Nvidia might be one of the top technology companies in the world, but the company led by Jensen Huang is certainly not sleeping on its laurels, having recently launched a new series of graphics cards based on the company’s new Ampere technology.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 and GeForce RTX 3080 offer huge performance gains when compared to the previous generation according to reviewers, so it’s not surprise that both sold out very quickly after launch.
So much so, that Nvidia recently announced that it would be postponing the launch of the GeForce RTX 3070, a card that’s bound to sell bucketloads taking into account it can beat last-gen’s GeForce RTX 2080 Ti for a fraction of the price.
Talking about RTX 3090 and RTX 3080 availability, though, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made it clear that PC gamers looking to get hold of one this year should not get their hopes up.
“I believe that demand will outstrip all of our supply through the year”, Nvidia’s boss told the press in a Q&A session (via Tom’s Hardware).
“The 3080 and 3090 have a demand issue, not a supply issue”, commented Huang, adding that “The demand issue is that it is much much greater than we expected — and we expected really a lot”.
Actually, Huang compared people’s desire to get hold of Nvidia’s new RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 graphics cards to buyer’s eagerness to get hold of Microsoft’s Windows 95 operating system and Intel’s original Pentium processor back in the day.
“Retailers will tell you they haven’t seen a phenomenon like this in over a decade of computing. It hearkens back to the old days of Windows 95 and Pentium when people were just out of their minds to buy this stuff. So this is a phenomenon like we’ve not seen in a long time, and we just weren’t prepared for it”, said Nvidia’s CEO.
Nvidia, though, is ramping up production in order to meet customer demand according to Huang, even if the new graphics cards are flying off the shelves, meaning it will surely be hard to get hold of either the RTX 3080 or RTX 3090 this year.
“We’re ramping really, really hard. Yields are great, the product’s shipping fantastically, it’s just getting sold out instantly”, said Huang.
Earlier reports from China suggested low stock levels for Nvidia’s latest graphics card to last until 2021 at least, so PC gamers looking to turbocharge their PC with an Ampere-based graphics card might have to exercise a little patience, as it looks like it will be tough to get hold of one this year.
GeForce series 30 graphics cards (Nvidia Corporation)