Nvidia’s RTX 30 series graphics cards have become a rare commodity this fall, with available listings on Amazon and eBay carrying absurd mark-ups. Fortunately, it appearsNvidiawill be releasing an enhanced version of the RTX 3080 later this year, potentially alleviating some of its eager customers' frustrations.
The release of the RTX 30 series' flagship cards, the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090, has been so intensely criticized thatNvidia issued an apology for mishandling the cards' launch, and pulled both products from its own digital storefront. It appears that scalpers employing botnets managed to secure the overwhelming majority of Nvidia’s stock for resale at incredibly inflated prices.
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Even though theRTX 30 series shortages are expected to continue well into 2021, some amount of new cards are expected to be available during the holiday season. Furthermore, it seems like those cards will pack extra memory over the Founder’s Editions. Today, rumors surfaced that Nvidia will be releasing SKUs for a 20GB version of the RTX 3080, and a 16GB edition of the RTX 3070 in December of this year. The same rumors suggest that the planned launch for Nvidia’s 3070 Ti with 6144 CUDA cores appears to have been canceled, and will be deferred to next year.
The Founder’s Edition of the RTX 3080’s has a standard configuration of 10GB of video memory, while the RTX 3070 has only 8GB, though in mid-September, Nvidia dropped hints that a memory upgrade for the RTX 3080 could be on the way.
Later that month,Gigabyte accidentally revealed its own 20GB edition of the RTX 3080was on the way. Given the RTX 30 series' focus on 4K gaming, the enhanced video memory makes a great deal of sense for graphics enthusiasts, as it is a key resource in rendering 4K textures quickly and smoothly. Gigabyte’s same leak implied that upgraded versions of the RTX 3060 and 3070 are also in the works.
One hopes the launch of the video memory-enhanced cards will be handled more securely and deftly than the launches of the 3080 and 3090 Founder’s Editions. Widespread, bot-assisted scalping has currently rendered the RTX 30 series extremely scarce and exorbitantly expensive. The problem has become so commonplace that one of Nvidia’s manufacturing partners was found guilty of the practice.MSI got caught scalping its own RTX 3080son eBay through a subsidiary, though the company claims the listings were errors.
The popularity of Nvidia’s cards is far from superficial or faddish. Gamers and critics who have been lucky enough to land a card have reacted extremely favorably, and noted performance upgrades over the RTX 20 series. Fortunately, the RTX 3080 will likely be back in stock sooner than gamers expect. Graphics card manufacturerEVGA stated that it is restocking cards every few days, and Nvidia’s other manufacturing partners have released statements to similar effect.
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