even without scalpers sweeping the marketplace and leaving the graphics card out of stock. The good news is that measures have been implemented to prevent resellers from depleting the newly released RTX 3090, but it looks like history is destined to repeat itself anyway as Nvidia has apologised in advance for its “limited supply on launch day.”
This isn’t particularly surprising, as the RTX 3090 might not carry the ‘Titan’ moniker of its predecessor, but it’s still replacing the enthusiast graphics card that was similarly produced in smaller quantities.
Just because the GPU targets creators that render video, researchers using AI, and extreme gamers wanting to try out 8K gaming doesn’t make it any less disheartening, however. Nvidia says it understands this frustration and has attempted to reassure fans that it’s “working with partners to increase the supply in the weeks to come,” but some fear it could take until 2021 before we see supply meet demand.
Affectionately dubbed the “BFGPU” for its behemoth size, Nvidia also explained what prospective RTX 3090 owners will be waiting for. When comparing it with the RTX Titan gaming at 4K resolution, the green team said that we can expect an impressive 50% increase in performance and a 10-15% improvement over the flagship RTX 3080 – when the latter isn’t experiencing crashes, of course. Take these figures with a pinch of salt, though, as we await the scores of reviews that are cropping up online from independent testers.
If you’re itching to upgrade to the $1,499 / £1,399 RTX 3090, it’s worth noting that Nvidia reportedly has an RTX 3080 20GB in the works and AMD’s Big Navi GPUs will be uncovered on October 28. So it’s worth waiting to see what’s to come – not that you’ll find it easy to get your hands on one anyway.